When in Rome...

William saved up 5 euro in pocket change for the trip. He chose to buy this t-shirt...and obviously was pleased with the purchase.  :)

One of the great parts of the school system here in France is the generous holiday schedule. I'm sure it would be maddening if I were working full-time...but since I'm not [she says with glee], we're embracing the "7 weeks on, 2 weeks off" pattern that pretty much holds from the beginning of September to the beginning of July. What's more, I think the boys cope with the stress of school better knowing that every Wednesday is a half day and les vacances are always around the corner.

Another thing we love here? The dirt cheap airfares within Europe. Long school breaks + great airfares = verrrry nice combo indeed. We just enjoyed a trip that involved flights from Nantes to Rome, from Rome to Budapest, and from Budapest back to Paris—over 2500 miles total. Airfare was $140 per person! Even our cheapskate selves could handle that.  :)

The Rome part was chosen pretty much entirely because it was the most affordable flight available for that first leg; we would have just as happily ended up in some other European city! Be that as it may, it was awesome. We rented a little flat for housing and relied on mass transit (and our own sturdy legs) for transportation, logging 8-10 miles on foot per day. We were thankful to have lugged the stroller along; William still wears 3T trousers at the age of 5 and a half, and his wee legs give out understandably quickly.

In front of St. Peter's Basilica

We spent most of Day 1 in the Vatican area. It was almost physically painful for me and Jesse not to go into the Vatican museum, missing countless art treasures, the Sistene Chapel, etc. But with multi-hour lines and the prospect of boys who'd be bored long before we even got inside, we let it go. Maybe one day...   (Yes, I know there are tours that skip the lines, and tours catering specifically to families with kiddos. They look totally, completely amazing. But...you know...$$$).  Instead, we followed the "simple, free, and fun" phrase that has been a mantra for planning activities since Jesse first uttered it as ENC student body president in the 1990s. And it rarely disappoints!

First we looked (me and Jesse) and ran (Josiah and William) around St. Peter's Square and the vicinity. So many tourists! Such grandeur! So many priests and nuns! And...so much confetti between the cobbles? (I'm assuming this was because we arrived not long after Shrove Tuesday...)

Around noon we hit up Alice's Pizza. It's a tiny place around the corner from St. Peter's that came with highest recommendations from our friend Steve, who lived in the area for years. Oh my goodness. I thought I knew what pizza was before this. I was badly wrong. Words fail. What I can tell you is that we bought a big boxful (you just choose various types on the counter, indicate how big a chunk you want of each, and the total amount is warmed and weighed); we ate it all; we felt pleasantly and adequately full; and then we went ahead and bought another boxful because it was Just That Good. Stuffing ourselves silly felt like a moral imperative.



After lunch, the queues to get into St. Peter's Basilica had gone down by about half—enough that we were willing to stand in line despite the arrival of light rain. The boys chased pigeons and each other in the enormous square for the 50 minutes that we inched forward. It's free entry, but since you go through an airport style security scanner, you can't just cruise on in. The interior of the church was gorgeous—so colorful, so grand. But what we especially enjoyed was climbing the 551 steps to go up the dome (yes, we sprung for those tickets, and yes, it was good exercise post-pizza extravaganza!).

The first "stop" on the climb up was still inside the church, right up by the interior of the dome. The mosaics were beautiful, and looking down on the sanctuary below was breathtaking. 

Then the real climb began. The boys were troopers and of course actually completely enjoyed it, but we all were a little spent several hundred steps later!

Oh, the views in all directions! 

The giant columns the boys had run among in the morning looked like toothpicks.

***

We did more walking and touring around that day, but I'll share just this one story. Metro stops are few and far between (there's so much ancient history underground that officials have been rightly loathe to dig too many tunnels!). We all were weary; we weren't relishing the mile or so hike ahead of us to the nearest metro stop. We were trudging along a sidewalk by the river. It was busy with evening car traffic beside us but had very few pedestrians on the walkway, and there was a fair bit of trash and graffiti around. Josiah suddenly said, "I'll catch you up," and ran backward a few feet. Moments later he was wide-eyed, saying, "Is this real??!" with a 50 euro bill in his hands! 50 euros! He'd spied the bill crumpled with some litter and leaves against the wall. It perhaps would seem his daddy's infamous pink-winged angels have, after several decades of faithful service, now lit on Josiah's shoulders.   :)

Josiah spent the remainder of the walk considerably perkier, considering how to spend this windfall. He eventually decided to put 15 euro in the bank, 15 euro toward the child he helps us sponsor (he pays half each month), and 20 toward a new Lego. We approved. William, meanwhile, spent the remainder of not just the evening but the entire vacation with his eyes glued to the ground, awaiting his own payout! 

***

This post is WAY too long so I'll just drop in pics to cover Days 2 and 3:

Beautiful buildings and sculptures and fountains were around every corner, it seemed. 

The boys were wonderfully good about us dragging them into church after church after church...

Of course their behavior had nothing to do with gelato bribery each day...  (Oh, that gelato!)

A painted church ceiling. We played "I spy," necks craning, for quite a while...

We ate/made both breakfast and dinner in our little flat each day, but we had lunch somewhere out-and-about. Delicious pasta and pizza and lasagna = two boys in heaven. Their parents weren't especially put out either.

Pinocchio!

The last day was glorious. The weather was in the 60s, bright blue skies. We spent it primarily at the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, and Palatine Hill. So much ancient history...

(Excuse me having a little tilt-shift fun, turning the Forum into a model village!)

The only downside to our time in Rome was that by the last night, Jesse wasn't feeling great: very tired with a headache he couldn't shake. Obviously we'd been going hard for days, so we didn't think too much of it. What we didn't know at the time was that he was coming down with the flu, or as we affectionately came to call it, the Roman Plague. But I guess I'll pick that up in a future post!