So, its been since Versailles since we’ve written. The day after Versailles was a beautiful day by comparison to the day before. We woke up and headed off to San Sulpice to listen to the Sunday organ recital. We haven’t been great about getting up really early and this day was no exception. By the time we got there the recital was nearly over. But we did get to climb up to see the organ and speak a couple of minutes with the organist. Who, due to speaking with countless tourists such as us now is fluent in 5 languages. After San Sulpice we headed off to the Orsay museum. The weather was perfect, it was warm and sunny and made for a really pleasant walk there. We got there at about 2pm and the museum closed at 6pm so we had 4 hours there. It truly is a monumental museum with a superior collection of Impressionist paintings. Seeing a Van Gogh never gets old. The paint is laid on so thick in places that it becomes a 3-D experience. After the museum we crossed the Seine to stroll the Tuileries gardens. The sun was out and it was an ideal temperature. It made for a perfect ending to a great day. Course, anything tops a day at the hospital in Versailles. Finished with dinner at an Italian restaurant in Rue Cler.
Sophie at the Eiffel Tower
Monday started off clear and sunny and the plan was to leave early to get to the Eiffel tower to climb to the top. Early proved to be 11am. We’ve proven we can’t do early. We got to the tower and it is immense. It’s so hard to appreciate just how big it is until you’re standing beneath one of the massive pillars. We got in line to buy our tickets to go all the way to the top, much to Dad’s chegrine, when they closed to the top due to too many people up there. So we went ahead and bought tickets to the second level. It’s only half as high as the upper most level but the view is no less impressive. With the wind blowing up there it was a little cool. I hung Sophie over the edge a la Michael Jackson and his baby to give the crowds below a chance at a photo of her. Didn’t drop her or anything. I mean, it is a long way down so I wasn’t going to do that. Despite his fear of heights Dad did great and really enjoyed taking in the expanse of the city below.
We descended and headed off to the Louvre. I wish I could say we spent all day there but in reality we got there at 3pm and had a scant 3 hours to take in what many would call the greatest art museum in the world. We advised Mom and Dad to head straight over to the Mona Lisa so that they could at least see it, be underwhelmed by it, check it off the list and move on. Despite having almost no time to take in the miles of corridors we all had a good time. You could spend months there exploring every nook and cranny so it was a bit of a shame to have only three hours but its all there was. How do you trade seeing and climbing the Eiffel tower for seeing things at the Louvre.
Sophie at the Louvre with "Napoleans Coronation"
By the time we left the Louvre we had to rush over to try to get into Notre Dame. When we got there they had just closed the entry doors. I wasn’t about to let Mom and Dad get to the threshold of so great a site only to see it from the outside. So, I went to the exit door and pled with the exit guy to let us in. He was really gracious and said, “How many?” “Four” I replied and he waved us in. Mass was going on at that moment so we sat in the back and listened to the organ play. It was a very short visit but enough for all us to see the great windows with the sounds of the music resonating all around. Many spend hours there on a visit. Not unlike other places we’d been, we didn’t have but about 45 minutes inside.
Sophie at Notre Dame
After we left we it was overcast and quite cool so we hustled off to the Latin Quarter to find some dinner. Found a little Italian place nearby and slipped inside. Dad struck up a conversation with the New Zealanders sitting at the table next to us about the American presidential election. It was amazing to hear how much disdain they have for the current administration and how much concern they have about the next one and the hope that it isn’t anything like the present. It was amazing to understand the impact that others around the world feel regarding our politics. You get the sense that if foreigners could vote for our president it would be a landslide in favor of whoever is farthest away in ideology and policy from “W”. We got back to the apartment late again and all crashed hard knowing that that was our last night in Paris and that we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning for our ride to the airport and our 7am flight to Rome.
Rome - Sept 16
Tuesday started dang early. I didn’t actually sleep at all. I didn’t dare take an Ambien for fear of not being able to get up when the alarm went off at 4:30. So, I just laid in bed. We all got up early, took a crazy ride out to the airport with Sophie in my lap and a seatbelt around the both of us since they didn’t have a car seat for us unlike our ride in to Paris when the car service came with a car seat. So, it was tense. The driver drove like a mad man and you just hoped nothing would happen. I was grateful to get there and get out. We recommend traveling with an infant in Europe if possible. You get escorted to the front of lines and give royal treatment when you have one. Sophie has been quite an asset in that department. I bet I could make little blow up, life sized Sophie dolls and sell them to business travelers who could inflate them just prior to getting to the terminal in order to go in and get all this preferential treatment in order to blitz through all sorts of lines. Then just deflate prior to boarding and realize huge savings in time and hassle. We landed in Rome to much warmer temperatures.
Holy crap is Rome chaotic. I don’t remember it being so jam packed. Of course despite this being my fifth time in Rome I’ve never been on the roads there. So I was amazed at just how totally crazy it is to drive there. And we were in a bus from the airport into Termini, the central train station. The streets are basically lawless. There’s motorscooters buzzing all around weaving in and out of traffic like gnats swirling around you head on a summer night. We got to the hotel at around 10am am and napped for a couple of hours before heading out for an evening historic walk past such landmarks as the Spanish steps (location of the best McDonalds French fries in the world) the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and finishing in Camp de Fiori where we searched out and found a little family run restaurant that Anneka and I had been to three years ago. The walk was enjoyable as much for the sites as for the warmer weather. It was just a perfect temperature. The Pantheon proved again to be an amazing thing to behold. It is argued to be the oldest continually inhabited or used building in the world. It began as a Roman temple to the gods in AD 27 and became a Christian church hundreds of years later and due to that status it has been preserved and used up until today. We hopped a cab back to the hotel to save our legs. Best 10 Euros I spent on the trip. If I’m tired at night Mom and Dad must be even more so but you wouldn’t know it. They’re hanging tough. We got back to the hotel late again and crashed hard.
