"Roaming Rome in the Rain"

Posted January 24, 2014.

Title credit to Ellie, as explained at the end of this post.

We've only been here a week, and I already feel hopelessly behind documenting this trip! We were talking to someone about our flight here, and Joey said, "That feels like ages ago." True. We've been busy!

Our first full day in Rome was Sunday, January 19th. Here's a recap.

We had planned on attending church at 9:00 a.m., but the kids were still like rocks at 8:00 a.m., so we decided to let them sleep. We barely made it down for the hotel's breakfast, which closed at 10:00 a.m., then headed towards St. Peter's Square to catch the pope's appearance.

On our way to pretty much anywhere in Rome, we took a tram (or walked) to Piazza del Popolo.

Ainsley and Ellie were excited about their first metro ride.

Waiting, along with thousands of others, for Pope Francis.

And there he is!

Bathroom stop at McDonald's...seriously better than the Mickey D's back home!

Back at the Piazza del Popolo...the kids loved all the water fountains.

We loved wandering on the Via del Corsi:

My place.

Finally, gelato success!

Ellie quickly figured out what "Saldi" meant.

Pretty much everything in Rome was on sale. :)

At the Spanish Steps.

More wandering in the rain.

Rob can't walk past a church without a peek inside, so we saw quite a few.

Most of them still had nativity scenes up.

Joey's place. :)

At the Trevi Fountain. Trick of light, it was actually pretty dark by now.

]

Wet feet.

At the end of the day, the kids have to write journal entries, and after first protesting that his journal was private, Joey decided to share his hilarious and creative "Dear Diary" entry, prompting a "Battle of the Books" which has now become a nightly occurrence. Here we are crammed in our tiny, but nice, hotel room to hear what they came up with. Everyone liked Ellie's title, "Roaming Rome in the Rain", so we all stole it. :) It was interesting to hear what stood out to each of them. The one thing they all mentioned was breakfast at the hotel...I had to take a photo the next day, since it was obviously such a hit.