two backpacks and a diaper bag

Friday, April 27th. Rome. I am so behind in my writing. This one will have to be quick.

Yesterday, we decided to visit Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and Piazza Navona. We ended up going to Castel Sant’Angelo and St. Peter’s Square as well. We walked the whole way there and then took a taxi back.

Today, we walked to Circus Maximus, then took the taxi to Villa Borghese and walked back home passing through the Spanish Steps, Quattro Fontane, and Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

Trevi Fountain was beautiful but there were so many people! Maybe we should have gotten out of the house earlier.

Sean did the whole coin into the fountain thing… and then we left the craziness to head to the Pantheon.

The crowd there wasn’t as bad, but it was still crowded.

Before we continued, we stopped by a small restaurant to get lunch. This was an early lunch, but we wanted to stop so we could feed and put Arthur to sleep.

He fed, but he didn’t want to go to sleep. It was too bad because Sean had a very good lasagna and my beef was okay. Maybe we should have eaten somewhere else. When we sat down, they gave us two small glasses of prosecco. We thought they were free. Turned out they weren’t. We only found out about this when we paid. It was only 1.50 Euro per glass so we were fine with it, but it was definitely a surprise. The prosecco was good, though, which was why Sean ordered a full glass of it to accompany his meal.

Towards the end of the meal, I tried to put Arthur to sleep. It worked but only for about three minutes. There was a group that had just entered the restaurant and they were laughing quite loudly. Arthur woke up from their burst of laughter. It was a really small restaurant so the sound really traveled.

I took Arthur outside to try to put him to sleep again while Sean settled the bill. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put him to sleep. When Sean came out of the restaurant, we walked to a small alleyway and Sean tried to put Arthur to sleep using the car seat. It worked. Arthur fell asleep.

We walked towards Piazza Navona, but we stopped by San Luigi dei Francesi. I wanted to show Sean a Caravaggio painting that I really liked (from when I was in Rome a couple of years ago). When we got to the church, it was closed for lunch. It was going to be open again at 2:30. We weren’t going to wait an hour, though, so we continued on. We thought we’d come back later. Unfortunately, we didn’t.

Piazza Navona was surprisingly quiet. I thought there would be a lot more people but there weren’t. Maybe because it was really hot and lunch time. Most people took refuge under the shade created by the church. We looked for a gelato place but couldn’t find one on the square.

After this we weren’t really ready to go home, so we decided to continue walking.

We ended up at Castel Sant’Angelo.

We used our Roma Pass to bypass the line, dropped off the stroller at the check-in, and walked around the castle with Arthur in the carrier.

There was a really nice view of the river and Vatican City from the castle.

In the castle, we fed and changed Arthur and when we were about to leave, we put him to sleep. And then we walked to St. Peter’s Square.

We spent quite some time walking around the area. We thought we should try to go in to visit but the line was so long and it was just way too hot to stand in line. So we decided to walk around some more until Arthur woke up. Then we fed him and then called a taxi to head home using mytaxi app. Surprisingly, there were two other moms sitting on the side under the big pillars to feed their babies.

The taxi dropped us off at Via Cavour just two blocks away from the apartment. We stopped by Fatamorgana again to get some ice cream before we went home. It was a long day of walking. We were glad to be back home. We had deliveroo for dinner. Really good pasta!

This morning, we left the house quite late. We wanted to take our time. We first walked to Circus Maximus. To get there from our apartment, we had to walk through the Colosseum and its craziness again.

Circus Maximus required reservation from Monday to Friday. We didn’t have a reservation, so we couldn’t go into the Museum. However, the other three-quarter of the field was open to public. After getting a cold bottle of ice tea and Corona at a nearby food truck, we walked the Circus.

At the end of the walk, we stopped to feed Arthur. Then, we took a taxi using mytaxi app to Villa Borghese. Our cab driver was funny and fascinating. He had been driving for at least 20 years. He doesn’t work every other weekend, and in the summer, he always travels with his wife and twin daughters to new places. They are planning to go to Japan this summer.

Villa Borghese was a super nice park. Sean and I contemplated about sitting down and chilling on the grass, but we wanted to walk some more. We did sit on the bench to feed Arthur and watch people go by in their bicycles and skateboards and cycling (cart?) but the rest of the time, we walked and walked and walked.

Before we headed down towards the Spanish Steps, we took a picture of the view from the top of the hill.

We had put Arthur to sleep at the park, but on the way down, he woke up. So I walked with Arthur in the carrier.

The Spanish Steps were filled with people. It was difficult to get a good picture.

We decided to leave the craziness and find a place to eat along the way home.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to find a high-rated restaurant around the area, especially around 2:50. Most restaurants were going to close after lunch and reopen later for dinner.

I looked for something that might be good. It took us to a place a block away from the Cappuchin Crypt. The place was small and not what I expected. We ate there anyway. It was all right. Nothing to write about.

After a quick meal, we contemplated going in to the Crypt. The super long stairs up made us decide to walk away. So we walked to Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. We passed by Quattro Fontane and got ice cream at two different places. It was a long walk.

Then we walked home. We stopped by a pizza place along the way to get something for dinner and we stopped by Fatamorgana again for ice cream.

While we were at Fatamorgana, Arthur started crying. He had been awake for far too long. He was crying and we couldn’t stop him, even when we tried to distract him. This was a cry that rarely happens. He was overtired and we shouldn’t have let that happen.

Within two minutes, we were home and we put Arthur to sleep. Because he was overtired, it was harder to put him to sleep. He was crying because he wanted to sleep and couldn’t. I felt so bad.

Eventually, he slept and we ended the night with the pizza. We didn’t expect today to be a long day, especially since we have to leave at 6:30 tomorrow to go to the Vatican. We were exhausted. Arthur must have been, too.