Happy Leap Day

Happy Leap Day.  I don’t really have much to report, but I wanted to get that in.  

We have had a couple of quiet days.  We are resting up because the next round of relatives arrives tomorrow for a week’s visit.  This time it is my in-laws who are coming.  Also known as Grandma J and Grandpa D. 

I have been doing a lot of cleaning in anticipation.  I don’t think it really does much good though.  At least the dirt is nice and shiny now.  I also spent some time with the Italian-English dictionary deciphering the instructions on the Italian Liquid Plum’r.  That stuff makes me nervous so I wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing.  I figured out the directions and gave it the old college try.  And I don’t think it didn’t do any good at all.  Oh, well.  At least I tried.  And I learned some new words in Italian that I might not have learned otherwise.  Words like scarico (drain) and impedimento (clog).  They might come in handy later.  You never know.

We also did some grocery shopping and found frozen pizza.  The C-man begged me to get them so in a weak moment, I did.  It is called Pizza Quick and you get 4 mini pizzas for about 3.50.  I think you are supposed to cook them in a toaster, but the toaster oven works just fine.  He loves them.  I tasted it and discovered that frozen pizza tastes exactly the same here.

The weather has been rainy again so that has kept us close to home too.  Today the children spent the day making paper brooms for their stuffed animals, and then flying their stuffed animals around the apartment.  From their room to the living room and back again.  All.  Day.  Long. 

We tried to go to the playground for a bit this afternoon.  We were there for about 5 minutes and then it started raining.  Princess O was all for staying anyway, but I vetoed that idea and we came home. 

Once we go here the stuffed animals began their flying exercises again.   Tom gets back from his field trip tonight.  Just in time to get a good night’s sleep and greet his parents at the airport bright and early tomorrow.  I can’t wait to see them.

Ikea!

Today we went to Ikea.  It was like a little taste of home.  A little Swedish taste of home. Ikeas are the same the world over so it was kind of nice wandering around in there.  We could have been in Sweden, or Minneapolis, or Chicago or London.  All the stores seem to have the same layout, the same signage, and the same blue and yellow color scheme.  And of course, the same great stuff.   I love Ikea.

 

It all started when M called last night as I was watching Project Runway on youtube to suggest the expedition.  Of course, I accepted immediately and we made arrangements to meet at 10am to begin our adventure.

 

We had to take a tram and two busses to get there.  First the tram up to the Cats, then one bus to Termini and another from Termini to Ikea.  That was a long bus ride.  Ikea is at the Porta di Roma shopping mall, and it is WAY out there.  I am not even sure exactly where we were in relation to the city center, but we were very far away from it.  We were also surrounded by some of the most pig-ugly apartment buildings I have ever seen.  And judging from the number of tower cranes I saw, there are more on the way.  I know I shouldn’t criticize.  There are pig-ugly apartment buildings everywhere in the world.

 

I do think this mall must be relatively new though.  The walk from the bus stop to the mall and Ikea isn’t especially nice.  You would think the bus would stop right in front of the mall, but instead it stops about a block away, so you have to cross a big intersection that has no crosswalks, and fortunately also not much traffic.  It’s a temporary bus stop, adding more evidence to support my theory that this is a relatively new mall. 

 

So anyway, we arrived at Ikea just in time for lunch.  Swedish meatballs.  Yay!  The children had French fries, bread and fruit salad.  Not the most balanced lunch but not that bad either. We also had cinnamon rolls and I had a coffee.  Then it was time for a good look around.  Our first stop was the kid’s section where I picked up some of those plastic drinking cups like the ones we have at home.  They will come in handy for picnics because we can use them for wine too.  At dinner tonight Princess O said “oh it is so nice to drink milk out of an Ikea cup again”.  How funny is that?  I didn’t buy much because we didn’t really need anything, and I didn’t want to carry a bunch of stuff home on two busses and a tram.  Besides, this shopping trip was really just recreational.

 

We went to the Port di Roma mall while we were out there.  That was kind of odd too.  We could have been in a nice American mall so many of the stores were the same.  We didn’t stay long because the children were getting tired and unhappy.  I told M we should get the men-folk to watch the kids some Saturday and go back out there ourselves senza bambini.  Maybe after spring break.

