Back from Rome Yes, we

Back from Rome

Yes, we are back. We are recouping by taking long leasurely showers and then we'll take a nap. It was so fricken' HOT in Rome! Janine either did have or came close to having heat exhaustion Tuesday afternoon, and I got a tad bit too much sun on Wednesday. I brought and USED the sunscreen, but I didn't put enough around my neck and completely forgot about the back below my neck. Forgot that the tank top I was wearing goes down lower than normal in the back. I'm okay today, but yesterday I was bushed!

Rome is beautiful! And too much to see in two days! Janine and I knew this, but we wanted to do a short trip anyway. We took a stop and go bus tour the first day and that got us to most of the big highlights in Rome. We walked around the Trevi Fountain, climbed the Spanish steps, walked around the plaza in front of the Vatican, visited Piazza Novona, the Pantheon, and walked around one of the most historical market squares in Rome. All in the first day, while sucking down lots of water. We ate dinner right across from the Pantheon. Every day occurance for us! NOT! :)

Day two we went to the Colesseum, had our picture taken with two "Roman soldiers" (who then tried to hustle us for 5Euro each for the pleasure - we gave them just 5Euro), ate a FANTASTIC shaved lemon ice in front of the Victor Emmaneul Monument (lovely, gorgeous, pretensious, HUGE marble monument to the first king of united Italy in the middle of Rome), and went INSIDE St. Peter's church (all properly dressed thank you). We wanted to see the Sistine Chapel after that, but the sign said it closed at 3:20pm (why such an odd time? I don't know), and it was 3:10pm when we saw the sign. So we stopped for a bite to eat. This is funny....we saw a Cafeteria style restaurant on the corner, so we went to check out the menu. Two waiters were there chitchatting and both asked if we were interested, so we said yes. Turns out that they worked for two restaurants side by side and each tried to hustle us into their particular restaurant! One guy says the A/C doesn't work in the others restaurant and the other made waving hand motions like we should ignore the first guy and follow him instead.

After that small meal, we went back to the hotel room, splashed ourselves with water, closed the blinds and slept for a couple of hours. Went back out around 8pm, and wandered over to the Piazza Novona and had a LOVELY meal in a cafe right on the plaza (which has three marvelous fountains and a church dedicated to St. Agnes of Agnone). Janine had Mussels and Calamarii and I had a prawn Rissotto and a lemon chicken medallion dish. Janine tried to get me to eat some Mussels, and I was going to, but I just couldn't. I looked at that little muscle inside the shell and the thought made me nauseous. And I didn't realize a prawn was a crawfish kind of thing. I thought it was the sea animal that is on the Shell gas station sign. So, I ate the rice and put the prawns on the side. :) I did eat some prawn meat when Janine pried it out of it's shell though. Seafood is a waste on me. Other than that, the meal was excellent! We had some wine, and special Italian ice cream desserts (Tartufo and Cassata). Delicious!

Oh and the other two nights we had Italian Gelato! Mmmmmmm......heavenly! Truly! Best ice cream I've ever had! AND HUGE!!!! We got small cones the first night we were there, and for 1.60 we got about three scoops of ice cream. Wow.

Okay, off for a nap.

Posted by Jinglelady at July 24, 2003 02:49 PM | Previous Blog | TrackBack