Roman Holiday: Rome — May 19 - 22, 2022

(By Laurel)

We took a short “Roman Holiday” before starting our trek proper.  

Ah, Rome!!  We had been in Rome once before … forty-two years ago in 1980, when it was one of many stops on our backpacking honeymoon around all the major European sites.  As the Voda-phone salesman said to us, “It hasn’t changed much.”  I guess he’s right, after all many of the buildings have been in place since Caesar’s time.  What’s another forty-two years when you’ve been around for a couple of thousand already?!

We stayed very comfortably at Casa San Giuseppe in the San Giovanni area; it’s a convent which has converted part of its facility into a guesthouse.  Jim found it on monasteries.com and it’s also listed on booking.com (nuns these days are savvy!).  Our room had a private bathroom and air-conditioning, both of which we were very grateful for when the temperature hit 30 degrees — come in from touring the sites all day, have a cool shower, and splay out in front of the AC.  OK, maybe too much information there … moving on …

We loved being in Rome again!  We happily played the tourists, wandering by the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Caracalla Baths, the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, St. Peter’s and more.  There’s an old, beautiful church on every square and we made sure to stop in to admire (almost) every one.  And the food, of course!  We tasted quite a few delicious Roman specialties — pizza (gluten-free, even!), pasta, veal sandwiches from Testacchio Market, suppli (rice ball), fried artichoke, and —my faves— tiramisu and lemon gelato!  There’s more to see and eat, but alas we’ve run out of time; with luck, we can catch those when we’re back in Rome before our return flight to Canada, in July.