1. bis 7. April: Rome!

Busy Week!

As you'll see, this was a busy week, which is just the beginning of about three busy weeks, for me at least. We got ready for and then had our first big trip and the next week will see another big trip and then I fly back for the Boston marathon. We're all still having a great time and really enjoying ourselves, which is what this is all about. Warning up-front: this is a huge (long) post, so thanks in advance if you actually read it all.

Dienstag 1. April

A fairly normal Monday: I started with a run and then Aaron was at school and Anson was home with me in the morning. Rebecca had meeting in the afternoon and before she left, and on her way to the train, she, Aaron, and I headed down to the market to get Aaron a lunch box and a pair of "Haus Schuhe" (house shoes) which are indoor slippers that you really can't wear outside. Aaron ended up opting for some Crocs, which work fine too. The kids don't wear their street shoes in the school and, really, most Austrian's and Germans take their shoes off at the door and wear some sort of slipper or Haus Schuhe inside. Rebecca caught her train and Aaron and I did some grocery shopping then headed back to the apartment. Just after getting home, we got an email from the school saying Aaron also needed some additional school supplies, something he neglected to mention to us before, so I walked down again on my own and picked them up.

Anson on the way to the HGM (not the building behind him)

Aaron enjoying the zip line!

We then had plans to go to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (HGM) (military history). We wound up taking an U-bahn to a stop we'd never been before. Anson and Rebecca decided to get out a stop early and walk while Aaron and I stayed on until the end. However, we then had to navigate in an area we'd never been before. We don't have data plans on our phones, so we try to get in the habit of "starring" our destinations in Google Maps and then using the GPS capabilities to self-guide to our destination. That works well for Rebecca and I, but the kids were getting a bit antsy and wanted to eat. So we stopped in at a restaurant in the park and had a late "second lunch." We then walked the rest of the way to the museum, ... only to find it was going to close in about an hour. We all decided to come back another day and instead, headed to a park. The kids played and had a great time and then we navigated our way home, this time including a trip on an ÖBB train, which is the national train system here. They are free to use within the city limits.

Mittwoch 2. April 

Wednesday was a good day for Anson. He and Rebecca went into work that morning together and Anson met with one of Rebecca's colleagues who was hoping to hire Anson to do some translation work! It involves taking sections of German text, using Google Translate to convert it to English, and then Anson corrects the English to make sure it reads right. Google does an amazing job, for having no humans behind their technology, but they don't quite get it right all the time. He stayed there all morning and worked and then took the U-bahn home on his own. I met him at the Hietzing station and we walked home together, stopping in at a bakery for a treat, of course.

Wednesday was also a great day for Aaron. When I picked him up after school, he was with one of his friends, Maxis (pronounced Maxy), who wanted to know if Aaron could come to his house and play. I learned that his parents were home and decided to meet them and understand the situation better before deciding. On the way, which is literally around the block from the school -- no streets needed to be crossed -- we met his father coming to pick him up. After a wonderful conversation (in my broken Deutsch and his quite good English) we agreed to an afternoon playdate at their house. We exchanged phone numbers and he gave me his card as well. 

Early that evening when I called to see if it was a good time to pick Aaron up, I learned that they were having such a good time that the kids wanted a sleep-over! After talking with Rebecca, I called back and said that it would be fine. I packed up some clothes for Aaron, as well as his toothbrush and such, and headed back over to their house to drop it off. I was invited inside and wound up staying for about 90 minutes, having tea with them and talking. They are very nice people (she is a language teacher born in California with two Austrian parents who traveled all over the world and did her undergraduate work in Canada, so her English is quite good; he is in the Army Reserves here, doing historical preservation and cultural work, while his day job is in insurance). Aaron had a great time and they took him to school on Thursday for us. It was strange being in our apartment that night without Aaron, but it allowed Anson, Rebecca, and I to have some good time together, which we all enjoyed. 

