January 18, 2017: Exploring Rome on the Bus

Dominica and I were up at nine this morning.  I think that today is Wednesday, I have lost all track of time as usually happens with a move back to Europe.  We spent a bit of time getting ready this morning, then we made an attempt at waking up the girls.  Luciana had been awake until almost five in the morning so was very tired and cranky this morning when we tried to get her up around ten.

Before we left the apartment I felt, very clearly, two strong earthquakes.  The chair that I was sitting in moved like someone had grabbed the back of it and was pulling me side to side .  I could sense the room shifting and the curtains were swaying significantly.  Dominica said that she could not feel it but Liesl could see things moving.  It was strong enough that I instantly looked up and said that it was an earthquake.

Before we made it out the door, there was a second earthquake.  I managed to look it up and see that there had been a precursor quake that we had not felt.  The big one that I felt was a 5.3.  It was big enough that Rome had to close the schools and send the kids home and the subway had to be shut down.  Up in the mountains there was a blizzard and people were struggling to get outside into the snow to avoid houses falling like happened here a few months ago. But it appears that everyone is okay today.

We finally got out of the apartment around eleven.  We decided to do our City Sightseeing Tour today, so we walked around the Colosseum to the far side where we were able to catch the bus. For just 64 Euros we got three day passes for the entire family which will make getting around the city very easy.

We rode around for a while and got to see a lot of the famous bits of Rome.  The girls were not in the mood to be riding the bus, however, and wanted to get off.  It was pretty cold up on the top of the bus.

We got off at the Trevi Fountain stop and walked to see the fountain.  That was pretty cool but overloaded with tourists which really ruins things.  Rome is neat, but it is nothing but tourists and hawkers trying to take advantage of them.  It kind of sucks.  They need to go all Morocco on them and make them go away.  It hurts the city, a lot.

From the fountain we went to a little restaurant nearby.  We knew that it was a tourist place but we had no idea how to find something better without it being a huge undertaking.  I got a smoked salmon penne, Liesl got seafood risotto, Luciana got eggplant Parmesan and Dominica got mushroom risotto.  It was pretty decent.

From there it was back onto the bus.  Both girls fell asleep this time.  They are really exhausted.  So we just rode the bus to the end of the route and walked back to the apartment.  They needed time to just play and relax.

I checked on the earthquake status and found that there had been ten earthquakes in the Rome area today!