Sophie, by the way, has been simply amazing! She travels incredibly well. As long as she’s fed and watered she just sleeps peacefully dangling in Mom’s front pack or in her stroller or she just stares out at all the people smiling back at her. I hoped she’d be good and she’s been better than good she’s been absolutely amazing.
Wednesday Sept 17th
Today we went to the Coliseum and to the Forum. We didn’t get out of the hotel very early but it wasn’t too big a deal since the hotel is only about 500 yards from the coliseum. It’s amazing to see so large a building still standing after 2000 years. Only one side is essentially the same size as when built. That side was built on a base of stone. The other side is missing its outer most, and highest section of wall, and appears only half as large as the more complete side. Apparently that side which is missing so much was built largely on sand and there was a strong earthquake that struck in 1349 which toppled a great deal of the monuments and buildings of ancient Rome.
Sophie got a lot of looks while there. Course she’s gotten a lot of looks everywhere we’ve taken her. After the coliseum we went back to the neighborhood near our hotel which has a bread shop that has the best pizza bianco, or foccacia anywhere. It has just the right texture, amount of salt and oil and has a great flavor. We got some pizza Bianca and some drinks and I got these awesome little pig in a blanket hot dog things. WE chased all the food down with a gelato then headed back to go to the forum. Wandered the forum’s ruins until closing at 6pm.
From there it was off to diner. Anneka and I ate at this particular place when we were last in Rome in 2005 and thought we’d go back since I thought the pizza I had back then was the best I’d ever had. Well, Dad got some lamb and hated it. It was nothing but bones and fat he said. I had to lean my head away from the table as I ate so as not to catch a whiff of the lamb and activate my gag reflex. I don’t know what it is but Lamb is the gamiest, most pungent and horrible smelling food I can think of. Mom got a bowl of vegetable soup hoping it would be as good as the vegetable soup that Dad had had the night before. It wasn’t. She hated it. I got a pizza and while it was good, it wasn’t the powerhouse that I’d remembered the last on to be from three years earlier. Anneka got pasta in tomato sauce and it was OK as well but nothing to blog about. Anyways, that proved to be a bit of a let down which was a bummer as I’d hoped we’d have knock out good meals every day in Italy. After dinner it was a leisurely stroll back to the hotel and to bed.
Thursday Sept 18
Today we went to the Vatican museum and to St. Peters. Sophie worked her magic and we bypassed all the crowds at security. The line to get into the actual museum wasn’t too bad at all. I’ve seen it in years past where it is a mile long and can take 2 hours or longer to make it all the way through. Anyways, we got in and in the tangled mass of people extruding themselves through the halls toward the Sistine chapel I got separated from Anneka. I had the backpack on with all Sophie’s gear in it including her food. Well, I started trying to find them and looked at some things along the way. I happened to be down a particular section of the Egyptian section and I could hear Sophies cry coming towards me. I knew it was her, I knew I had all the gear, I knew Anneka would be panicked and I knew that I should RUN towards the sound. When I got to her I knew I was in trouble so I just avoided making any eye contact with Anneka and just quickly made Sophie a bottle and started to feed her. Anneka was panicked and rightly so. She had no idea where I was nor how she’d find me when Sophie started to have here little hunger related freak-out. We’ll, once Sophie was being fed Anneka was fine and we were able to chuckle about the experience. We stuck together the rest of our time for the sanity of all of us. The Vatican museum is set up like a one way street. Everyone starts in the same spot and everyone gets channeled down the same corridors and everyone ends up deposited in the Sistine chapel. Mind you the Sistine chapel is a great place to be deposited in. We’d gotten separated from Mom and Dad at the beginning of the museum and told them to meet after the Sistine chapel. When we got there we didn’t know if they were in front of us or behind us so when we showed up we found a comfortable place to sit, to soak up the single greatest piece of art ever produced by the hand of man and to wait for Mom and Dad to pop into the chapel. We waited for as long as we could trying to balance are they in front of us or behind us? Ends up they were in front of us and were actually sitting outside waiting for us. So, reunited again, and hungry, we decided to pull off the tourist path and get something to eat. We stopped at the first restaurant we saw and actually had a really tasty meal. Normally I would shy away from touristy restaurants since they often have crappy food. But we were really surprised. After eating we continued our walk over to St. Peters basilica.
That place is simply massive. I don’t think Mom and Dad could really believe it was as big as it was. We were only in there for about an hour before they closed and missed the opportunity to climb to the top of the dome. You take a lift to the roof of the church and then have to hoof it up to the top of the dome but we just ran out of time. I’m not sure our legs could have handled such a hike anyways so we were all sort of secretly relieved that we’d legitimately run out of time and can use that as an excuse as to why we didn’t make it to the top. After being shuttled out of the building we caught a cab back to the hotel. After getting Sophie showered and to bed I took off and went wandering. I ended up going over to the coliseum and taking some night pictures of it all lit up. It was and amazing conclusion to an amazing day.
I’m days late on the blog and am going to stay days late since it is late now and we need to get up earlier tomorrow to kick off our site seeing earlier.
More later.
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