Donnerstag 3. April

PhotoSphere of the front of our apartment complex

Apartment courtyard

After schooling Anson in the morning and picking up Aaron after school, I took a couple of Photo Sphere pictures of the front of our apartment and the courtyard, just to give a sense of the place. Those of you on desktop or Android systems should be able to click them and see them in all their 3-D glory, iOS users are out of luck, sorry. Note that once you click on the picture, you can "grab" (click and hold) the image and move it all around to look wherever you want to.

Settled in on the train for a long evening

We all then spent the day cleaning, finishing laundry, mowing the lawn and packing. We were off to a four day stay in Rome! We had to be at the ÖBB station for a train leaving at 19:30 that evening. The units are setup to have 6 people, but we bought the entire unit for the four of us, just to avoid having a couple of strangers hanging out with us for 14 hours. The bench seats and the backing convert into beds (three levels on each side to accommodate the six people). We talked and snacked until it was time to get to bed, then we all picked a bunk and did our best to sleep. It seems Aaron had the best sleep of all of us and I had the worst -- I think I was lucky if I managed a full hour; I just kept tossing and turning and never quite got comfortable.

Freitag 4. April

Great early lunch had, now we waited.

We arrived in Rome Friday morning at 09:30. Our plan was to walk across Rome, each of us with a stuffed backpack of clothes and whatever else we wanted for the long weekend, to our apartment unit, which was awesomely located right in the center of all the great Roman sites. It turns out it was too far away. We made it as far as the great "Altare della Patria" (Alter of the Fatherland) monument and decided to take a taxi. It was the right decision. Unfortunately, though we had arranged for an early check-in, we were too early and were told to come back to the apartment at noon. We walked up the block and decided to have an early lunch at a nice "Snack Bar" cafe and kill some time. We were then allowed into our apartment, just to drop-off our bags, and then were told to come back after 15:00 so it could be cleaned. 

On the Ponte Saint'Angelo with the Castel behind.

We headed north from our unit to the ancient St. Angelo bridge and castle, both built around 80 A.D! We got our first glimpses of some of the awesome Roman architecture, the ever-present street vendors, and what would quickly become our little neighborhood.

Posing in the courtyard

After a quick stop back in the apartment, we headed out for an afternoon of walking and exploring! I'm shifting to smaller pictures at this point just because I want to link in so many of them. :) We stopped at the Piazza Navona first, taking in our first stolen Egyptian obelisk and getting more of a taste for the street vendors that hawk all sorts of wares all the time.  One place we did spend some money, multiple times, was in the many gelato shops in the area!

Gelato at Pantheon

After grabbing a nice, cold, sweet treat, we headed to the Pantheon, which is absolutely amazing. 

I was blown away at just how large this thing is! I simply can't get over the fact that they built these incredibly huge and complex structures about 2,000 years ago.

Photo Sphere of Pantheon

The amount of human effort to cut, carve, and place all of the stone that's in just one of these monuments is mind boggling (to me). Trying to get my head around the fact that the Pantheon is really quite small, in comparison to other sights we'd soon see, just leaves me speechless. 

The kids at Trevi

Liar!

After the Pantheon, we wandered over to the showy Trevi Fountain. I say "showy" because I've learned that the Roman's built their fountains to show off how well they could manage water, thanks to their aquaducts. This fountain was built in the 16th century, but it's still an impressive display and is all about showing off in my mind. On our walk back to the apartment, we saw a store that makes wooden puppets. They had a fantastic "selfie" type display in front and I couldn't resist snapping a photo of Aaron in it. 

Cobbles

Another thing I noted on the walk back is that every single street and piazza we had walked on that afternoon was made of cobble stones. In-line with me being blown away by all the work put into the monuments, I was also struck by how much work was put into the stuff that we were walking on! Each stone had to be cut into a tetrahedron, flattened and smoothed on one end, then placed, in a pattern, in the ground.

