Our Adventure Begins

We arrived in Rome Saturday morning, found our driver Ricardo and headed over to our home away from home. After cooling our jets in a “bar” ( in Italy this is a place you get coffee and pastry) until our Air B & B was ready. We  met with Christina, our host, who has a lovely shop full on high end lamps and furniture. There was still a wait so off we went to Camp Di Fiori. This is a lively open air market  with all manner of fruits, vegetables and flowers. The colors are amazing. We made our first purchase of a plastic kitchen tool hawked by a guy Matt had see on y.ou tube, get ready for spiralized zucchini and curled potatoes.

https://youtu.be/Qi6oHF665EE

We went for lunch at the restaurant Ricardo had recommended, La Carbonara. Right next to the outdoor tables were two carabinieri soldiers outfitted with some very serious looking machine guns. Today, we have seen the same set up at the coliseum and the church we visited. It's disconcerting and at the same time reassuring to see them. You can tell they are very aware of the possibility of a truck bomb and guarding  against it. By this time, given jet lag and little sleep I was channeling my inner zombie so much so that it felt like my perception was altered . We went back home took a nap and off to dinner. Still exhausted, we came back after dinner and I crashed much to the envy of Matt.  

This morning we were off to the Domus Aureas. This is the palace Nero built just after Rome “burned”.Nero was conveniently at his summer palace at the time, and confiscated the land which had burned to erect his massive luxurious palace complex. Needless to say, this did not make him a popular guy. About a hundred years later Trajan stripped the place of marble, had it buried and built a bath on top. In an effort to eradicate any memory of Nero. Fast forward to today, it is an archeological site. We donned hard hats and headed underground. It is a huge site, very atmospheric. At one point. We put on virtual reality glasses to view the site as it was. Wow this must have been an incredibly impressive place. Matt got some great pictures. We then went out to lunch. I ordered a cheeseburger seriously lowering my street cred with Matt.



Linda