Girandola and Walking

 

We are riding backwards on a train from Rome to Venice today. A treat to be blogging from an Italian train. I never worked on the blog last night because we had a night of adventures and a migraine. So, I’m a day behind. I love finishing our days by writing about them but all I could think about last night was going to sleep. 

We had a smallish day of morning adventuring yesterday. We visited the Baths of Caracalla which was pretty cool and also scorching hot. We are enjoying a heatwave here. We thought we would be able to tour underground there and escape the heat, but not so much. We did enjoy an art exhibition there though. I love black and white photography and there were some really cool photos that looked even better amidst the Roman ruins.  

After that mileage we headed back to Trastevere for some lunch with plans to go chill (literally) in our air conditioned apartment. I felt a headache coming so a nap sounded perfect. 

We had Trapezzini and Suppli for lunch.

Ended up sleeping until 5 which was good because we had planned to be out late. Yesterday was a holiday to honor the city’s patron saints, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The night is celebrated with a fireworks show called Girandola. It’s a 22 minute firework display that dates back to the 15th century. 

We had to make sure to be out for that and along the way we planned on seeing the sunset from a beautiful lookout we had found earlier. On the way we made a stop to take a peek from a tiny keyhole with a huge view. The Knights of Malta Keyhole. It was pretty neat. Our cameras would not focus through the keyhole so the view I’m sharing is not my photo. 

It was a super quick peek and we had the pleasure of seeing a wedding party followed by a bride and groom leave the nearby church and head down the path to their celebration. Gosh, what a gorgeous area for a wedding. I’m a sucker for romantic things like that. It added to our adventure for sure. If you’re in Rome, take a walk up the hill for these little additions to your itinerary. Worth it.

After this visit I had a bad headache and a full bladder. Brian’s blog would probably be titled, “Finding Italian Bathrooms for my Wife”. I’m sure I was an awesome travel partner. We headed down the hill and off  toward our sunset spot. Found a quick stop for some OK pizza and I used their bathroom. 

This stop put us pretty close to sunset and we had a ways to go from there to see it. We rushed through the maze of Roman streets dodging millions of people who were also out to celebrate the festivities. And. We missed the sunset. We still rushed to the top of the hill in hopes of seeing the colors of the end of the day appear. At least we were up there and ready for the fireworks. We found a great spot next to the guy singing sappy love songs in hopes of filling his pockets with euros. We had about a 30 minute wait before the show. We were finally early for something! 

After the show we made our way through the crowds toward the Coloseum to get some night shots. The energy was so fun. There were musicians singing and huge crowd participation. It was a fun night to be out. 

 Poor Brian was dragging me along behind him on a walk from Trevi fountain to the Colosseum.We made it though! Lots of people were headed there for some night shots. We made it there at about 11:40 and it was bustling. We took some photos and then made our plan for getting us way back across town to our apartment. We have walked back and forth a couple times but my head said no. Brian found us a bus and we got most of the way home. Just a little but further from the bus stop. It was a welcomed ride. It was a good night and it was very much time for goodnight. Our small adventure day turned into 31,000 steps. 

We have another couple hours on the train. It’s kinda nice to give our feet a little break. I look forward to Venice and to our next adventure.