The Terrific3 travel blog

We went to bed at 8ish last night. I was up several times hearing some noises in other apartments. Next thing I knew it was 837am and Z and I woke up at the same time feeling decent for a first day.

We had our colosseum tour at 10am so I didn’t have time for a morning run. We got S up, I cooked us some breakfast and we headed to our semi private kid friendly guided tour with Maria Claudia tours, a woman owned local tour company that gets rave reviews for being family friendly. Our guide Veronica was amazing with the kids and the whole tour was informative and catered to them!

Some photos above of our guide with the kids.

The tour was 1.5 hours and then we had tickets to explore palatine hill and the Roman forum on our own. The kids were tired so we headed home to drop off stuff, they watched Tom and Jerry, and gelato got us to the next self guided sites which we had fun exploring.

Then lunch… sonu really wanted us to do to a place we had walked by and smelled good… I decided to let him but then when I saw it “bistecca and pizzeria,” I had a feeling it was an overrated tourist trap. We sat down anyways, it took the server lots of prompting and about 15 minutes to get to us, at the same time that I pulled up an 1.8 star Google review (which I’ve never seen before!). So I asked the waiter what the wait for food would be, he rolled his eyes and said over 30 minutes, and we used it as an excuse to leave. My kids had a great time reading through the Google reviews later, and this was a chance to teach the kids how I usually suss out a good restaurant (which is hard to reach!)

We ended up at a lovely place that was a bit tucked away with amazing service and decent food. Then I convinced the boys to just wander the streets with me.

We stopped in a little store and got this amazing pastry, discovered that the blocks in Rome are sometimes almost a half mile long, and made our way back to our apartment, watched the sunset over the colosseum, and then back inside.

It was almost 5pm and Z started to look tired. Once it was time to go out for dinner, he said he was too full and didn’t want to eat and once we starting walking, his belly was hurting and he was on the verge of tears. I think it’s probably a backed up travel belly. We had tons of fruit for breakfast but I was the only one eating salads. We picked up some takeout pizza, and headed home.

I’m at close to 19K steps today. Which means the boys also walked almost 10 miles. So easy to do in Rome!

Tomorrow, our last day here before we head to Florence. We’ll do a city tour, I bought tickets to the Viattorio, which impressed me on the way in and apparently has a glass elevator and amazing panoramic roof view, and we’ll eat some more delicious food.

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be out of the U.S. right now especially. Just knowing there is a world out there, and many places to live if we decide to move should we move down the same fascist path Italy did many decades ago. And also that fascism is often a phase through the arc of history for many. For a country full of people who unfortunately don’t have great global education, it’s not that surprising that many would worship a dictator as they may not even know what happened in Italy and Germany etc. Hard for me to believe as a history and politics buff, but many people are insulated and didn’t grow up living and traveling around the world like I did, and may not even have left their state.

I’ll leave you with a photo of our laundry…a way to teach my kids that most around the world do not have the luxury of a dryer…. These are the simple reasons why I prioritize and value international travel with them (and yes I know I’m privileged)….for them to learn that there is so much beyond the community and country they are growing up in, and to consider other ways of living and points of view.