 

 

Giant feet and bikes

Our hotel in Venice does have TVs in the rooms!  Now I just have to figure out a way to wake up that early without waking up the rest of the family and turning on the TV very quietly.  I hope I can pull it off.

But I digress.  We decided we should get out today so we jumped on the tram and went up to the Cats.  We stopped and admired the kitties for a while, then wandered down to Santa Maria sopra Minerva.  On the way we discovered big signs for a new bike-sharing program in the city.  The sign was in Italian of course, but it looks like they are setting up about 15 stations in the city center where you can rent a bike.  It looks like you have to sign up for the program and get the bicycle equivalent of a library card to use it. 

I am not sure when it will launch, but we noticed the signs in a couple of different places.  I think it’s a great idea, but Rome doesn’t seem like the easiest place to ride a bike.  No real bike lanes in the city center, and narrow streets.  I hope it works though.  The kids expressed an interest in trying it out, but I don’t really think I want them riding bikes in central Rome.  Plus they don’t have their helmets here.

Our real mission today was to find the giant foot we read about in the DK Rome Guide.  We found the street, but no giant foot.  We did find the Via del Gatta or street of the cat, and the cat stature that looks over it from the top of a building.  The kids liked it.  And fits in well with their current fascination with cats. 

Once we found the cat we walked back to the Pantheon.  We were on the hunt for a new gelateria we had heard about.  Well, new to us, it’s actually been there for about 50 years.   As we were walking back the way we came, we found the giant foot!  It is just tucked up next to a building in an alley.  And we probably missed it the first time because there was a motor scooter parked right in front of it.   D’oh.  It wasn’t as big as we expected, but it was pretty big.  Especially if you stop to think about how big the whole statue must have been with a foot that size.

Onward past the Pantheon to Giolitti.  It is huge, and way more than just a gelateria.  It looked like they also had a bar and a pastry counter and a tavola calda where you can get hot food.  The dining area was very 1950.  Pink and gold with big chandeliers.  I loved it.  We have to take Tom there.  I had cinnamon and Grand Marnier ice creams.  They actually complemented each other quite nicely. We had cones, a departure for us.  But when we handed our ticket to the man behind the counter he just grabbed cones.  I have to say, the ice cream was good, but the people who worked there were pretty surly.  The woman at the cash register never said a word beyond telling me to give her 6 euros.  No hello, no thank you, nothing.  Charming.  

Odds and Ends

We had a very international dinner tonight:  French toast.  I think I mentioned that my mom brought pancake syrup when she came to visit.  Well, I really like pancakes, but I don’t like to make them.  That is what Perkins is for.  But I do like to make French toast, so we have been eating that.  A lot.  First you have to go to the Standa and buy pane Americana.  This is a loaf of square white bread like good old Wonder Bread at home.  The only difference is the slices are thinner, and the whole loaf is much smaller.  So you need to eat a lot more slices of French toast than you normally would.  To review, you use American bread to make French toast in Italy.  Like I said it was a very international meal. 

 

Did I mention I found horsemeat and rabbit baby foods at the Standa?  I did.  At first I thought, oh, isn’t it cute that they put a nice picture of a bunny on the baby food jar?  Then I realized it was a picture of what was in the baby food jar.  Urk.  I shouldn’t say that.  I am sure the Italian babies think it is delicious.  Of course, I never fed either of our children the meat baby foods because they smelled so awful.  Maybe this explains why they are vegetarians now.  Thankfully the jar of horsemeat baby food just said cavallo on it and skipped the picture.

 

On our way out of the store we stopped to investigate one of the street vendor’s stalls.  She had all kids of house wares, and these stalls are my favorite.  This one had everything from sponges to screwdrivers to lighters to batteries and a lot of strange hardware that I didn’t recognize. I have decided that if you are patient and look hard enough you can buy almost anything you could ever want from a street vendor.  One day we saw a guy with a whole rack of fur coats.  I am not even kidding.

 

I bought a couple of those little pop-up clothes hampers.  I got them for the children so they would have someplace to put their toys and miscellaneous stuff  besides all over the bedroom floor.  Now they are full of the junky toys they purchased from street vendors and paper light sabers, broomsticks and other quadric equipment.  And paper wands.  The children are very creative.  There is nothing they can’t do with a ream of copy paper and a roll of cellophane tape.

