As most of you already know, some nearly two decades ago we told our first grandchild, Scott and Annie’s son, Liam, when you become a teenager, we will take you anywhere in the world — if you can make a case for your choices. Liam did, and we drove all around Namibia. Then his sister, Cora, came of age and we sought birds and other wildlife in Australia. Almost two years ago, Laura’s son, Tennessee, became 12, and off we went to Japan. Now, the last of our grandchildren is approaching his teen years, and we are off to Italy – pizza, football, Vesuvius and more!
First stop, Roma after 14 hours from Portland to Roma via Amsterdam.
In each of 4 cities, Roma, Napoli, Firenze, and Venezia, we plan walk-arounds with a guides specializing in working with adolescents and providing some kid-oriented activities, 1 or 2 each day. This has been worked out in advance with us providing input on hotel and Oz activity suggestions with the admirable research and suggestions from our terrific travel agent, Chelsea Kaufman. Chelsea is a young woman from San Francisco whom Laura happened to meet at a spa, Rancho la Puerta, in Mexico!
Thus begins our trip…..
Day 1 on a Sunday in Roma began with a walking tour starting from the Spanish Steps, built at a time when Spain was running the show in Roma. This region was filled with people cheering on the runners in an international marathon that threaded its way (and always in our way) through these centuries old narrow streets.
After a couple of hours of wandering with a group of 8 or so tourists and hearing of many historic figures and looking at many historic buildings and statues and fountains and more, we walked back to our hotel. Near there we had lunch and by 2 o’clock we (and hundreds of Roma soccer fans) were off by Metro. We then had a long walk to Stadio Olympico where 90,000 fans were gathering to cheer on the Roma football team in their game against Sardinia.
Our hotel desk clerk, Frederico, was very pleased to hear that Oz was off to see a Roma football game and he took us 5 floors down to his motorcycle where he gave Oz is Roma-branded wool cap! We are finding the Italian people with whom we interact to be so friendly and generous!
Enthusiasm for the team and their plays was extraordinary with coordinated singing, chanting and flag and banner waving. On each side of us we were surprised to have 6 year olds who enthusiastically cheered the many Roma team members by name!
Roma won, 1 to 0!
Our first look into Italian history centered on the Roman Period and our visit focused on the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. As we were to re-learn several times, getting to a venue is the easy part. In Rome we walked about 2 km through narrow crowded and interesting streets and came to the Colosseum. Wow! We discovered HUGE crowds all around, but where was our guide? Ugh…! Sorting this out took us quite a while with various friendly Italians using our phone to chatter with possible helpers. Eventually, our terrific guide found us. Marina had been waiting at the nearby Metro Station with a little sign which said “Veirs” and was eventually contacted by the local company that our company had contracted with. (We had walked to the meeting point provided by our tour company.)
The next day, we tackled the Vatican. This is no mean task as it is huge and spread out. Again, we had a real struggle finding our guide. But, eventually we did and we jumped the long line of visitors and entered the Vatican. The point of this tour is to see the Sistine Chapel. But, one doesn’t just walk in. No, no, no. We march along through gallery after gallery of ecclesiastical objects that the Catholics have collected from everywhere. At one spot, our guide pulled us into a side gallery that, atypically, had a place to sit down. We three sat and our guide pulled out a bunch of visuals which she used to talk about what we would be seeing. One of us, Val, thought “why are we doing this; we are going to see the real deal in just a short time?”.
Well, our guide was quite correct in giving us an guided discussion about Michelangelo’s ceiling masterpiece before we entered the chapel. This is because the Sistine Chapel was packed shoulder to shoulder and the ceiling is way, way up there and the figures are so many and so small. And you can’t talk and photos are discouraged. Yikes! We were glad that we had spent 20 minutes talking with our guide in preparation.
This photo very quickly taken by Oz. And, you can get the sense that this is not just God reaching out to Adam! There is so much history and mythology going on up there.
To sort of sum things up for Rome, we took a ‘Golf Cart Tour’. The golf cart turned out to be a long electric 4 seat golf cart. Oz grabbed the chance to sit at the back facing backward and Val joined him. Those two saw Rome through the rear view mirror with lots of close encounters with motorcycles weaving through the heavy traffic. We drove around the Colosseum region and then outside the Roman walls to the catacombs of Rome and some high views from some of the hills of Rome.
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Soon we left Rome and took the fast train south to Naples. Below is a field of greenhouses passing us at 125 mph (a favorite rather-abstract photo of our train travel of Leslie’s).
