Rome!

We next drove to Rome! How exciting to visit that city. We unloaded our luggage and then dropped off the car. We then walked back. We walked all the rest of the time in Rome and saw so many wonderful. Our bed and breakfast place was on Via Cavour, the same street as the church that has the statue of Moses by Michelangelo. The one with the horns. It was very plain inside but loved seeing that statue.
Our room overlooked the street and that was so entertaining. Cars were parked every which way, double parked, triple parked and even on the sidewalk. at right angles, or at any angle, to the curb. People would walk down the middle of the street, two and three abreast, ignoring traffic. Our room has a shower in the corner with the toilet down the hall.
We saw the Spanish Steps but I was disappointed. Pictures always show them with flowers and clean. There were no flowers, it was dirty and tons of people. We walked across town along the Tiber river and saw Castello de Sant Angelo of Tosca fame (she jumped from it at the end of the opera); it was built as Emperor Hadrian’s Mausoleum. We then walked to St. Peter’s Square. Pictures can’t do it justice, it is huge!!! Inside the Basilica is truly beautiful, also huge. Lots of beautiful marble, gold, paintings and statues. We were able to see the "Pieta", just beautiful.
Walking back to the hotel we would look down in a vacant lot and see Roman ruins below ground level. We saw the huge white monument to Victor Emmanuel II "Altare della Patria" It looks like a big wedding cake.
Next day we visited the church "St. Peter in Chains" built to house the chains that bound St. Peter. It is famous for the tomb of Pope Julian II for whom Michelangelo did so much work. We then walked to the Colosseum. What a thrill to see and walk about it. We paid the extra fee and went up higher. I saw a little piece of brick and picked it up as a memento. What things occurred here years ago: duels, battles, hurts, etc. We truly enjoyed this. We walked to the Trevi Fountain in a drizzle. It was bigger than I had thought and so beautiful. I was surprised to see that it is surrounded by buildings and not in a big open space. We went to the Pantheon but it had closed about 45 minutes earlier. We had wanted to go to the Forum but with the rain coming down and having seen a lot of other ruins along the streets we didn’t feel too disappointed, just a little.
Bus tickets are sold in the tobacco shops so we bought two for in the morning. We thought it might be too far to walk to the train station with all our luggage. We really don’t have that much: two small suitcases, a garment bag and a carry-on bag.
The next morning our landlady gave us an early breakfast at 7:30 a.m. consisting of bread, butter, jam and grapefruit juice. We caught the bus about 7:50 a.m. arriving at the train station around 8:00 a.m. It took a long time to find where to buy tickets to get to the airport. The tickets cost L5,000 each and I now only have L4,000 left; everything worked out just right. It took about 45 minutes to get to the Leonardo da Vinci airport. There were guards with submachine guns patrolling and occasionally stopping and looking into luggage if you are Arabic. We were not stopped. It was a nice big airport. We boarded the plane about 10:30 a.m.
We enjoyed seeing the Cape Cod Hook from the air as we flew into Kennedy Airport in New York. It was great understanding every one. We had a few hour wait but customs did not check our luggage. We went all through Europe and back into the U.S. and no one checked the luggage; that really surprised me. Tricia and Rob met us at the SLC airport about 10:00 p.m. It was good to see them and be back but we had had a marvelous time, an unforgetable time, for which we are very grateful. It has been a wonderful 20 days and we still can’t quite believe all we’ve seen and that our kids made it possible.