It's a busy life being here in Rome. I'm a day late already, and now I'm writing this at the dinner table at Pat & Mimo's place - dinner will be served soon as Mimo is in the kitchen now putting the finishing touches to it. It's going to be spectacular, as all meals here in Rome have been and especially the one we enjoyed at their place earlier this week.
Yesterday, we had a busy day. We were all at the bus stop just before 6am, waiting for the 224 to take us into 'town'. 'We' wanted to be at the Spanish Steps as early as possible, before ANY tourists were there. I say 'we' - actually I wanted to, and the others gallanty said they'd come too. It was a chilly morning but by the time we'd arrived at the Spanish Steps we'd defrosted slightly. We all agreed it was worth getting up early to be there at that time - it made a great comparison to yesterday when the steps were was covered with tourists. By this time we decided that breakfast somewhere would be a good idea so we ended up at a great tiny cafe right next to the Trevi Fountain - "lots of statues stuck on to the back of a church" as Pat calls it. I was going to say we had a yummy breakfast, but at this rate you might think that I'm going to bore you with details of meals. I won't. Since arriving in Italy, we haven't had a bad meal/snack/gelato/nibble - mind you, all the meals in Tanzania and Kenya were good too - and so of course I'm going to need to ramp up the exercise stakes when I get back to Oz. After breakfast, we spent some time back at the Fountain and were fortunate to be there when they switched it on in the morning. Aaaaahhhhh ...
We dragged ourselves away from the fountain and made our way back down to the Colesseum, this time zigzagging up, down and around alleyways and ducking and diving the early morning traffic. It was a magical way to arrive back at the Colesseum and this time we were early enough to escape the queues and get entrance tickets. Note to self: try not to come to Europe in high summer, unless we're living here ...
After leaving the Colesseum, we spent some time sitting on the grass outside just enjoying the fact we had time to sit and enjoy the views. Roger more or less decided that one of us was going to 'have to' have our photos taken with the Centurions, and it wasn't hard to guess who that person was. So we wandered over to the Centurions, and of course I had my photos taken with them - and then Leanne joined in too of course while Roger did the camera honours. Great fun all round.
We then caught the metro back to Lepanta station where we waited for the 224 back home. We called in to the deli downstairs and bought the makings of a huge picnic which we all enjoyed back at our apartment.
Most shops here open in the mornings from about 8:30am and then they close at 1pm for a siesta, opening again at 4 and closing around 8pm. During the afternoon, since we were all feeling a tad tired, we decided we'd have a siesta too. As plans go, it was great. However the usual happened and niether of us got our siesta. While Leanne did her best to stimulate the Italian economy (we had a show and tell afterwards to view the results) I needed to get to the bank to change some money. Easier said than done.
I took my passport and USD across the road to the bank. There is no door into the bank. Undeterred, I just stood and looked terribly blonde. I just couldn't work out how to get in, so I did the sensible thing and walked down to the bank a couple of blocks down the road. Fortunately there were 2 suited men just about to go in, and I finally discovered the "Italian Banking Tardas" and how to actually get into the bank. Once inside, it didn't look like a bank at all because there were no tellers, or no-one who looked like what I expected a teller to look like. The guy who had gone in previously came up and wanted to know what I was doing there, so I showed him my passport and cash. He shook his head and waved frantically to show that I may have been in a bank, but they don't change money. So he took me outside, said he didn't speak English and proceeded to wave his hands in various directions and push me up the road.
I did my best to follow his directions but couldn't find anything remotely resembling a bank. So I came back to our apartment and asked the guy downstairs. I then discovered that the building next to our apartment is, in fact, a bank. Doh!!! I went over, chuffed that at least I knew how to get in to it. So I pressed the magic button, the door slid around & open, and I stepped in. The door shut. And then nothing happened. I tried all sorts of things and just before I wondered how I was going to feel about spending the night standing in this thing, the original door opened again and so I escaped, back to where I started from. I could see the girl inside just looking at me, so I pressed my passport up against the door (yep, it actually had a door that you couldn't use) and she pointed me back to the tardas. Fortunately this time it let me into the bank, and I was more than relieved to discover that they could change my money. Phew. It only took about 8 pages worth of paper for her to perform this small miracle and I finally left the bank with Euros at last.
I checked that Leanne was still more than happy to be shopping, and I went to the travel agent to buy our train tickets for next week up to Florence. After the banking experience, this was a relatively easy one, even though the girls at the travel agency didn't speak English, and I don't speak Italian.
By this time, our siesta time was up and we were due back at Pat & Mimo's apartment which is about a 5 minute walk from ours. As it was Good Friday tomorrow, there are churches open late the night before. I am a Christian, not a Catholic so I am not sure of exactly if it's a Roman tradition or a Catholic one but anyway, we parked the cars easily at Santa Maria Maggiore church and walked to 3 totally different type of churches to look inside and see everything. We then drove to San Giovani in Laterano, which used to be the Vatican before the current one and as you could imagine, the church was ginormous and absolutely spectacular. The atmosphere in each of the churches was amazing as well. After this they took us to one of their favourite pizza restaurants. They had originally wanted to take us to a favourite small pizza place but as it was so late, they took us to this one as it was closer. The food was mouthwateringly delicious and we ended a special evening with lots of laughs and a great time.
We'd been on the go for about 14 hours so we were all pleased to crawl into bed ... and I didn't have the energy for a blog update last night.
This is normally the bit where I add some photos, but for some reason the photos are not being able to be uploaded, so sorry, but you've only got the news without the photos this time ...
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