Sunday 13 December

I love warm weather….I intensely dislike winter at home….and yet, I signed up for this? 😉❄️

  
We didn’t head out until after 9am today, and instantly realised how warm our apartment is! 😬 We wandered back down past the Trevi fountain in search of the Pantheon, following instructions I had found online. I found a site offering Rome walking tours for a fee, but their description was so detailed I was confident I could walk the family there for free! (Minus the expert guide of course).

It never ceases to amaze me how many monuments and historic buildings are around every corner. The Pantheon took our breath away as we approached yet another piazza full of people, cafes and shops and there it was.

  
Our photos do not do justice to its magnificence! We watched a Catholic Church service underway inside from the doorway, and then moved on. We found a church we could visit, the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Piazza della Minerva. Zac is quite disturbed by the fact there is a beggar at every church door, so we are trying to keep some change in our pockets – for toilets (which are few and far between, and cost at least 50 cents to use!!), and for him to give to those holding a cup at the door asking for help.

Side note: the public toilet system is not good for potential kidney stones! I am not drinking enough water because of the cost and general unavailability of bathrooms…😕

From there we visited the Altar of the Fatherland, a massive building dedicated to Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy. The terraced area there gave us views of the Roman Forum and Colosseum, both of which we wandered through before we trekked back to our apartment. 

   
 We picked up coffee and lunch from the Yum Yum cafe where we bought croissants and pastries the first morning we arrived here. We have been in search of pasta as an alternative to having pizza every day, but no restaurant seems to offer pasta as a takeaway option. Well the manager of Yum Yum remembered us, immediately gave us cutlery and plates for 8, and sent us home with shrimp and salmon salad, spaghetti marinara and lasagna. Yum!

Everyone had a rest after lunch, and I tried to catch up on some washing (I’m having withdrawals! And managed to trip a fuse twice in trying to use the washer and dryer simultaneously…). We then went souvenir shopping and had a quiet night in the apartment (after paninis and sandwiches from the supermarket for dinner) playing scrabble and watching the soccer – Jarrod came up with a grand plan to attend a Roma v Napoli soccer match while here, to which I had to play bad cop and point out the time and cost to get to Napoli to see the game. I could have saved the bad cop routine for another day because the game was a sell out anyway 😉