We walked to Vatican City Thursday morning to make sure we knew how long it would take to get there, and to scope out the location we were supposed to meet our tour guide for our tour of the Vatican. I had a general idea of the location from Google maps but we thought it would be wise to know the details so there was no confusion the next day. It took a bit longer than I thought it would to get there on foot, but once we were there we gawked at everything like, well, tourists… The line of tourists outside the Vatican Museums was pretty incredible. There were a LOT of white people in shorts with big cameras around their necks.

We walked around for a little while around St. Peter’s and the rest of the area looking at the stuff. As we walked back toward our hotel we passed a series of stalls along the river near The Castel Sant’Angelo (originally the fortress of Hadrian) where Indians and Pakistanis sold more crap – calendars, cheap jewelry, sunglasses, and – Native American license plates… Wait! What? There was a stall that had American license plates, but what really caught our attention were the Native American plates. There was even a Comanche tag so we got a picture of Vivian pointing at it… What a strange place! We continued toward the hotel and sat at Alfredo’s restaurant just a few blocks from our hotel. This is supposedly the place Alfredo style pasta was invented. We got some. It rocked. I’d go back any day. As we sat and sipped drinks and ate we saw a couple of older guys and their wives leaving. One of them was wearing an OU hat. I said “Boomer Sooner” to him and he laughed and said it back.

We quickly ended up back at the hotel for another nap. All that walking was exhausting! And we weren’t finished with the jet lag by a long shot. When it was noon Rome time, my body said it was 5 am… That evening we walked back up to GA and had more drinks and watched it rain for a while.

After it finished raining we again walked across the Tiber and south to the Trevi Fountain. It was late afternoon and we zigzagged our way through the streets. I had purchased a small book called a Moleskine City Notebook which had a pretty darn good map of central Rome in the front section, blank pages for notes after that, a place to write down where you ate, who you met, where you stayed etc. Oh, it also had a map of the Metro and a few other things to help you get around town and remember the trip. I highly recommend it. It’s compact and the map is accurate even if it IS divided across multiple pages.

As we walked along to Trevi Fountain we suddenly found ourselves at the edge of yet another piazza on a major street, but rather than an obelisk in the center of this one, there was a large, intricately carved column. This column was erected in 180 AD and is the Column of Markus Aurelius and is modeled after Trajan’s column. It’s approximately 90 feet high and around 7 feet in diameter. You just don’t know you’re going to see things like this until you’re there, standing open-mouthed and wide-eyed, again looking like a tourist…

It took a while to regain my thought processes and close my mouth, and Vivian and I tried to figure out what the building was at one edge of the piazza where a small crowd was gathered. I think it was a government building of some sort, but I’m not positive. Eventually we gathered ourselves and continued on our way.

We walked through streets that were small by American standards. A Hummer definitely would have trouble, but a Smart Car could go anywhere. After a number of streets we spotted what we thought was the square in which the fountain was located, though we could barely see anything down the narrow streets. As we approached the piazza we could hear the sound of many people talking, and the sound of water running. Again, at the edge of the building the piazza suddenly opened before us. To our left was the fountain, and to our right the piazza filled with hundreds of people! We had heard about this from Vivian’s sister. There are so many tourists it’s hard to enjoy the fountain. And don’t forget the crap salesmen shooting their bubble guns and tossing those stupid magnets in the air that rattle when they collide… We took pictures of each other and had a Gelato and hung around until we couldn’t take any more of the crowd and left.

TIP: If you click a thumbnail to see the pic, it will still be pretty small when it’s displayed on the next page. Click THAT pic and you’ll see a bigger picture. Just use your back button to get back to the original post to see the next one.

We left Tulsa at 11 am and flew to Atlanta on Delta Airlines. After a short layover we left Atlanta at 4 pm Eastern time and arrived in Rome at 8 am Thursday morning Rome time. We were in the air for 9 hours between Atlanta and Rome, and though we cat napped a bit on the plane we didn’t really sleep because we were packed too tightly in the middle two of four seats… Once we were on the ground and through Customs we headed for the hotel. We knew we didn’t want to try using the public transportation to go from airport to train station to bus to reach our hotel. It was just too far and too much effort. So we grabbed a cab and hung on for dear life!

Lesson number one is that unless you’re from the area don’t try to drive in Rome. The drivers create their own lanes and motorcycles and scooters zip between the cars making it truly chaotic. It’s not so much scary, as bewildering… We arrived at the hotel around 9:30 am but our room wouldn’t be available until noon. We wanted to familiarize ourselves with the area as quickly as we could, and we were trying to take everyone’s advice and not check into the hotel and go to sleep because it would add to the jet lag problem, so we left our bags at the hotel and walked down the street, across the Tiber, and north on Via Del Corso to the Piazza Del Popolo. Our first taste of Rome!

