I am drinking a glass of wine that we poured out of a box and it isn’t even terrible. And the really funny thing is: it only cost 65 cents. I finally found out that is what you 1/100th of a Euro, a cent. Duh. So once again, you gotta love a town where you can get a drinkable wine for about a dollar. It’s way better than two buck Chuck.
We have been playing tourist all weekend. Yesterday we drew some cards from our deck of 50 Roman walks and, well, went for a walk. We took in the Farnese Palace, the Castel St. Angelo and a fountain that at one time spouted wine instead of water. This was, at one time, a very decadent place. Some might say it still is. We also saw churches with skulls carved into the doorway (very welcoming) a bridge designed by Michelangelo but never completed, and the Farnese Palace, subject of a long-running family joke.
When Tom and I came to Rome back in the dark ages (1994) we had dinner in the Campo de’ Fiori on our first night in town. We got lost on our way back to the hotel, and just as we were about to pull over and consult the map Tom looked up and said “Oh my God, it’s the Farnese Palace!” I think I said something like “is that good?” Anyway, the rest of that conversation is lost to the ages, but the general idea was Tom telling me I know exactly where we are, but it is nowhere near where we want to be. The line “oh my God, it’s the Farnese palace”is now what we say when we are navigationally challenged.
We had pizza near the Campo de’ Fiori and then came home. We had to walk past the Farnese Palace again to get there, and the C-man noted we had been past it once already. Then he said, “Mommy, we have done a whole lap of Rome!”
We capped off the evening with dinner at Team G’s house. It is always fun to get together with them. We try to do it at least once a week. Next weekend my mom will be here so we will all get together at our apartment.
Then today we went to one of the many branches of the National Museum of Rome. We saw a lot of classical statues in a beautiful palazzo originally built in 1480. There have been some updates since then but it is a beautiful space. The building is called the Palazzo Altemps, and many of the statues on display were originally part of the collection of Ludovico Ludovisi, a cardinal in the 17th century. The only reason that is worth mentioning is because he was a big believer in “repairing” these ancient Roman statues. Apparently back in the 1600’s this is what you did if you found an old statue lying around.
So he hired sculptors to replace missing limbs and stick new heads on torsos that were without. They would either carve new ones, or if they happened to have some lying around, they would just use those. The results range from the comic to the tragic. Our personal favorite was a statue where they had obviously placed a woman’s head on a man’s body.
We left Tom to wander a bit on his own and the kids and I hit the road. We walked back to the Piazza Navona and discovered there was a little circus going on in the south end. There was a band playing and clowns and kids in fancy dress were having a parade. I tucked my wallet in close and we waded in for a closer look.
While we were standing there, in the rain, a clown came up and took C-Man’s hand to get him into the parade. So he is trying to pull him into the parade and he is clinging to me with the other screaming “mommy noooo!” So I said no really loud and when the clown looked back I told her (in English) that he did not want to go. She let go right away and went off, but The C-Man was done with the party at that point. It was probably a good thing because it was starting to rain harder so we went back to the tram and came home.
Once we got home I was tooling around online and discovered it was a Carnevale celebration. Ash Wednesday is this week, so I guess this is the Roman version of Mardi Gras. I have a feeling it’s more exciting in Venice.
Posted by goitaly 
