Rome II

Our second stint in Rome was packed with tours.  This city gets mixed reviews from travelers, with many giving it poor marks because it's too dirty, too busy, or lacks the charm of many of Italy's smaller cities.  However, it may be my favorite Italian city, and the tours we did gave us a great a varied experience during our time there.  While many guidebooks say you only need to spend three or four days in Rome, Magge and I left feeling like we had just scratched the surface.

Almost immediately after we got off the train from Florence, we headed to the Vatican City (yet another one of Italy's UNESCO World Heritage Sites), where we had a three hour tour with a small group.  When Magge was planning this portion of the trip, she asked me if I thought a three or seven hour tour would be better.  I said the shorter one was a better fit for the kids. I didn't also admit that I thought it was a better fit for me.  I'm not a big art guy, and seven hours of looking at sculptures and paintings wasn't something I thought I would handle well.  However, the three hours passed by incredibly quickly thanks to possibly the best guide we've had on any tour over the past nine months.   I was expecting a "this painting is called [insert Italian word], painted by [insert Italian name] in [insert year]; notice the fine balance and fluidity - actually, you won't notice them because you're an idiot when it comes to art" type of tour, but it was far more engaging than that.  Our guide is a PhD in social history and wove everything into a historical narrative.  Being the history nerds that we are, Magge and I ate it up.  We hit the major highlights in the Vatican museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica before our time was up, and I felt like I could have easily done the extra four hours.

I don't know why there's a Death Star in the Pope's courtyard

The very crowded Hall of Maps

St. Peter's Basilica

Michelangelo's Pieta, which launched him to international stardom at the age of twenty-four; finding this fact out made me feel like a loser

My mom chatting up our guide

After our day in Pompeii, my parents got the morning off as Magge, the kids and I went to a "mythology workshop".  Something I didn't know prior to my family's visit is that Liam is a Greek and Roman mythology expert, and he dominated this tour.  He actually learned a new myth, though on this tour, as we studied Raphael's paintings of Cupid and Psyche's love story.  Besides watching his interaction with the guide, the best part of this tour was visiting a palazzo that is off the main tourist track.  Unlike the Vatican, we almost had the place to ourselves.

Liam identifying the statues of the gods

Admiring Raphael's work

In the afternoon, we all went on a tour of Rome's most iconic site, the Colosseum.  This is my second time seeing it, and it was just as awesome as the first time.

Our last day was low key. Magge and I took Kiersten to the Forum and the Palatine Hill, where the emperors and Rome's upper class lived, and left my mom and dad to enjoy a leisurely breakfast with Liam.  Magge's interest in the Palatine lay in that she thought she'd be able to visit the house of Catullus, an author she studied in high school Latin class. Once we arrived, she found out that, even though he lived there, there is no house to visit and she quickly lost interest.  The ruins here have not been as well preserved as others we've seen and require more use of the imagination, especially since we didn't have a guide.  Two hours was enough for us.

Kiersten and me on the Palatine with a view of the Forum and the Colosseum

Afterwards, we joined the rest of the family for a food tour.  First item on the menu was pizza.   Good, but not earth shattering.  Truth be told, I prefer Papa John's over any pizza I've had in Italy so far.  I may get flak for that statement, but I had already heard it all from New Yorkers when I said the same thing about their pizza and it never changed my mind.  How good the pizza was on this tour was somewhat irrelevant anyway, because it was merely a prelude to the main attraction: the gelateria.  Our guide arranged for us to watch a local shop make gelato from scratch and eat it cold off the press.  We also each got a couple of scoops of our choice, including some strange-sounding flavors like sage & raspberry, cheery & cheese, chocolate & orange, lemon pie and Sicilian tomato.   It was all good, except for the tomato.   After leaving the gelateria, Liam stated his new plan, fifteen minutes in the making: "I'm going to move to Rome, get an apartment near the gelateria, and work at the gelateria."  It sounds like as good of a plan as any I've ever had.  The tour finished with a stop at a coffee shop, but while my parents and Magge sipped their strong Italian coffees, the kids and I sat outside and reminisced about the gelato.

The timeline of a sugar rush