Rome/Vatican City, Italy June 26

Our goals for the last few days in Italy were to pretty much take it easy and get in the last few sites we wanted to see: St. Peter’s and the Colosseum.  We slept in and leisurely made our way out the door. Our plan for the day was to see St. Peter’s and walk through the neighborhood known as Trastevere. Rick Steve’s had a walking tour through this area that I wanted to follow. It had been raining a bit this morning and was still cloudy out so I put on my rain jacket. I put a rain poncho in my purse in case Craig got desperate. As we were heading out the door it started to rain pretty heavily and I suggested Craig take the umbrella for himself. He said he was fine and I stared at him for a long time. He was wearing flip flops, his long dress/casual/Friday work pants, and a shirt. We didn’t even make it around the block and he was getting drenched. (I’m sure this is another situation that doesn’t surprise his parents!) We had at least 10-15 minutes walk ahead of us. I saw a café and wanted to get a coffee, so we stepped inside and had a break from the rain. It became a dilemma because we only had a card and a 50 bill to pay for my 1.50 euro coffee. They could not take a card, or break a 50 so Craig tried going to the store next door, no luck. Customers were even trying to see if they could break our 50 bill, and no one could. If I hadn’t already taken a few sips of my drink I probably would have just left. I asked Craig what we could do and he offered to go back to the apartment where we had smaller bills. If we weren’t in the middle of our only downpour we’ve experienced in Italy, I would not have hesitated. Plus, he didn’t have a jacket or umbrella. I asked him if he would at least change his shirt (shoulders already sopping wet) when he got there, and he said, No. I figured it was his decision, and prayed I wouldn’t be paying for this later. I agreed to have him go back to the apartment, while I anxiously waited and not-so-much enjoyed my drink. After he had been gone awhile, thunder started to cackle loudly and there were a few spurts of lightning. I was watching down the street for him from a window at the café’s bar. I put my hands over my face praying he would be carrying an umbrella back with him. After some time, I saw a brown umbrella bouncing down the street with Craig attached to it. We paid for my latte, and I gave him a big kiss and told him that he was my hero.

We trekked towards St. Peter’s. While the rain made it quite uncomfortable, it also helped to diminish a lot of traffic and crowds. I ended up becoming desperate and wearing the rain poncho, but still got soaked until just above my knees. We only had to wait less than a minute while going through security to get into the basilica. Because of the rain, I didn’t get as many pictures outside as I normally would have.

After leaving the church, we saw a post office right by it. We popped in and discovered that it was indeed going to cost at least 2 euro to send each post card. We would have bought them there, but didn’t have enough cash for our 33 postcards we wanted to send. (So, if you get a postcard from us know that it cost close to $3-4 and we love you!!! And, if you didn’t get one from us, we still love you but already spent all the money we could!)

We started to walk towards the area of the Trastavere. We wanted to start at the Santa Maria of Trastevere, but eventually got lost. Before telling Craig for the third time that we had walked in the wrong direction I sat him down and said, “Craig, if you would like to go back to the apartment, we can because we are again walking in the wrong direction.” He immediately said, “YES.” to giving up on Trastevere. I said I wanted him to take on navigating our way home because I wanted to be the follower for awhile. We stopped at a café for lunch and made our way home.

We ate at Napoli Bella a recommended restaurant  around the corner from our apartment for dinner. Overall, I thought it was okay. We had fried zucchini stuffed with anchovies and cheese for our antipasta, a mushroom pasta for first course, and swordfish for our second course. Craig and I both agreed that the fried zucchini was good, but we needed some ranch or blue cheese dressing!! (There’s so much more American in me than I ever thought.) The mushroom pasta seemed simple: oil, parsley, and mushrooms, but it was surprisingly rich with the mushrooms so I could only eat so much of it. And the swordfish was again, okay, I liked the capers on it. But overall I’d say I was a bit disappointed because we had walked by several times and everyone’s food looked so good! We did get tiramisu to go, and that was delicious in the comfort of our apartment.