Narrow streets

I also noted the fact that we were in an old European city, where the streets were narrow and windy. There were no defined places to walk, drive, or park, yet people, cars, and scooters were constantly in motion (or parked) all over the place. Even their main roads have no paint marks on them and people freely walk in between moving traffic, while dodging the scooters that dart in between the vehicle traffic. Amazing!

That night we had dinner at a restaurant just around the corner from our apartment. The area we were staying seemed to have places to eat all over. There were so many of them that Rebecca and I wondered how they are all able to stay in business. The answer quickly became obvious: us, meaning the tourists. They were everywhere. There were also what looked to be the "regular" locals, but far and away the majority of business was from the tourists.

Samstag 5. April

Rebecca and I started the morning with a nice long walk. We headed back the way we had all walked the afternoon before, but then continued on to the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Plaza) with the Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti (Spanish Steps) and then up to the Villa Borghese gardens where we stopped for a quick cuppa and a sweet treat (and we also learned that we were charged about twice as much, just because we had a waiter bring it to our table!). We then wandered through the gardens and I saw an obelisk. Since Aaron has a thing for obelisks, I went to investigate. Turns out it was the Piazza del Popolo, one of the tallest in Rome, brought there in 10 B.C! We noted the location on the map and then walked back home. 

Our family plan for that day was to head to Vatican City where we would tour the museum and see St. Peter's Basilica. After walking more than half-way around the walls of the Vatican, we wound up waiting in a line for about 30 minutes (we were told by the hawk-like non-licensed "tour guides" that were swooping in on people all throughout the line that it would take us "over two hours" to get in), we had our tickets and were inside. Immediately, Anson insisted that he needed some water. I saw a sign that indicated a WC "off to the left" and so we started walking that way, which was also leading us into the museum. We got to the first exhibit, on Egypt, and the WC sign was pointing up the stairs. In what proved to be a critical decision, I said that I'd take Anson to the WC and Rebecca and Aaron could wait for us and look at the Egypt exhibit. Long story short, Anson and I had to wade through shoulder-to-shoulder tour groups for about a full kilometer of walking through the long hallways of the Vatican, including a jaunt (that everyone had to take) along a balcony outside, and finally got to the WC. We were basically at the "end" of the museum area by this point, just before the Sistine Chapel. Rebecca had called and, understandably frustrated, said that she and Aaron were just going to continue on. 

Anson and I decided to head back, against the tide of humanity, and find them. We actually made great time (I think the tours go off in groups and naturally bunch up as quicker groups come up to slower groups). However, we couldn't find Rebecca or Aaron. We wandered through the Egyptian exhibit and then through the next area and still hadn't caught them. I texted a couple of times (cheaper than calling since we were in "roaming" mode for our Austrian-based phone numbers) but got no response. Anson and I decided to head back to the WC, covering the long hallways a third time, in an effort to catch-up to Rebecca and Aaron and meet them before we all went into the Sistine Chapel. We never found them. So, Anson and I decided to go into the Chapel. It was absolutely packed: wall-to-wall with people, shoulder-to-shoulder. We slowly maneuvered our way through toward the exits. As we emerged from the throng, a museum guard was standing there saying, in heavily accented English, that St. Peter's Basilica was to the right, so that's where Anson and I headed. Just at the exit door, Anson pointed out a sign that indicated the exit was only for tour groups. I looked around and saw a lot of individual people and families using the exit with no indication they were in a tour group (most groups were easily identifiable because they would all wear a scarf of the same color, or would have a set of earphones in so they could hear their tour guide who would talk into a low-powered microphone and radio system). So, we took the exit on the right.

