Last Day in Rome (and last day of the trip!)

This post was written over several days so the today, yesterdays and tomorrows are probably all screwed up. 

We got to have a late start today, packing up a bit this morning, only leaving the hotel at about 9:20am!  We took the metro over to Santa Maria Della Vitoria Church which is an Angels and Demons site!  We saw the Bernini statue Ecstasy of St Theresa which has an angel pointing out the path of illumination!  The kids liked this even though it was a 5 minute stop!

From there we went to the Capuchin Crypt which is a super creepy site where monks made entire rooms out of human bones to honour the dead. Very weird!  We always use Rick Steves self guided tours everywhere we go but this time our ticket included an audio guide. Which was very weird to look like such a tourist! 😂 

From here it was time for lunch. I had booked a restaurant near the Borghese park that got good reviews and had a nice patio terrace overlooking Borghese park.  It when we got there and saw the menu outside, it looked expensive and maybe not the most kid friendly food. We decided to wander around and use google maps to see if there was something better.  But we were in a very swanky neighborhood and all the places were very fancy and expensive. And we had a reservation at the Borghese gallery to get to so we didn’t have the luxury of time to wander around aimlessly looking for a place. So we decided to just head back to the original place. 

In the end they had a kids menu (which wasn’t any cheaper or smaller portions but they had an Alfredo pasta than Anna got and a Bolognese sauce that Owen got). Owen basically got pasta or gnochi woth bolognese sauce and Diavolo pizza (pizza with spicy salami) for every meal! 😂 

Trev and I decided to get a charcuterie to split and then we got this other dish to split. What would you think you are getting here?  $30 Canadian for this dish?

Well this is what we got! 😂 This is half of it because they split onto to two plates. I was so confused! 😂 Anyways we definitely realize we are not fancy people and don’t get enjoyment out of our tiny, fancy dishes!  In the end the restaurant didn’t have a cover charge and while it was pricy, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. We had paid 20 euros in cover charge at other restaurants for 5 of us to I decided to consider the 20 euro polenta a cover charge for the view with a free little polenta thingy. 😂 

They placed these fancy knife and fork holders in front of us 😂 

We are fancy people now who drizzle olive oil and then grind salt on our bread

This was delicious!

Owen decided it was so fancy he needed to eat with his pinky up!

From there we walked into the middle of the park to the Borghese Galley. This is one of my favourite museums. The sculptures are mind blowing!  The kids are museumed out and had no interest. We should have just let them wander around the park in hindsight. But it is a small museum and we were only there for half an hour. 

All week Owen has been eyeing these scooters. They are called Line scooters and they are in every corner. You scan you credit card and it activates them and then you can use them and just drop them wherever you want in rRome and disconnect to end your session. He has been begging to use one. Well Borghese park was the perfect time to try!  You have to be 18 to rent one but Trev did the paper work (you need to put a picture of your ID in the app when you get it) and tried it out and it was pretty easy. So all the kids took turns riding it. This thing goes fast!  It has a throttle and hand brakes and it is very fun to drive!  Especially in Borghese Park where you have the whole park of paths to zoom around in. The rest of us got one of these 4 person peer assist pedal golf cart bikes. So for of us were in the bike and one of us on the scooter and we would just take turns with the scooter. It was so fun to zip around the park for an hour. Owen had the time of his life and could have scootered all day (it cost about $32 per hour for the scooter). Owen declared it his favourite part of the trip not really was fun!  

We giddily dropped the scooter and bike off and got a gelato (surprise) in the park. It was from a stand and it was all homemade. Just the kids got one first but when Owen declared the strawberry the best of the trip and I tried a bite I ended up getting one too!  It was so fresh and tasted like delicious fresh strawberry!  Tied for best gelato of the trip with Orvieto with some we got in Florence a close runner up!  Trev and I also each got a cocktail to go from a to-go cocktail cart and drank it while we walked out of the park. 

We had one more Angels and Demons stop and it was only a 15 minute walk away so we headed there. Turns out it was a great walk through some awesome squares!  There was an amazing guitar player at one!  And the square after that there were three opera singers that were performing. It created a great ambience!  We were 10 minutes early for the church opening so we waited 10 minutes and enjoyed the ambience on the square. Then we did the last Angels and Demons stop. The church of Santa Maria fella Vittoria where we saw the last angel station by Bernini!

After that we metroed back to the hotel for a break. We had already packed up most of our stuff for our departure that morning so we just relaxed for about an hour and a half. For me that meant sorting through my pictures (I had 1 million pictures of the scooter adventure!). I haven’t scrolled twitter, watched a YouTube video or watched a TV show for the entire trip!

