Daily Life in Rome

There are only so many things you can plan on and research. Some things just happen. This post is a mixture of what we planned and things that just happened.

Our hotel was close to the Roma Termini. This made it easy to take our stuff from the train to our hotel when we first arrived. It also made it easy to catch a bus to all of the tourist stops. Sure, we could have paid a lot more money and taken one of the many tourist buses. But at 1 euro per person per way (our kids were young enough to be free), this was much cheaper. The city buses also stop at all of the tourist stops and our hotel stop was simply the terminal. Even if we didn't understand a word of Italian, we could have gotten around with no problem. It's not like we would miss the Colosseum just by looking out the window after all.

Just walking down a neighborhood street we saw this. Apparently they had just finished redoing the facade of this house. Now I want giant faces around all of our windows.

A little farther down that same street, this family started out of their house. The little girl and sweet daughter took one look at each other. Then they embraced like long lost friends. As they chatted in two different languages, the adults just looked on laughing.

At one point we got lost. We couldn't figure out which way to go. We had been walking longer than we expected. It was raining. I had opened the map so many times it had disintegrated in the rain. We eventually decided to take a taxi back. Not remembering the name of the street our hotel was on, we just told the driver to take us to the train terminal. She didn't complain about walking, but the moment we sat down she was out and didn't wake up until the next morning.

The next day he wanted more nap, so he pretended to sleep in my arms. I'm always up for a good cuddle. It didn't last long before he wanted to walk on his own again.

This was a small cafe we stopped in. We just might have let the kids eat pizza every single day we were in Italy. We also brought along dried veggies which they ate for snack every day. See that large sidewalk just behind me? That's a street. Not just a small side street for motorcycles, there was a city bus stop just out of view. When a car or bus came along, everyone just stepped to the side or in a doorway so that there was room.

 

All of the glasses were real glass. No kids cups or plastic to be found. Luckily the wine glasses had handles that made them easy to handle. The kids loved using the adults glasses and after a few times, I learned to relax and just trust them not to drop.

Historic buildings all around, fountains in the plaza, and people everywhere. When my kids hear music, they decide to dance in the street (literally). If I had just an ounce of their energy I think we would all be better off.