Rome

We just got home from spending a week's vacation in Rome. We had a great time. It's difficult to summarize such an amazing experience, but here goes:

1. Scooters: This is the Roman citizen's favorite way to travel. There are thousands of them on the streets.
2. Food: Pasta, pizza, bread, buffalo mozzarella, gelato...these were a few of our favorites. We found several great little restaurants and bars near our apartment. The Italians also are quite fond of children so Carson was always getting lots of attention. We found that for "happy hours" many local bars did nice appetizer buffets that you would get if you bought a drink.
3. Art: The Vatican museum was beautiful. Only problem was that it was so crowded that we really were not able to enjoy it that much. Jan and Tracy saw the Sistene chapel but Kevin and Carson stayed home that day--which was a good idea. Saint Peter's Basilica was amazing too (and much less crowded).
4. Architecture: From the old ruins of the Forum to the Colesseum to the loads of churches and piazzas with fountains, the architecture was beautiful. Every other word out of Carson's mouth was either "castle" or "coleseum" since he thought that's what all the buildings looked like. Our favorites on our visit were the Trevi Fountain and Castle Sant Angelo. Of course we didn't have our camera with us the day we visited the Trevi Fountain--oh well.
5. Leather: We found an amazing hole in the wall shop with one of the last few true Italian leather artisans still in business. I picked up a great handmade handbag and we met his apprentice, Era. Era happened to be an American who quit her job in the corporate world 4 years ago and moved to Italy to do work with leather. It was great to meet her. She didn't have any bags of her own in the store when we were there but I'm going to email her since I'd like to buy one of hers.
6. Open Top Bus Tour: This was by far the best way to get around to see lots of sites without the difficulty of having to walk around with a 2 year old. We took the Open 110 tour and it was worth every Euro (had a discount since we had purchased a Roma pass--which we highly recommend anyone do that is planning on visiting Rome for 3 days or more). Since Kevin was craving chicken wings, we ended up making a pit stop along the route to stop off at the Hard Rock Cafe - Rome. Would never think of doing this in our travels in the US, but after not having chicken wings for 14 months, this was quite the oasis!
7. Open spaces: The perfect places for Carson to chase pigeons that we found are--Piazza San Pietro (5 minutes from our apartment) and Villa Borghese. At Villa Borghese we rented a row boat and took Carson out on the lake for 20 minutes and he also got a pony ride in the park.

I think that about sums it up. It was a great week. Have moved my Flickr photo stream to a badge on the right side of the page. You can click thru to view the pics from Rome.