Rome

Rome confronts the tourist like a giant sandwich. The question immediately becomes: how do you start?

We had a hotel in a wonderful location near the Piazza Navona and Bernini's Four Rivers fountain, and so we started there and worked our way out, day after day, to different parts of the city. Close by we had the Pantheon, a number of great churches, and the Campo de Fiori (where we enjoyed glasses of wine in the evening).

We spent a few days at the Vatican (see additional post below).

We spent a day at the Roman forum and Colosseum.

We spent a day walking around the Villa Borghese gardens and the Borghese Gallery (museum), both of which were fabulous, visiting the Piazza del Popolo, and then a long walk along the river to the Trastevere neighborhood.

Along the way we stumbled across wonderful spots like the Trevi fountain, the Spanish steps, and Michelangelo's grand staircase.

Our hotel gave us a voucher each morning for breakfast at a charming little local cafe tucked into a street behind the piazza. Each morning we would start with a pastry and a cappuchino, then launch out into the city. Each evening we would have a glass of wine and talk about the day. We got to know the restaurants in our neighborhood and they got to know us. (It was artichoke season, so we tried to have some variation of that as often as we could). Each night after dinner we would find a gelato place on our way back to the hotel.

All of which is to say that we enjoyed the big stuff, but also found ourselves enjoying the little stuff as well. We were sad to leave.