Day 10: Another day in ROMA!
/I was up early this morning as the iPod making noise for Luke in our bedroom ran out of battery. I have conditioned all of the boys to love sleeping with white noise. it's a blessing in times when you want to drown out noise, and it's a curse all other times. Like when there's no other noise to drown out early in the morning, but if the white noise shuts off they wake up. Or they can't fall asleep because there is no white noise.
Anyhow, the iPod ran out, so I woke up. Not Luke. I wandered around in a stupor for a bit trying to find an adapter to plug it in and fire it back up. After about 10 minutes of aimless feeling around in the dark, because Judah sleeps in the living room here, I realized I could just swap out the iPad. Funny how long it takes the brain to function early in the morning. Well, by the time I finally figured that out I was wide awake. It was 6:15 then and I decided to just stay awake, having the grand idea that I would wake everyone up around 7 or so and we'd try to get on this schedule. After a week. It's still.not.happening. I didn't wake them up, I just sat at this darned computer and fought with it to open my pictures, or lightroom or anything to do with photos. It was having none of it, so I uploaded the pics from yesterday as-is and finished bringing the blog up-to-date.
Everyone else woke up around 8ish...I think....I was tired again by then. ha! We ate a quick breakfast and went to a water park nearby that Josh had tracked down when we decided to not do two days in a row of walking around melting our shoes on the cobblestone streets of Roma. The water park was refreshing, but PACKED. SO.MANY.PEOPLE! SO many teenagers with their lovey doveys! :/ Ih. Smoking here is so common. We saw several kiddos today that looked no older than 12 or so, barely developed, lighting up and taking long drags. It's really kind of sad. We stood in line just to get tickets for at least 30 minutes, but probably much more than that. It took forever and made for great people watching. Or...people feet watching. The boys and I sat and took in all the second hand smoke while Josh was elbow to elbow with the sweaty masses. There was no line to speak of. You are aggressive, or you wait an extra 30 minutes. Italians work ticket lines the same way they work traffic. :)
I didn't want to wear my camera the whole time, so we locked it up in a locker at the entrance to the park. These are the couple of photos I got there. The second pic there is the area we spread out. The two families that were to the left of us on the lounge chairs were quite put out that we camped there. I am still a bit baffled as to why. It was just the wives, but they made certain to give me eyes and let me know they didn't approve of us pulling up a nice square of concrete next to them. (Josh: it IS possible that this was a cultural issue- maybe in Italia muttering under your breath, rolling your eyes and glaring is actually a sign of respect. or affection. or something...) They never so much as smiled, but their husbands and children seemed unaffected by our presence and interacted with us normally.
We left the water park......wait for it.......later than we'd hoped (that seems to be the running theme for this trip - maybe we should just stop hoping or planning departure times) and Luke was just done. He's become an expert at sleeping in the van and did just that, even with Elijah and I trying to tickle him awake, all the way back to our place. I transferred him to his tent in our room and he slept another hour and a half. Josh stayed up and researched our next stop, but the rest of us passed out for a bit. After naps we loaded up and headed back to the tram to make our way to the Pantheon. Josh and I tried to go see it when we were here last summer, but arrived just 5 minutes after the door shut. Yesterday we arrived a short 15 minutes after closing time. We checked the time for Sunday closures and made for sure and certain that the third time would be the charm! And it was! What a sight' to behold! And to think that the columns we leaned against were there in the time of Paul the apostle(or thereabout!). Each column in the front weighs 55 tons and is a single piece of granite! The domes roof is a marvel of engineering- still the largest all concrete dome in the world!
After the Pantheon we sauntered back through Piazza Navona, saw a living cowboy statue, bought a fedora, and ate at the same gluten free place as last night- penne with bolognese, a margherita pizza and a salame pizza. Delish!
The tram home takes about 20 minutes, and Joel strikes up random conversations with strangers the whole way- he's so stinking cute that everyone wants to talk to him, or get talked at by him! There was one curmudgeonly lady who shushed him, but we'll assume she was having a bad day... On a side note, teaching a four year old to respect his elders and obey when some of them act like jerks is a tough lesson to teach...
Now we're off to bed- we'll load up the van and get on the road to Pompeii tomorrow!