St. Peter's Basilica

We came to a small plaza outside and just on the side of the Basilica where I stopped and texted Rebecca again. After waiting about 15 minutes, I decided we should just go into the Basilica and hope we could connect with her and Aaron there. The Basilica is amazing. It's absolutely huge and beautiful. It was impressive enough that even Anson pulled out his phone to start taking some pictures. We slowly wandered around and managed to take what I think is an awesome Photo Sphere (minus the ghost people). We then took advantage of being able to walk behind one of the four statues at the diagonal corners of the dome into a "secret" door that led down under the Basilica to the area where many of the previous Popes are interred. We emerged from there back into the same plaza we'd been in before. This time we walked to the front of the Basilica and found a place to sit (temporarily, until one of the workers in a suit came and shooed us, and all the other people sitting down, away).

I pulled out my phone and saw a text from Rebecca saying "Just out of Sistine chapel and will head to plaza in front of St. Peter's." This was great news! We'd finally reconnect. I texted back where we were and that we'd be waiting. After about 20 minutes I got another text saying, "By the fountain in the middle. Line too long for Aaron right now." I was a little confused as there was no line coming out of the Sistine chapel heading into the Basilica. Anson and I had gotten some water at the fountain in the plaza I'd mentioned before, so I was expecting Rebecca and Aaron to come around the corner any minute. That never happened. After a couple more text exchanges, I learned that they were by one of the big fountains out in St. Peter's square. They had taken the exit on the left heading out of the Sistine chapel and it took them back to the museum entrance point. They then needed to walk halfway around the Vatican again to get back into St. Peter's square and there was indeed a line that looked to be a solid 30-45 minutes long of people waiting to get into St. Peter's Basilica (you don't have to pay to get into the Basilica). Rebecca was quite frustrated and I felt pretty bad.

Gelato again!

Great dinner!

Piazza del Popolo

We decided to walk back to the apartment, but Aaron also wanted some gelato, so we walked past our place and almost to the Piazza Navona again to get some. We then went back to the apartment and relaxed a bit. Anson had walked enough that day and even going out to eat couldn't entice him to join us, but Rebecca, Aaron, and I headed out for a wander through our "neighborhood" and we found a great little place where Aaron had yet another Margherita pizza (that's all he at in restaurants in Rome!), I had a great thick spaghetti noodle dish with a spicy tomato sauce and bacon, and Rebecca had some incredible ravioli. 

Ramsey's obelisk, St. Peter's Basilica, and lights of cars.

The three of us then continued our walk. We took Aaron to the Piazza del Popolo with the huge obelisk. The street vendors were out in force that night and it was really getting annoying. I learned to give them a forceful, "No!" and that seemed to get them to back-off. Rebecca was accosted by one while she was trying to take a picture of Aaron and I on the Spanish Steps and had to physically shrug him off (he was trying to get her to take some roses, which he then would have charged her quite a bit for). It really did diminish the fun of the evening. Along our walk we saw some wild orange trees with some incredibly full, juicy fruit on them. Aaron was pretty impressed by that, talking about, "Seeing my first orange tree ..." the rest of the night. We did get a great view of the city when we took a short-cut through the Borghese gardens though and that made up for a lot.

Sonntag 6. April

Inside the castle

I started the morning with my last long run, along the Tiber river, before the Boston marathon. I even added a bit to my interval effort so it ended on an even half-marathon, in honor of my brother Kevin who was running his first ever half-marathon race that same day. After showering, Rebecca, Aaron, and I headed back up to the Castel Sant'Angelo and this time went inside. It's a massive building that started as a tomb, then was expanded somewhat, used as a prison, and eventually taken over by the church and used as a refuge for the Pope in the event of a siege. We took our time and saw a lot of neat things and had a great time together. It was a beautiful day, which really helped. 

At an aquaduct

Palatine "Stadium"

After stopping into the apartment for some lunch, we walked along the Tiber river to the Circus Maximus, which turns out to be pretty boring in real life: just a large field of grass and dirt. After yet another gelato stop (it was a sunny, 22ºC day), we went into Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum area. I was very taken by all of the ancient structures all around me. The thought of such a massive "city," with all the ornamentation that was discussed (marble of many colors, statues, fountains, and the like), thriving over 2,000 years ago was very humbling to me. It must have been incredibly impressive to the people of the time and to think that so much of it has lasted until today is amazing. What building or monument that we've built in the past 100 years will last until the year 4,000? Not much. While much of what we saw was ruins, it was still there. 

