There's No Place Like Rome for the Holidays

Just returned from Rome where we spent 19-26 December. It was really great; one of our most fulfilling vacations.

We really want to write a fair amount about the trip, but the number of pictures we took is overwhelming, not to mention we haven't fully unpacked yet. So, we're settling for a just a few pics of the hundreds, plus super brief stories.

Weather was fickle, ranging from needing hats & gloves to just long-sleeve shirts. We had rain (most afternoons), but some sunshine - but no white Christmas.

We rented a 2 bedroom flat. It was described as 'luxury', but that was a stretch of someone's imagination. The location and neighborhood really made the flat great. We were just 200 meters from the Vatican.

As we've said before, renting a flat just makes family life much easier than in a hotel. Having a kitchen allowed us to make pancakes a couple times, plus cook up decent suppers when we weren't bringing pizzas home. Yeah, Italians can really make good pizza!

We seemed to take advantage of and enjoy the buses and subway pretty well, far better than the old, deep metro of Paris.

What did we do? First full day was spent getting familiar with the city on a double-decker tour bus. The bus company had several buses rotating, letting us pop off where we wanted, then catching the next one. Maylia and her sister Erin did the same thing in Dresden last year, and since then we're big fans of the idea.

• Spent the next day going through the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel.
• Spent a day at a kid's museum called Explora, where exhibits are very interactive. We had booked this online far in advance since they allow just 6 or so families per 2 hour time slot. All kids had a good time there.
• Spent a day at the Colosseum and exploring the nearby Palatino. Not so exciting for the kids, but Maylia and Jeff really enjoyed it. Mattias does not like gladiators, nor men in gladiator costumes.
• Spent Christmas eve shopping at Rome's christmas markets. Definitely a step down from Prague's markets. Kids were happy with carousel rides. Mattias tried cotton candy for first time. Very happy little boy, until Ella decided he'd had enough of her cotton candy.
• Jeff attended Christmas eve mass in St. Peters (Vatican), delivered by the Pope. Almost worth the hassle of getting advance tickets and queuing 5 hours before mass started. Most interesting part was when a woman lept over the barricade at the pope.
• Spent Christmas morning at home, ripping through paper and boxes. Spent the afternoon at the Pantheon.
• Last day in Rome, we spent downtown at the Trevi fountain. We had seen a lot of fountains in Rome and elsewhere, but the Trevi is one big mama of a fountain! Kids surprisingly like it, too.

Overall, we're happy we reached all the tourist spots we hoped for, plus a few more 'extras' like the Explora museum, Rome castle and the markets. We had ordered or reserved most of it all in advance, which helped tremendously for planning.

We also figured on the flight home, this makes Ella's fourth country out of her 5 Christmases (US, Egypt, 2x Czech & Italy). So, now we're challenged to keep up the pace for her.

Okay, I have to throw some pictures on here ...and get to bed.

Us with St Peters behind us.

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Close-up of the ceiling
Inside the Colosseum
An idea of how HUGE it is inside of the Vatican's St. Peters basilica.
About halfway down a very impressive hall of maps, of the Vatican museum.
We did a few carousel rides over the week
The flight home
The rock star delivering his sermon

And, we can't forget to mention some new friends - Jamie, Heather and their kids, Issac and Zoe. While they're from Nova Scotia and share a lot of mutual friends with Maylia, they now live and teach in Kuwait. But they spent their Christmas vacation in Prague! Since the timing with our holiday was nearly the same, they used our flat for their home. It was nice coming home (to their home) to spend some time with them before they caught their flight back to Kuwait.

One last picture.... what our Christmas tree looks like right now, tonight. Yes, Santa came again tonight. So, we will have our 2nd Christmas tomorrow morning, since Santa couldn't carry most packages to Rome. This will be a big surprise to Ella and Mattias.