Monday, April 25, 2016

As I had mentioned, our hotel was spectacular, but not within walking distance to anything, so we decided to take a cab to Piazza Barberini which is a large plaza in the city center of Rome. Triton Fountain or Fontana del Tritone which is a seventeenth-century fountain by the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini is in the center of the plaza square. I am sure my Mother or one of the sisters has a photo of this fountain, however I did not, so this photo is from the internet.

We didn’t select this site by accident, it is the drop off and pickup location of our hotel shuttle. We were using this as our grounding or home base while we went on our walking tour of the center of Rome and if we timed it right, we would catch the hotel shuttle bus back to the hotel.  Today our goal was to walk a triangle to see Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and the Spanish Steps. When we started we had a tourist map with limited street identification, but we knew the general distance and direction. (Should be easy right?) Unknown to us, this central section of Rome is filled with so many statues, fountains, plazas and cathedrals that no matter which wrong (and there were many) direction we went, we found something amazing to look at.

Trevi Fountain

Fontana Di Trevi our first stop, not too far away and it should be easy to find right? Well not when nothing is in English and not a one of us can read Italian. (Spoken Italian is close to Spanish, so I could communicate a little, however I could read very little.) Already, this early in the trip I was thinking about my father-in-law Albert and longing for his Italian language skills. Tod’s Grandfather Albino and his Grandmother Gina came to the United States, “the land of opportunity”, on a boat from Italy. They were originally from the small village of Maurina which is in the municipality of Sopramaggiore. Albino arrived in New York and found work in West Virginia, however, he eventually he relocated to Northern Wisconsin. In Northern Wisconsin he and other Italian Immigrants found many job prospects in the iron ore industry. Neither Albino nor Gina spoke much English when they arrived, so needless to say, all of their children, although born in the United States, learned Italian and English at an early age.

We finally found some small signs for Fontana Di Trevi, so we followed the signs and the closer we got, we simply followed the crowd. Mom and I somehow ended up ahead of Kathy and Linda – they stopped to shop (Did I tell you I come from a long line of shoppers? I didn’t tell my husband either!) The walking path took us through all these alleys with different vendors sort of like a farmers’ market.  I saw these cool bicycle decorations and pointed them out to Kathy and said, “These would be perfect for Jake and Jenna”.

Mom and I moved on, however, when we got to the next street, Kathy and Linda were nowhere in sight. We knew they must have stopped to shop, so we killed time by investigating the nearby vendors wears. They were not too long in joining us and I asked Kathy what she bought, she said, “Those bicycles for Jake and Jenna.” Of course I wanted to see them (luckily as it turns out) and Kathy was happy to show off her first Roman purchases. I thought they were adorable but was curious about the colors she had chosen. Jenna’s name was in purple and Jacob’s was in pink. I said, “Wow, I’m surprised, I didn’t know Jacob liked pink that much, I would have picked pink for Jenna and purple for Jake.” Kathy was indignant and insisted that Jacob was spelled in copper, NOT pink. And Linda vehemently agreed with her that the color was copper. They didn’t believe me. (Two color blind girls arguing with the one sister that can see colors and not just some of them, all of them.) I told them, “The material may be coper, but the color is definitely pink.”

You know it was just like when we were kids, they would not believe me, after all what did I know? Mom had to settle the color dispute and only when she confirmed would they believe me. They sheepishly went back to the vendor’s stand and explained the error (although I am not sure how much he could understand) and ended up coming back with Jacob spelled in blue.

Aren’t they just the cutest?

After all that we were one alley away from Trevi Fountain. Construction of Trevi Fountain was completed in 1762. It is 85 feet tall and 65 feet wide it is enormous! It is the largest fountain in Rome and the most popular. I am not sure if it is the most popular because it is the largest and so darn impressive or if it is because it has been in several movies, so people are just more familiar with it. Whatever the case it is an amazing sight to see.

The legend is if you have your back to the fountain and throw in a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder you will return to Rome someday. A newer legend involves three coins. Coin number one is a sure return to Rome, the second coin leads to a new romance and a third coin leads to marriage. (We all threw one coin over our respective shoulder.)

Next we were off to find the Pantheon. The map made it look easy, but gain, there were very few roads on the tourist map we were using and somehow we just did not quite find it all that easily. It really didn’t matter much because every block had some really cool sights that took us by surprise.

The first photo is inside two different and equally beautiful cathedrals we happened upon, along with a few other monuments along the way. The architecture and history in Rome is absolutely mind-blowing, all of this and it is only our first day of exploring!

Every turn seemed to give us something amazing to look at.

I have more to write on this walking tour of central Rome post, but I am simply too tired to finish it tonight so I will add a new post tomorrow. For now, good night and I hope you enjoy reading this.