The plan today was to go to the playground then go up to studio to meet Tom so he could show me where the house wares store was. And I found the studio with no problem at all. I was so proud of myself.
While I was navigating to the studio, I decided I need a new map. I love the map I have, it folds up very small and when you unfold it, it pops out in an interesting way, and then folds itself back in when you close it. Unfortunately it does not have a whole lot of detail on it. Like, for example, the names of smaller streets, which is where all the interesting stuff is. So I’m not exactly sure where I should go to find a better map, but it must be done. It’s too bad, because this one is so handy.
But I digress. As we were standing in the piazza by studio who did we run into? Team G, our fellow Roman travelers, who had just finished lunch. So we decided that Tom and P should go back to work and support us in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed, and the women and children should go exploring.
With that we were off on our first adventure. We started out by heading to the Theatre of Marcellus. These are some very nice ruins that somebody somewhere along the line thought would make a good foundation for some apartments. They actually look very cool, and you are free to just wander around the ruins. It’s very nice. There are little bits and pieces of columns and other mysterious bits of building lying around in artfully arranged piles meant to look like they just fell over last week.
From there we went to the Campidoglio and walked up a huge flight of steps (124 – we counted) onto the back end of the Monument to Vittorio Emmanuele. You can look out over the Roman Forum from there, and you can see the Coliseum. With our usual exquisite timing, we arrived at the same time as some protest rally down in the piazza. I have no idea what they were saying, but they seemed to feel very strongly about it. And, of course, the front of the monument was covered in scaffolding, keeping a long-standing family tradition alive.
We admired the view, and then wandered around looking for the bathroom for a while. That didn’t work out so we gave up and went down to the forum. The forum is amazing. 2,000 year old ruins of temples and government buildings in the middle of the modern city, with no real buffer zone between the two. We stood there and admired them, but we had forgotten our guidebooks so we had no idea what we were looking at. We will have to go back later with either Tom or a guidebook or both.
By now the need for a bathroom had reached the mission critical stage. M bravely asked a (very attractive) Carabinieri officer where we could find one. He directed us to a bar around the corner and we arrived just in time.
On our way back to studio we came across a shoe store that was having a big sale. M found some boots she liked so we went in to try them on. I tried on a gorgeous pair of riding style boots. They were black leather with a band of brown leather around the top and a low heel. I loved them and I would have worn them with everything all the time. But, as usual, they did not fit over my big fat (or “athletic” if you are being kind) calves. Bugger! They would have looked awesome on Olivia but I am not buying her boots. It doesn’t make sense since by next winter she will probably outgrow them anyway. M was more successful, and bought two pair. The same boots, one pair black, one brown. They were beautiful.
We got lost for a while after that, but not fatally. Finally we split up and went to our respective apartments. All in all we were out and about for close to 5 hours. The kids should sleep well tonight.
Posted by goitaly 