 

I also bought some AA batteries.  They were a euro.  I am a little worried about them frying my camera, but then I buy batteries from the dollar section at Target all the time and I have never had any trouble with those.  I am just being paranoid. 

 

In Formula One news today was the start of the last testing session before the Australian Grand Prix.  Lewis Hamilton was first.  I think Alonso was 7^th.  That is not good. 

 

And speaking of the Australian Grand Prix, we will be in Venice when it takes place.  Maybe we will have a television in our room and I can watch it very quietly with my earphones.  I am hoping anyway.  I have to check and see if our hotel has TVs in the rooms.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Villa Quntilli Photos

Lunch Among the Ruins

I don’t mean to gloat but the weather today was absolutely Spec.Tacular.   It was sunny and warm, with a high of about 60 I believe.  Sorry. 

 

We had plans to meet up with our friends P, and M and their children (also known as Team G) and also C, who used to work at the Big U but is now in Rome full time, and his wife G.  And their baby girl.   Our destination was a picnic outing at Villa Quintilli.  This is a truly amazing set of ruins, some of which date to Hadrian’s reign.  They are huge, and almost completely deserted.  It was so quiet out there.  No motorcycles, no busses, no sirens blaring.  And there was green space.  We don’t get much of that around here.

 

We took the tram up to the Cats to meet our companions, and then took two busses to get out there.  This is probably why it isn’t crowded.  It takes a long time to get up there and if you are here as a tourist, it is VERY far off the beaten path.  

 

When, we got there, and went to pay to get in Tom walked up and asked if there was a discount for the children.  The woman asked where do you live?  And Tom answered with a perfectly straight face “Rome”.  This is technically true of course.  The woman looked at him and said, “you live in Rome?” Tom deadpanned yes. Then he elaborated and explained that we are American but we live in Rome.  And she let all the children in for free.  Yippee.  The general rule is EU residents under a certain age (that part varies) are free, but everybody else pays full price.  This is perfectly fair since the sites are government subsidized and all the EU residents are paying taxes to subsidize it and the rest of us are not.  So it was really nice of her to give the children the EU discount.

 

The ruins are massive.  I was just reading about them in the Blue Guide and so they said that most of what you can see is the baths.  There are still some areas being excavated so you can really see a lot.  From whole huge walls, and recognizable buildings, to just little bits sticking out of the ground. 

 

We found a good spot to picnic on one side of the ruins and settled in.  It was great fun.  We had wine and tons of food, and it was warm and sunny.  I realized that this is what I had been picturing in my head for the past 18 months.  This is the Rome I had imagined.  The kids just ran around in and out of the ruins.  After lunch Tom and P took them on some walks around the place while M, G and I sat in the sun and chatted. 

 

G talked to one of the attendants and convinced them to open the gate onto the Via Appia Antica when we were ready to go.  That is the ancient road that leads into Rome.  It is two chariots wide and there are tombs dotted alongside.  Apparently, if you were important in ancient Rome, they buried you out here.  It is beautiful, and again, very quiet.  There were a handful of cars, but not many.  And I can’t help wondering what happens when two cars meet going in opposite directions, because it really isn’t wide enough for two cars.  I guess there must be a way.  Or maybe it’s a one-way street, but I swear I saw cars going in both directions. 

 

It’s quite a long walk along the Appia to the bus stop but we took our time.  And at about the halfway point we stopped and passed out the rest of the food and opened a second bottle of wine.  The children ate and played and the adults drank and talked.  It really was a perfect day.  I will post some photos soon.

The Gelati World Tour

Today we will be talking about gelati.

There are about a zillion different gelateria in Rome.  And I am trying to systematically work my way through all of them.  I realize this is impossible, but I think it is good to have goals.  I have made a list of the top gelaterias listed in our many guidebooks, and I am starting with those, and the neighborhood places of course. 