Panorama of the Roman Forum area

Altare della Patria

Cool car!

We then walked back toward the river, passing by the great Altare della Patria. This time I managed to snap a picture. Later, we read that the bronze statue of Vittorio Emmanuel, the first king of Italy, is the largest bronze equestrian statue in the world and that his mustache alone is over 1.5m (5ft) long! Believe it or not, after getting back that night, we decided to go out for dinner, again. It was our last night, after all. Along the way up our little street, we passed this awesome car. I have no idea what it is, but it was too cool to pass up. 

Montag 7. April

Basilica pillars

Scooters!

Our last day! Given the mix-up at St. Peter's Basilica two days before, Rebecca, Aaron, and I were up and walked to St. Peter's by 08:30 and there was no line. The three of us were able to spend as much time as we wanted in the Basilica and even got to go into the "basement" again and see the Popes' tombs. On our way back, I saw a sight that I'd gotten quite used to, but had to capture: scooters. Not the kid self-propelled ones of Wien, but the motorized ones in Rome that zipped in between traffic. People of all walks of life, wearing business suits, skirts, dress, jeans (and some tourists in shorts; only tourists wear shorts in Rome) ride scooters and they all seem to risk their lives zipping in front of cars. The picture captured a mass of them that "flowed" in and stopped at a light, in front of and along side all the cars. Amazing!

Outside the Colosseum

We then headed back to the apartment to pack-up and eat the last of our food for an early lunch. We then walked to another apartment controlled by the same group and dropped off our bags and then proceeded to the Colosseum. This was one of the places Aaron really wanted to see and I was pretty excited about it as well. It's a stadium that was built to hold over 50,000 people that functioned for over 500 years and is still (mostly) standing after 2,000 years! Again, just amazing to me. 

Aaron inside

The interior of the Colosseum is absolutely amazing. It's really no different than any other modern building in that some architect(s) need to think through the whole design, where and how to place rooms, walls, supports, windows, etc. It just impresses me immensely that this was all done and built over 2,000 years ago. OK, I think I've said that enough and I'll try to lay-off it, but still ... 

They did a really good job, I thought, with the exhibits in the Colosseum, talking about why it was built, how it was built, the life of the people who came to watch as well as the lives of the Gladiators and the slaves that had to work under the floor, tending to the animals. They had drawn pictures as well as a couple of dioramas of what the place must have looked like back in the day, which really added some context. They even talked about the retractable "roof," made of canvas and managed by hundreds of sailors up around the top ring of the stadium, that provided shade to the spectators. Incredible!

Panorama inside the Colosseum with Anson on the left

I had two!

Train to home

We then headed back towards where our bags were, stopping for a last lunch in Rome (Margahrita pizza for Aaron and Anson again!). I even indulged and had a couple of beers. That night we were back to the Roma Termini, the main train station, waiting for our night train back to Wien. The day was even hotter than Sunday and we'd been out in the sun and walking quite a bit that day, so we were all pretty happy to be back on the train, even though it was another 14 hours and some fitful sleep. 

Waiting at the Roma Termini

Final Thoughts

We had an incredible experience with our trip to Rome. What's so interesting to me is that it was "just" a 14 hour train ride away. So much of Europe is like that: just a train ride away. It really makes you think differently about your neighboring countries. I know many people in the States who've never been to another country (not even Canada or Mexico). Here, travel between countries can happen multiple times in a single car drive. Understanding other cultures and peoples is not just something that's "nice" to do, it's a required part of life here. It's an interesting perspective that you simply can't get living in the U.S. I'm glad I've been lucky enough to experience it.