"ristorante" - apparently that is a red flag that it's a tourist trap and not very authentic). we changed clothes at the hotel and relaxed for a few minutes before heading out for the night.
our hotel was right at the north city wall and we were able to walk everywhere we wanted to go!
thanks to the great advice of our driver, we found a wonderful little restaurant on a side street. our typical meal in italy consisted of all 4 sharing 2 pasta dishes and a pizza. we tried something different everywhere we went. this meal was one of our favorites - i still crave that vodka sauce!!
one of the many great things about italy is that everyone was so sweet to the kids. they really catered to them and always made sure we had everything we needed. it was such a relief after traveling or sight-seeing all day to not have to worry that we were bothering people by having small children in the restaurants.
after dinner, we walked over to the trevi fountain where we all got our first taste of real italian gelato. we got gelato almost every night, which meant that every outfit quinn wore in italy was stained with chocolate :).
i love this picture and it makes me laugh every time. apparently you aren't supposed to sit on this ledge, but we didn't realize that because a lot of other people were also doing it. after we were there for a few minutes, a guy came up to us and said something mostly in italian. well, we had heard that the trevi fountain is a hot spot for pickpockets, so john quickly dismissed him. i asked what he wanted and john said he thought the guy was offering to take our picture. i said, "i thought i heard the word 'polizia' in there - did he say something about the police?". john assured me that he was probably just a pickpocket and he didn't say anything about the police. well, about 2 minutes later, the police came by and told us we had to get off the ledge. apparently the guy was just being nice and trying to warn us to move the kids!
john and quinn throwing coins in the trevi fountain
he loved this!
my sweet boy
back in the room, the kids were WOUND UP from the gelato, so we played for a while and then got in bed around midnight. apparently quinn wasn't tired...shocking...so john and i both remember him waking us up a few times for random things. he woke john up to go to the bathroom, crawled in our bed a few times, and woke me up around 3am to show me he found the light switch for the room. who knows how long he was up or what all he did in the middle of the night. we woke up to him sleeping in his bed (where he slept until 1pm!). when we got up, our shoes were all out and lined up neatly next to the bed and a few other things were not where we left them. cute boy apparently kept himself entertained for hours after we went to sleep...
we're off to see more of rome! one perk of sleeping in until noon (1 for quinn) is that we slept right through breakfast and lunch, plus we didn't have to stop for naptime!
by taking a detour down a side street to see a "neat-looking statue" at the end of the street, we accidentally found the spanish steps. as we were walking down them we kept saying, "these seem really big and there are a lot of people here. is this something important?". haha! just slightly :)
baby girl riding on my back for the first time as we walked toward the forum
apparently we should have done a little more research on rome before we got there. or maybe just looked at a map. but who has time for that? we found the mamertine prison, which was one of the main things we wanted to see in rome. after checking in for the tour, we had about 20 minutes to kill so we sat on the steps overlooking the forum. someone came up and asked us if we knew where the entrance was. our response? "we don't know! we don't even know what this is! it must be something significant." well, yes. she looked at us like we were crazy and then informed us that it was the forum. obviously.
taking a nap on mommy's back
inside the mamertine prison. definitely one of the cheesiest tours we've ever been on, but it was pretty cool to see the place where peter and paul were likely imprisoned.
our next stop was the colosseum!
our victorious little gladiator
and, following in big brother's footsteps, the victorious baby gladiator
rocking the shades
after a few more sights, we found a nice table outside for our second italian dinner. granted, it wasn't as amazing as the first one, but it was still pretty good!
nightly gelato high on the way back to the hotel :)
that night when we got back to the hotel, we got everyone settled in bed and i told them that they had to stay in their beds that night and go to sleep. we reinforced the importance of going to sleep quickly that night so that their bodies could rest for the next day. to our surprise, they just laid there and went right to sleep. the next morning, when i woke quinn up for breakfast, he immediately and very excitedly asked, "mommy, did we do it??!". it took me a second, but i realized he was asking if they went to sleep quickly like they were supposed to. i told him that yes, they did do it. he got so excited and then asked if it was ok if he got up to get his thomas train that was under his bed. apparently he dropped his train before he went to sleep and was so determined to go to sleep like we asked that he waited all night to get it! now, why doesn't that work every night??
after breakfast, we stopped at the fountain at the base of the spanish steps on our way to the vatican.
and then FINALLY found the vatican after a few detours. let's just say our navigator may have gotten the map a little turned around. as we stood here for john to take our picture, a sweet older asian man came up next to john and started taking our picture as well. kind of weird. i still wonder what he's doing with our picture now!
st. peter's basilica
i knew about the dress code, so i brought jackets for caroline and i so our shoulders would be covered. i guess i was hoping that the length of my shorts would be close enough that they wouldn't care - it was way too hot to be wearing anything longer! however, we got stopped and they told me my shorts were too short. so what do you do when you're an hour away from your hotel and you have nothing else to wear? use the baby wrap as a skirt! i actually got asked by a few other people if i knew of a place they could get one for themselves so they could get into the church. ummm, no...
baby girl got another quick nap as we walked back to the hotel to head off for our next adventure: florence!!
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