Yesterday was our last full day in Rome on this wonderful vacation. This morning we will be boarding the Celebrity Solstice for our Transatlantic cruise back to the US. We decided to scale back our ambitious site seeing yesterday and take in a few of the larger piazzas.
We got a slow start on the day by sleeping in. After a breakfast of bacon and sausage, we made our way down to Piazza Popolo. We strolled around there for a bit and check out the three churches that are on the piazza. Suzanne really had wanted to visit one of them (can’t recall the name) because of a couple of really old painting that the church has. The church dates back to the late 1400s.
We then proceeded to head over to Piazza Novona (my favorite piazza). Along the way, we stopped at a new monument/museum. I say recent because it was only recently discovered and put back together. It was a former monument/temple to peace. When it was rebuilt, it was housed inside of a building which seemed really odd. I guess it gave them an easier way to charge an admittance fee for viewing.
At Piazza Novona, we were able to enjoy a nice pasta lunch will taking in some people watching. This piazza is very large and usually has an array of artists and street performers there. At this time of year, most of those had been replaced by a Christmas Market. There were still a couple of street performers there too. Suzanne was able to find a couple of souvenirs at the street market.
This was also the first time we got a bit wet on the trip. As previously mentioned, it had been threatening rain the entire trip which made the weather actually quite enjoyable. There was a slight drizzle falling while we ate lunch and for a few minutes afterwards, but we still managed to stay pretty much dry.
After leaving Piazza Novona, Sean wanted to visit the Spanish Steps again since he still hadn’t actually climbed up the steps. So I guided us back there but took a path back over there that went past the Pantheon. The kids still had not seen the inside during daylight hours. After seeing it, the nighttime view was still preferred. It also gave us an opportunity to get our Gelato for the day! We also visited the Trevi Fountain another time on the way back to the Spanish Steps. Savannah wanted to throw another coin in the fountain since she said she had already left Rome and then returned. Now, personally, I think visiting the Vatican doesn’t really qualify as such, but what the heck.
Finally, we hit the Spanish Steps and the kids were able to climb to the top and view them from above. After a short stay, we headed back to the apartment. I picked up a bottle of my favorite Italian wine, Barolo, for us to enjoy in the evening/night in the apartment.
We enjoyed a final Roman meal and reminisced about the trip to Rome. The girls were a bit sad, but were cheered up by the fact that tomorrow we would be getting on a cruise ship!
This has been a great way to start the vacation. The fact that we gave ourselves four days in Rome was really good. It would have been hard to see all we did in less time. Luckily, having been here many times on business myself, also gave us a pretty good idea ahead of time what to see and how to get there since I still find navigating room on foot very easy. The food has been fantastic. The people have been wonderful. The apartment couldn’t have been better. The price was right and we were ideally located in old Rome with easy access to most things we wanted to visit. All of us have enjoyed the pre-cruise stay in Rome much better than last years pre-cruise stay in Barcelona, Spain.
Be sure to follow our travel exploits on this blog as I try to make a daily update of our Rome and transatlantic cruise. Today, as previously mentioned, we will be boarding the Celebrity Solstice to begin our transatlantic cruise. This should be an interesting cruise as the Solstice is a bigger ship than we normally cruise. It will be another fun day!
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