Speaking of neighborhood places, we found a new one.  It is called Gioriagel.  It’s on the corner of Viale Trastevere and San Francesco a Ripa. The children and I stopped there yesterday, but I didn’t have any.  I wasn’t in the mood.  So it doesn’t officially count yet.  They had some some intriguing flavors that I haven’t seen before.  One was banana, which was a rather unattractive dirty-white color.  I won’t be trying that one.  Why?  Because I hate bananas.  The green apple and pear seemed much more appetizing so I will add that to the list of Flavors to Sample.

I think I also need to start trying the more unusual flavors.  The ones that I can’t find a translation for, or just plain sound odd.  For example, earlier this week at Nice Ice over by the Pantheon, I saw a flavor called cinnamon with mixed fruit.  Intriguing.  I chickened out that day, but we may have to go back and give it a try. 

I am keeping a list of all the places we visit, and also a list of the flavors I’ve had.  I will probably share these with you at the appropriate time. 

So far my favorite flavors are chocolate with orange, coconut and pineapple.  My favorite gelateria is Vivoli’s but that is in Florence, so I don’t think it counts. 

School and Cats

My mom left this morning.  She stopped over to say goodbye before heading to the airport.  It was great having her here.  I hope she had a good time and that she won’t need a vacation to recover from her vacation.

 

Now, it’s back to the old routine.  It’s time to catch up on some schoolwork.  While mom was here we were only working on math, and not much of that.   I feel like we are a little bit behind.  I am struggling with this again.  Mostly with how to have both kids end up where they need to be, while still making it seem like their workloads are “fair.”

 

Math especially is a constant struggle.  It is our primary focus, so we tend to do the most of that.  The difficulty is that the C-man seems to have inherited some kind of math gene in his DNA code.  I’m not sure where he got it, because it certainly wasn’t from me.  But, he finds math really easy and whips right through it.  Princess O on the other hand, has a hard time with math, and it takes her longer.  Plus her assignments are more difficult anyway.  If I give them both about the same number of pages, C-man is done ages before his sister.  This always leads to tremendous wailing and gnashing of teeth from Her Royal Highness.  This of course means her assignments take her even longer because she is so busy complaining about how it isn’t fair that C-man is done already.  But on the other hand, it doesn’t seem fair to give C-man twice as much work as his sister, just so they finish at roughly the same time.  I am having a hard time making the Princess understand this.  I guess I just have to suck it up and be the big mean mommy.

 

After the Princess finally finished her schoolwork this afternoon we went up to the Largo de Argentina to see the cats.  I think the children are busy naming all of them.  The Princess has been reading this series of books about cats called Warriors, and she is busy deciding which cats in the sanctuary belong to which clan in the books.  She is very creative.  I noticed a sign that says they offer guided tours of the ruins on weekday afternoons at 4.  We might try to do that next week. 

 

 

• I wonder if the tour will be in English or Italian. 
• I wonder how many cats we will count while we are in there. 
• I wonder how hard it will be to drag the children out of there without adopting a cat.  

 

Rain tomorrow.  Then the weather is supposed to get nice and warm with temperatures in the 60’s.  I could get used to winters like this.

Check out my Florence Slide Show!

 

Florence!

We learned two things on our way to Florence:

1. That myth about the trains running on time is just that, a myth.  Both of our trains were late.
2. That Princess O gets motion sick on fast trains.  Poor girl.  She never actually puked but it was a near thing.  Thank goodness for Dramamine. 

Now, get comfortable.  This is likely to be a record breaking entry.

 

Day One

 

I booked us first class tickets because I thought there might be a lower level of chaos in first class, and I was traveling with the children by myself.  It was very nice.  Although we came home second-class and I can’t really see much of a difference.   In first class I think there are slightly fewer seats to a carriage, and you get a free beverage.  The Princess asked for un coca-cola per favore and won the hearts of the snack cart ladies.  The woman told her (in Italian – which I understood!) that since she said please she could have two.  Fortunately the Princess didn’t understand that part.  Mom and Uncle met us at the train station and we all piled into taxis.

 

We checked into the hotel and admired our view of the Duomo.  Amazing.  Finally we put our eyes back in our heads and went over to Santa Croce.  I think it is still technically a church but it is really a museum now.  I’m not sure if they ever hold services there anymore.  They are restoring quite a bit of it so the inside is full of scaffolding.  But you could still walk around and see all the tombs along the walls, and that is what everybody comes to see.  This is the final resting place of Michelangelo, Galileo, Dante and Machiavelli.  Those are some heavy hitters. 

