Day 8 Venice to Rome

We leave Mestre, Venice, early in the morning , and drive across the Appian mountains and head for Rome. We have a toilet stop at a roadside amenities along the way and also stop at a “services” for lunch. It is pretty stressful J testing out my Italian to order. It would have been hard enough figuring it out for me but wait…..I need to order for all 6 of us!!!! So after lots of gesturing, plenty of smiles and my smattering of newly aquired Italian we actually get what we ordered and I even managed to correct the lady when she got it wrong. Who’d have though I could have such an enormous sense of achievement over a simple quarter of margarita pizza.  The adventure continues. We finally arrive in Rome mid afternoon and check into our hotel. At 4.45 we depart the hotel and meet up with a local guide for an orientation tour. We get fitted out with the latest in audio assistance, little earpieces that allow us to hear the guide whilst she talks and walks (saves her standing still and yelling), the only challenge then is to stay within range of the radio which is about 20 metres and this little Italian lady can sure duck and weave. I grab Riley’s hand and between us, Mark and I manage to keep all our cherubs in tow. We walk down the Spanish steps, across Rome in the drizzling rain to the Pantheon where we spend some time listening to our guide Miray, explain the significance and history of this amazing church.  We walk past the home of Pinocchio, where the kids get a photo with the little guy on a wooden bench before we arrive at  Piazza Navona. After some more orientation and history we are set loose to find a small ristorante off the Piazza. We find a nice enough little place and enjoy a fresh  pasta  dinner, then surprise, surprise ….some  absolutely wonderful gelato for dessert. We watch the last of the early evening light fade as we photograph in the Piazza then reboard our bus and head back to our hotel. Our nightly rituals follow , but at least we are here two nights so we don’t need to worry about putting the bags out in the morning or finalizing packing tonight.