Piazza Novana is big and spectacular and often overrun by street vendors. The current favorite are the guys that sell this little squishy ball character that, when thrown against a hard surface, splats out to nearly flat and then recovers his original shape in about 5 seconds. These guys are everywhere, asking 1 Euro for this thing. Their favorite sales tactic is to hold the item in the direct line of sight of your child and then harass you about it. Even Hadden has learned to say "no" when they come around.
Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (1651). Four guys around a big base made by Bernini to hold the obelisk from Egypt (Rome has a bunch of these - all taken from Egypt at various times).
Detail of the palm tree in FQF - carved by Bernini himself. It's hard to get rock to look like palm fronds. You have to be a master.
We saw the Pantheon again (top photo is from the night before) but this time we saw the back, which contains a small bit of remains of Agrippa's baths. It's truly a remarkable structure but the crowds are large enough it's hard to keep track of your kids. Oh, wait. There's ours...yelling, bumping into people and falling down.
One of my favorite statues from a church near the Pantheon. Not sure which one so I'm calling it the "Church of the Holy Hand Grenade". Anyone who's seem Monte Python's Holy Grail knows what I'm talking about. That rabbit's dynamite! And this dude has the weapon to defeat it...not the sword in his right hand, but the grenade in his left. One, two, five! (three, sir) Three! I like to think he's on "two" in this statue - even though one could argue the pin is still in (see the tiny cross at the top).
We also saw a big foot along the way. This is just on some random street corner. It's left over from Roman days and, I guess, all the museums were filled up so they put it here. It's remarkably clean with no graffiti.
I went walking down the banks of the Tiber south of the Ponte Palatino to locate Rome's first sewer outfall. This is the sewer they made to drain the area around the Forum and make it usable space. The big outer arch is new but you can see the old one if you look closely. It's still functioning and also serving a second purpose there days - bum's home. I scrambled down to get a better look and stumbled across a palatial (for a bum...did you know that that term, "palatial" comes from the Paletine Hill in Rome?) bum pad. This is not a major tourist attraction. Naturally.
Atop Castel Sant'Angelo. The view is spectacular and the family held still long enough to get a photo. I think 3 out of 4 are actually smiling. Potential Christmas card right there. It might be too much to ask all 4 to smile at the same time.
Our day on Palatine Hill. Clara was grumpy for a good portion of the day so this one was a tough go. Plus, the crowds were huge outside the Palatine/Colosseum. Among the things we saw: Constantine's Arch, a small portion of an aqueduct extension that goes to Palatine Hill. And, a rare moment on that day when both kids were happy - hopping from stone to stone on a Roman Road.
We managed to make it into the Colosseum in one piece. It was an absolute zoo. If you're in Rome you HAVE to go there, which makes it the zoo it is. You can't go to Rome and then say, "oh, we didn't go to the Colosseum." With Hadden and Clara at the end of their frayed ropes, we didn't loiter and read about the history of each brick. A relatively quick tour around the inside and that was it. Perhaps I'll go back later and loiter.
Other random notes:
- Hadden proclaimed Nona's house on Bainbridge to be the most fun of "all our houses". Second place is our place in Rome and bringing up the rear is our actual house in Seattle.
- Most dinners at home have been hits with the kids. Lots of pasta bases, meatballs, salami, cheese (although Hadden doesn't like stinky cheese) and tasteless bread. Not sure why Italy does bread in such a pedestrian way. You would think Italian bread would be better.
- There is no drying machine in the apartment (or in most of Rome) so I've been hanging out clothes out to dry old school.
- Hadden totally knows the 116 bus. He recognizes it, and the number on it, and calls it out each time.
- Everyone, but especially Nona, is obsessed with counting stairs. I think it's 52 up to our apartment.
- Clara climbed the Spanish Steps (138 stairs) from bottom to top all by herself. And then back down again.
- Hadden has watched far too much "Transformers Prime" TV on the iPad. It's actually a pretty good series.
- Our iPads are awesome. There is always someone using one of them when we are in the apartment. Even Clara plays Angry Birds. We are bad parents.
steve
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