 

We also saw the Pazzi Chapel by Brunelleschi.  The Pazzi Chapel is apparently considered a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture because of its proportions.  But that’s all I know about that.  I remember seeing it with Tom 13 years ago and not being terribly impressed.  Ditto this time around.

 

Our next stop was the Ponte Vecchio.  It is loaded with jewelry stores.  Apparently at one time there used to be butchers and other ordinary shops on it.  Then of the Medici’s decided he didn’t want to walk over anything as ordinary as butcher shops when he was going back and forth from the Medici palace to the Medici Ufficio (now the Uffizi galleries) in his elevated corridor, which actually goes OVER the Ponte Vecchio.   So he kicked them all out, and decreed that only goldsmiths and jewelers could have shops there.  And it has been that way ever since.

 

Day 2 

 

The day started with the children watching Italian cartoons.  They had absolutely no idea what was going on, but they were hypnotized anyway.  I think it was just the novelty of watching TV since we don’t have one. 

 

The million-dollar question of the day was what to do about the Uffizi Gallery.  Should we try to book tickets ahead?  Or should we just get in line and take our chances?  Ultimately, we decided at breakfast that we would walk over there and see if we could book tickets for Sunday. 

 

On our way we stopped in the Piazza della Signoria to show the children the David copy.  They were impressed.  Especially by his nakedness.  We promised to come back later.  We walked over to the Uffizi and the queue didn’t look too long.  So we got in it.  We decided we would give it 10 or 15 minutes and see if we moved at all.  We didn’t.  Uncle had gone off to wander around.  I left the kids with mom and walked up to try to read some sign.  When I was up there I ran into Uncle who told me that the guard at the front of the line had told him it was about an hour wait from the end of the queue, but that there were still reservations available for that day.  So we made an executive decision to go ahead and buy tickets in advance.  This meant we didn’t have to wait in the freezing cold queue in the shade.  Hooray.

 

Since we had some time before our reservations we went to the Duomo. It is very ornately decorated on the outside.  Turns out, they only did that in the 1870’s.  It had a number of other facades before that.  I think the Campanile was always decorated like a birthday cake though, and they just decided the rest of the church should match, but I could be wrong about that.  Anyway, I kind of like it this way. 

 

We stopped to see the copies of Ghiberti’s doors at Baptistery.  The originals are in the Duomo museum now.  They are very beautiful.  I told the kids all about how they are generally considered to be the first works of the Renaissance era and how Michelangelo had called them the gates of paradise.  I am full of these little bits of Renaissance Art History Trivia.  We opted not to go into the Baptistery however and proceeded into the church.  We took a look around then noticed a stairway with a lot of people going down it.  So we went down too and discovered:  a gift shop!  And a crypt!  That you had to pay to get into!  We passed on that, but did take a look around the gift shop, and discovered Brunelleschi’s grave, which was right by the gift shop entrance.  And you didn’t have to pay extra to see it.  Makes you wonder what you get to see if you do fork over for the extra ticket.

 

Brunelleschi’s dome is very beautiful, and very high so we decided it would be better to admire it from the ground.  I climbed it back in 1995 and have no desire to do it again.

 

After lunch, we went back to the Piazza della Signoria to buy gelati for the children and admire the statues in the Loggia di Lanzi.  The loggia and some of those statues have been there for 500 years.  That’s a long time.  Finally, off to Uffizi to see Priceless Works of Art.   I don’t know who came up with this advance purchase idea but it is brilliant.  You just wait until your appointed time and they let everybody in.  No fuss, no muss. 

 

It didn’t seem that crowded inside.  The Vatican museum was definitely worse.   It is easy to tell the very famous paintings because they have big tour groups in front of them, and they paintings themselves are behind bullet-proof glass.  I won’t bore you with the complete list of what we saw, but I will say that as a Renaissance Art Geek I was happier than a pig in dirt.  I tried to keep the children entertained by sharing bits of interesting trivia with them, and they did pretty well. But eventually they started complaining that they were tired and had Museum Feet so we left.

