Roman Holiday

What a great weekend. We took the kids for their first visit to Rome (actually, Colin visited Rome with Grandma and Aunt Monna when he was about a year old, and Lucia was in my tummy at the time, which she thought was very cool). But this time, Colin was big enough to appreciate things, but Lucia was still small enough to be a bit overwhelmed by the hectic schedule.

We arrived around 6:00pm Friday night, and headed to Roberto and Jessica's apartment near the center. Then they had reservations for dinner at 8:30 at a little trattoria around the corner. Magnificent food, but by the time we got the kids to bed it was nearly 11:00pm. Not a good start to the weekend for Lucia. At any rate, we were up as usual at 7:30am, much to Roberto and Jessica's horror (they are in the process of trying for kids, up until they spent the weekend with my kids, at least). We had a great morning walking around the Coliseum. I wasn't sure how much the kids would appreciate it, but Colin really seemed to be into it. He kept grabbing my camera and taking photos. I'm sure he didn't grasp the significance of the structure, but he did seem to enjoy the visit. We walked around a bit more that day, saw the Pantheon, threw some coins into Trevi Fountain, checked out the Spanish steps. Then we spent the latter part of the afternoon at the Children's Museum, which they loved, but after having been to the one in Indy, I thought was pretty disappointing.

Lucia had a hard day. She had this cycle going on where she would be all happy and skipping along and enjoying things for a while, then she'd get all difficult, and start pushing her brother or not listening to her parents, which was followed generally by breaking down in tears and wanting to be carried and held for a while. Then she'd recover and go back to happily skipping along. The cycle continued throughout the day. The words that kept going through my mind were "Lather, rinse, repeat". But given her short night, I have to say that she did better than expected. We had a quiet pasta dinner that night at our friends' house, but she still didn't pass out that night until nearly 10:00pm.

On Sunday Roberto drove us around Rome a bit to show us some sites by car, and Sunday morning seems to be the only time you can actually get anywhere in Rome in a car. At any other time, you simply sit in your car, not moving, as people honk and scream obscenities in Italian around you. We stopped at St. Peter's Square, but unfortunately did not have time to stand in line to go through the metal detectors to go inside. We left later that afternoon, and Lucia slept for nearly 3 hours on the train home. I kept thinking as I looked around at my fellow passengers, "Do you people have any idea how lucky you are that this child is unconscious?"

We had such a great time with our friends, and Rome is truly amazing. It can be very chaotic and touristy, but it is truly amazing to walk down streets so rich with history. Colin is already planning his next trip....to Paris. Not a bad life.