Sightseeing in Rome
Tuesday night the girls slept through, which was a good step in the jet lag battle. In the morning I drove them to the nearby Catacombs of Priscilla for a tour in English. Dee and I had taken the Italian tour with the Balzottis months ago. The tour was great, though the guide's English was heavily accented and a bit hard to follow at times. She was very good at making jokes along the way and in bringing the place to life. Lu and Marilyn were especially impressed with the parallel parking job I did when we arrived at the catacombs. There were maybe 8 inches on each side once I got the car into place. Marilyn refused to even look at what I was doing, and Lu had to take a photo to show her family.
At noon, all four of us headed down to the Institute, where Dee would stay the whole day, baking a lot of her awesome new cookies.The girls and I headed out on the Metro see the Colosseum (only two stops away), plus the spectacular view of the Roman Forum from up behind the Campidoglio. We took a bus between the sites, because it was a long walk and Lu has to be careful due to some back problems. Our visits were pretty superficial, with no guide, but always impressive. I wanted to keep it brief and move on to other things.
From there we took another bus to get to the Trevi fountain, where we also enjoyed some great gelato.
From there we walked to the Spanish steps, and then we grabbed the Metro and came back to the Institute to relax a bit. The pedometers on the girls' phones said that we walked about seven miles, which is too high to be accurate in my opinion, but without a doubt we did walk a lot. The weather was quite nice: not too hot, with some nice breeze, but we still got pretty sweaty. Back at the Institute I changed from my tourist clothes to missionary attire and spent a little time printing out materials for my three lessons this weekend.
Lu offered to take us out to dinner, so we went to the Ristorante Del Giglio right downstairs. Our waiter there was delightful, very funny with great English. The food was excellent as well as the company.
Linda, our nonmember girl from Battipaglia, wanted to drop by, so we invited her to come to the restaurant, since we had closed the Institute campus a bit early for our dinner. The Ganziani and a number of the GANS had gone out together to drum up business for the English class, using my wife's awesome cookies at Piazza del Popolo.
We had a nice visit with Linda, who showed up after our meal was mostly through and refused our offer of food. The girls could only follow the parts of our conversation that we translated, but they seemed to enjoy it.
We were all pretty exhausted by the time we got home!