 

Time to run the gauntlet of gift shops to get to the exit. We stopped for coffee and snacks at the bar conveniently located just outside the exit.  Everybody was exhausted so we decided an early dinner was in order.  And since the children had been such troopers we decided that early dinner should be at McDonalds.  Not my first choice for dinner in Florence, but sacrifices must be made when traveling with 7 and 9 year olds.  My children have eaten at McDonalds in some of the finest cities in the world.

 

During dinner the C-man lost another tooth! We were sitting there and some American girls stopped to ask if we could help them find their hotel.  As I was pulling out my map to help them the C-man cried out “AAH!  My tooth!”  He was upset because he thought it was bleeding (it was) but I lied like a rug and told him it was just ketchup.  He bought it and calmed down.  So we had another visit from the Italian tooth fairy.

 

Day 3

 

Our original plan today had been to go to the Bargello, but it was closed because it is the third Sunday of the month.  Then we thought maybe the Accademia, but that was a pretty long walk from the hotel, so upon further reflection we decided on the Duomo Museum and then thought we would go to this Palazzo that is a museum now of life in the 15^th century.  We never made it there.  More on that later.  We thought this would be better because the children wanted to ride the carousel in the Piazza della Repubblica again, and I was still bound and determined to find Vivoli’s.

 

Vivoli’s is this gelateria Tom and I went to in 1995.  It was easily the best ice cream we had on that trip, and we had a lot.  Tom took their card, and has been carrying it around with him ever since.  When we were preparing for this trip I borrowed the card and wrote down the address.  But of course it is in a tiny tiny street, and wasn’t on any of our maps.  Finally on Sunday morning after two days of poring over those maps, I asked the woman at the front desk.  She had heard of it but had to do a search on google maps and print out the directions for us.  It turns out it is over by Santa Croce.  All the more reason to stay in the central part of the city.

 

At the Duomo museum we walked up to the ticket booth and asked for five tickets.  But he only sold us three, and told us the bambini didn’t need tickets.  He was obviously being generous because the sign very clearly said the reduced ticket prices were for EU residents only.  And kids were only free until they are six years old.  Well both of them look way older than six, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? 

 

We saw a lot of bits and pieces that have been taken off the church over the years, including the original panels form Ghiberti’s baptistery doors.  They were removed for restoration after the flood and are now in special nitrogen filled chambers to keep them preserved.  This museum also has the second Michelangelo Pieta.  Did you know there were two of them?  This one is much different.  He originally intended it to be his funerary monument.  But there was a flaw in the marble and one of the Christ figures legs broke off so he got mad and never finished it.  It’s very sad, but I like the one in St. Peter’s better.  We also saw the wooden model of the dome and some of the tools they used to build it.

 

As we were looking at the Pieta the C-man asked if we could go to Michelangelo’s house.  I had forgotten I had even told them it was in Florence.  Anyway, I told him I wasn’t sure we could because it might be close but we would try to go.  So on our way out I looked up Casa Buonarotti in the DK guide to Florence for sale in the museum gift shop. 

 

It was open!  So we ambled over there.  And once again the ticket seller insisted the children were free even though the sign said otherwise.  I’m not sure Michelangelo ever lived in this house, but his great-nephew did.  They do have two of Michelangelo’s sculptures and a bunch of art his great-nephew collected.

 

Lunch was next, and wasn’t very memorable.  Then, Vivoli’s!  Hooray!  We finally found it.  And it was as good as I remembered.  Uncle had chocolate chip and rum crisp. He made all the grown-ups taste the rum crisp.  I can’t believe it even froze there was so much rum in it.  Clearly not intended for the under 21 set.  Or under 18 over here.

 

Next off to the Piazza della Repubblica for one last ride on the merry go round.  And one last stop at the covered market we discovered on the first day so I could get a journal with that nice Florentine paper I like.  We had stopped there on Day One to purchase souvenirs, including a nice leather bag for myself.  The bag and the journal are very much like the ones I bought 13 years ago.  Apparently my tastes haven’t changed much. 

 

Day 4

 

Got the train back to Rome.  We took a cab from the hotel and arrived too early once again and our train was late.  I think the children and I have bad train karma.   Now we are home, and I am exhausted.  I will try to post some pictures soon.  Even though they are not really of Florence, they are of the Children with Florence in the background.