I was a bit hasty in my arrivederci to Roma...

One of the things I was unprepared for with this knee surgery is the inevitable fatigue that goes along with it.  So I have been lax at looking through everyone's blogs.  But nothing could stop me from messing around with a few of my photos yesterday.  I realized that I had a few more Rome pics I wanted to share.

Here we are looking down a side street near the Pantheon.  I love those narrow curving side streets.  Just beautiful.

 Like every self-respecting tourist, Greg and I had to go to the Trevi Fountain.  The crowds there were ridiculous and I found myself thinking I would never want to be near that place in the summer.  But it was beautiful.  And we threw our coins in just like we were supposed to.  This is  a shot of one part of the fountain.

On our tour of Rome, Greg and I were taken to a delightful restaurant Sora Rosa where we had lunch outside.  The weather was perfect and the meal was very good.  Here is the bruschetta that  we began the meal with.  Our pasta course followed.  We decided that Pasta Carbonara was about the best thing going and had it a few more times on our trip.  I would say though that this may have been the best we had.

Here we are looking at the Appian Way after a visit to the Catacombs.  I remember reading about the Appian Way in Latin class while in high school but I never thought I would actually see it.  

Now I think I can say "Arrivederci, Roma!"  Until the next time...

Goodbye to Sandy, my bad knee and Rome...

I'm back and glad to report that I would have been back sooner if it were only my knee I had to contend with.  But Sandy came for a visit and we have been without power for the last couple of days.  It came back on today at 1:05 p.m.  Did you hear me cheering? We got off very lucky this time.  Our outage was kind of a freak thing that had more to do with last year's storm that never got completely cleaned up than this one, I think.  I feel for all the people along the East Coast who have had a devil of a time.  I hope things get better soon.

I did have my knee surgery last Wednesday.  Everything went swimmingly.  Of course, the next morning I thought I was going to die or at least never walk again, but when I woke up on Friday, I realized that I hadn't needed to be quite so dire.  By now, I have pretty good motion, am going up and down stairs with less discomfort than before the surgery and am looking forward to graduating to a cane from the walker at some point in the near future.  The power outage didn't help my point of view for a few days.  I was a bear to live with because I couldn't ice the thing down and the swelling was out of hand.  But now, I am able to do what I have to do and things are looking up.  Please be patient with me as I try to catch up with all your blogs.  I'm looking forward to a trip into Blogland.

I haven't had a lot of time to edit photos needless to say with the power outage and normal fatigue after the surgery, but I did get to a few today.  Here are some more shots of Rome, the Eternal City.  

The Forum in the morning.

Looking up in Rome

The Colosseum

Ciao from Roma!  See you all soon.

Roma!

In life you have to make choices.  We had one day to spend in Rome and knowing this, Greg booked a driver to give us an overview tour.   We decided that we would concentrate on old Rome and leave the Vatican for another time.

 

Our driver Max Rocca of easitalytours was terrific.  While the frenetic Roman traffic buzzed around outside our car, he calmly and effortlessly drove while telling us what we were seeing outside our windows.  And we were given time to walk around and explore each of the places that were highlighted on our tour.

Our first stop was to the Piazza Navona.  It’s quite a sight as you approach it through the narrow street.  All of a sudden there is a beautiful, large open space with three magnificent fountains including the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of Four Rivers) by Bernini.

On the Piazza Navona

Detail of Bernini's Four Rivers Fountain

From there we went on to the Pantheon. The Pantheon was originally commissioned by Marcus Agrippa in 31 BCE and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in about 126 AD.  My photos don’t do justice to this beautiful, graceful building.

Then we had a brief stop to admire Bernini’s Pulcino della Minerva, this nice little elephant sculpture that holds up one of eleven Egyptian Obelisks found in Rome.  Here he is front and back.  He sits in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, an important Roman Catholic church of the Dominican order.  

That’s all for today, folks!

Home from the hills…

We lit out for Italy on October 3, driving down to Kennedy Airport in NYC so that we could take a direct flight there.  Flying all night with no sleep is not the most fun thing in the world to do, I will admit, but everything was on time and there were only a few bumps in the sky road.

 

Our transport was there as promised to pick us up at the Rome Airport and to take us to the hotel that we booked a couple months ago.  But…surprise!  The hotel was overbooked and we had no room.  They arranged to have us taken to another hotel in the same area for a night until our room became available the next night.

Long story short, it all worked out.  Our stand-in hotel was run by two women who didn’t seem to speak any English but both were enthusiastic enough and we finally got settled.  The only way we know how to deal with jet lag is to sleep a couple hours.  So that’s what we did.  Then we got up and started roaming around Rome.  Here are a few things we saw the first day…

We are at the top of the Spanish Steps looking down.  It seems that this area is always crowded with people.  If it’s like this in October, I can’t imagine the crowds in June.  Still the people were congenial and the light was fantastic.

A proud Italian pigeon.

After we had a delightful dinner, we strolled through the shopping district.  I was rather taken by these purses but decided that it wouldn’t be prudent to purchase something that didn’t go with a thing that I had packed.  But I did really like the knitted mug and tea cosies.  Note to Carrie:  There’s an idea for your next knitting project.

Ciao from the Spanish Steps!