At around 6pm we went out to enjoy our last night in Rome!  We tried to figure out where we wanted to go for the last night and decided that since we’d only seen the colosseum and Roman forum in the pouring rain, that that’s where we’d go. We picked out a Rick Steves recommended restaurant to make sure we had a good last dinner!  We got to see the colosseum all lit up which was nice. And then we walked for dinner. The restaurant was great and we had a friendly waiter. We sat outside in a plasticed in patio outside. It was cozy. Owen got Diavolo pizza (surprise surprise). Anna got a bolognese pasta that was named after the owner’s mom and it honestly was soooo delicious. She didn’t finish it and we brought the rest home and I ate it cold for breakfast today. :). Joel got a pizza with ham and an egg on it. And Trev got a pizza named after the restaurant. I don’t know what was in it exactly but it had zucchini flowers. After my delicious sage and butter ravioli the other day, when I saw it in the menu, I had to get it. It was delish again, but didn’t beat the last one!

After that we walked over past some tourist shops. Anna and Joel had some money left so they both got sweatshirts!  Waited u too the very last minute!  The. We walked the streets of Rome. We actually took a wrong turn and walked need up behind St Peter’s Basilica which was kind of interesting!  We walked past the Roman Forum (although we never found the good view of it we were looking for). Then we went walked over to the Vittoria Emmanuel monument. When we were walking back to the metro stop at the end of the night we walked past some amazing Roman ruins that you could walk through that were all lit up. There was a violin busker playing. It was so nice!  I could have sat there all night!

But we were all exhausted. So we metroed back and got back probably at about 9:30pm and were in bed for 10pm. Anna was wiped!

One of my favourite pictures I took this trip!

Tired Anna

One funny thing in our way back. We bought one week metro passes that are small wallet size pieces of cardboard. They were very expensive so I have been guarding them. I give them to everyone, we scan them to get through the turnstiles, and then I collect them to put somewhere safe. And I always sit, dont lose this, it’s expensive!  Last night when going through the turnstiles, Owen’s got stuck and he dropped it and it somehow managed to fall into a tiny crack in the machine and disappeared. Seriously you could t do it again if you tried!  Thank goodness it was the last night of the trip!  So this morning we just paid separately for one ride. 

Our flight wasn’t until 1:25 today. We left the apartment at 9am and metroed to the train station. We were a bit nervous about the metro ride with our luggage because it was so packed many times but it wasn’t too bad at 9am. 8am would have been a nightmare. 

We took a train which took half an hour to get to the airport. Airport experience was easy. The one issue was the grumpy guy at the airport checkin desk. He said, the flight is full, do you want to check your luggage?  I said, no thanks. And he said well then you will have to put your luggage in that measuring device. I said ok. My bag is made of completely floppy material. Like I could roll it up nap it’s the right dimensions but depending on how it was packed it shifts around a little. It was not even close to overstuffed. There was a ton of room left. But of course it didn’t just fall into the slot. I had to adjust it a bit and push it down. But honestly not because it was too big. Just because it’s sort of fluffy if you know what j mean!  I didn’t have to force it in at all. The guy was like, nope. Too big. It needs to fall j to the slot on its own!  Anna’s slid in perfectly. When Joel went to out his in the strap got caught and he had to adjust it and the guy was like, Nope!  That doesn’t work. You have to check them. He checked them for free. But I would have preferred to keep them with us. We spent a few minutes rearranging everything. We stashed all our liquid baggies in the checked bags so we didn’t have to worry about those through security. And then we took all of the special souvenirs in the bags we were going to carry on. Anna’s bag is busting at the seams with stuffies!  Haha!

We figured we’d get lunch before our flight. We saw a place that had great looking pizzas and decided to get one more delicious pizza!!!  Honestly the pizza was delicious and huge. We ate 2/3 of it and took the rest with us for later!  The restaurant had a real pizza oven. And honestly the price was very reasonable for the airport. 

The flight was great!  

We had to go through security again when we got to London. We did that and were just browsing around when I checked our boarding pass and saw the flight was boarding in 2 minutes!  I didn’t realize that it boarded an hour early. Should have realized for an international flight woth a big plane. Anyways we start looking for a gate and realize that we have to take a shuttle train to get there and then walk forever. Haha!  We weren’t actually concerned that we’d miss it but we did hustle! 

They hadn’t even started boarding when we got there and we were one of the last boating groups!  

We are in the flight now and it we seem to be taking off about 20 minutes late despite boarding early. Hopefully we won’t be too late and our luggage will not take too long (from the AirTags it seems like they are in the plane with is although the connection is a bit wonky. 

Update.: we’ve arrived and the flight was smooth. Food was actually pretty good!  Owen and Anna started with a sore throat and head cold after dinner in the last night and Owen had a rough landing with pressure in his head. But a decongestant back at the hotel helped. 

Took us an hour and 20 minutes from touch down to be in our car and driving to the hotel. 

By the time we got to the hotel it was about 10:30pm which felt like 3:30am to us. It was a long night!

Trev was awake at 4am. The rest of us were awake around 6am (except Owen who slept a bit longer. It’s 7:30am now and we are just heading to the car for the drive home

Here are final step counts!  Average of 22,438 steps per day with a high if over 27K!

Overall fantastic trip!  Now where to go next?!?!