Ciao Rome

May 3rd—Brent left early this morning for his trains, planes and automobile day (train to Bologna, plane to Frankfurt, car to Luxembourg). We finished packing up our stuff and after lunch left for the train station and our 1:30 train to Rome. It was our easiest travel day yet as we only had a 1.5 hour train to Rome. We arrived in Termini station and had a little time to kill before we could check-in at our apartment so we stopped for Gelato. We then caught the metro to our apartment stop. The apartment is just a short walk from the metro station. It is a nice apartment on the 8th floor of a residential complex. We are staying in a residential neighborhood outside of the downtown “tourist” area. It is nice because there is a grocery store and park within walking distance of the apartment. We took the kids out to play and it was full of families and their kids. They really enjoyed it because it has been a while since we have had a park/playground close to our apartment. We then walked to a pizzeria that is nearby and picked up a couple of pizzas to take home. They were great handmade pizzas and the pizzeria is likely to be a regular for us given its proximity to the apartment.

May 4th -- We awoke to a bright sunny day in Rome…or should I say Austin awoke us to a bright sunny day by opening our shades. We were a little slow moving this morning after a couple of packed days with Brent in town and then a travel day. The apartment has a DVD player with tons of kids / Disney movies so the kids were able to watch a movie this morning. Amy and Abby then headed out to the grocery store to pick up some essentials. When they got back we decided to head into the city to get some lunch and begin to get our bearings. We took the metro to the Colosseo stop. It was about a 10 minute ride from our apartment. When we came out of the metro station, the Colosseum was directly in front of us. It is very impressive to see and to think it was built 2000 years ago. I’ve been amazed at the architecture that we have seen and this sight topped them all from an engineering perspective given its size and age. We walked to a nearby restaurant that was recommended to us by our friend Paris and enjoyed lunch at one of the sidewalk tables. We then went back over to the Colosseum area and grabbed a spot on a hill to enjoy the scenery and people watch. It is beginning to warm up here so after a little while in the sun, we actually began to get hot. We decided to make it a light day since we will be in Rome for 3 weeks. We headed back to the apartment and took the kids back to the playground. It was even more crowded than yesterday. It was neat because one of the girls that Abby played with yesterday (who speaks no English) saw her and came over to her when we got there. While at the park, the gelato man (ice cream man) pulled up and all the kids rushed to him. Our kids didn’t notice him until everyone started coming back to the park with ice cream. So, I went to get gelato for both kids. My comment was “it’s nice to get gelato in the hood”. The cheapest gelato we’ve had so far. After a good, long play time, we went back to the apartment for dinner. We cooked pasta (of course) and sat on our balcony enjoying a nice Rome night.