It appeared as though they had a concert or something recently because there was a large, metal structure that looked like lights might have hung from it, and it was being disassembled by cranes and teams of men. We walked past all that and up the hill to the Villa Borghese park, where we walked around for another hour or two. The fountains (and obelisks) were beautiful. The flowers were blooming everywhere, and the trees were remarkable in that there were so many varieties. We sat on a bench in the cool shade when we got too tired to continue walking. The jet lag was catching up with us so we walked back to the hotel and did what everyone told us not to do. We took a nap. We just couldn’t stay awake any longer… It was near noon, but my body said I’d been up nearly 24 hours and thought it was 5 am.

We stopped along the way for a bite to eat at a little place in an alley called the “06 Cafe” between a big church and a bank (bunch of ATMs in a lobby). I don’t know why it was called the “06 Cafe” though. I got a beer and a thin crust pizza and it was freakin’ good. I was looking forward to more experiences like this. It wasn’t filling like Mazzio’s though, and Viv just got a snack.

In the late afternoon, after our nap of several hours, we went out for more sightseeing and thought about a little shopping, but first we wanted a snack and a drink or two. We stopped just up the street at a little place that looked like a chain restaurant, and I never quite figured out the name of the place because it wasn’t written anywhere, though the initials were GA which was everywhere in the shape of a very fancy logo. It started raining so we hung there and had drinks, which DID cost us money, and snackies, which we did NOT get charged for! Not what everyone said would happen. When the rain stopped we went for a walk and ended up at the Piazza Navona, the Baroque plaza that has changed very little since it was created in 1651 by Bernini.

The Piazza Navona is full of atmosphere and is magical in the evening. The moon was coming out over the piazza bathing everything in a soft light – like it needed more atmosphere… There is one of many obelisks in Rome in the center of the piazza in the fountain, also by Bernini, called “Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi” (Fountain of the Four Rivers). The Church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, by Francesco Borromini and Girolamo Rainaldi, is on the western side of the piazza with apartments, ristorantes, bars, and government buildings around the rest it.

From the Piazza Navona we walked the narrow streets a few blocks to the east and rounded the corner of a building to suddenly see the Pantheon also bathed in light from the moon. It’s being restored, like many of the monuments in Rome, and had scaffolding covering part of its facade. The scale of the building is deceiving. It looks small from across the piazza, but when you get up to the structure it’s actually huge! The columns are 4 or 5 feet in diameter and the main door is at least 20 feet tall. Oh, and there’s a fountain in the center of the piazza directly in front of the Pantheon with another obelisk. Apparently the Roman Emporers were fond of stealing them from the Egyptians and putting them in Rome.

On the irritating side all this atmosphere and coolness is punctuated by the hawkish Indian or Pakistani junk sellers. In every tourist spot in the city you’ll find them sellling crap. And I mean CRAP. They aren’t rude, but they’re aggressivly trying to sell flowers, plastic guns that look like ray-guns and blow bubbles and make irritating noises, sunglasses, camera tripods, plastic cubes etched with images of monuments – crap…

It’s quite a mix of cultures and eras at these places that boggles the mind – fountains, obelisks, basilicas, arches, columns (things from the previous two and a half millenia that tourists come to see). There are tourists who are predominantly white Americans or Europeans although there are lots of Asians too. There are locals who work at the restaurants and bars as artistans and entertainers – from clowns to “statues” that people can take their pic next to (and then drop a Euro into a coffee can near the artist) to the basically freaky entertainer (can take many forms)… Combining all that with the little scooters and tiny cars driven by the locals and you have a bizarre collection of elements from all over the world, and almost 3,000 years of history.

Not bad for day one!

TIP: If you click a thumbnail to see the pic, it will still be pretty small when it’s displayed on the next page. Click THAT pic and you’ll see a bigger picture. Just use your back button to get back to the original post to see the next one.

The Toilet Seat War Continues, originally uploaded by jenkinsba.

We have a unisex bathroom at work and our female boss doesn’t like the
seat being left up, so shelrft us a note.

Bob Watches Tux In The Next Yard, originally uploaded by jenkinsba.

Tux has to go to the neighbor’s yard to get any peace from Bob… Bob
can do nothing but watch Tux sharpen her claws helplessly.

Food Pyramid In The Morning, originally uploaded by jenkinsba.

Just sitting in my car waiting for the tellers to show up and unlock
the door at the credit union.

Carrot Bubble Gum?, originally uploaded by jenkinsba.

Thankfully it isn’t actauuly carrot flavored, it’s fruit flavored.
Which begs the question "Why put it IN a carrot?"

Apple store, originally uploaded by jenkinsba.

I’m at the Apple store because my car is in the shop across the street
getting a flat fixed. I’m killing time at the mall. It’s far less
crowded than the last time I was here but I’m still a little freaked
out by this place…