Laundry and gardens and things

Laundry day once again! We probably couldn’t have gone very much longer without doing it this time. The Laundromat near us had a lot of washers and even some dryers so that was exciting. Our plan was to get it started and then get some money from an ATM, but we walked around for the washing cycle and couldn’t find a single machine (we tried four) that wasn’t exclusively dispensing 50E bills. It’s sort of inevitable that you get those when you withdraw so much money but it’s really annoying to break them, so we try to have at least a few twenties just in case we need something cheap and don’t want to steal all the store’s change. It’s ridiculous not to dispense anything lower…if you round up the exchange rate to the nearest bill it would be like ATMs in the US dispensing only $100 bills. Outrageous! But so it is. We chased down another recommendation in the drying cycle but couldn’t find it; instead, we found a huge supermarket not too far from our hotel. That was a good find – even the nuns were loading up their minivans out front. We will have to return when we have money.

With our laundry clean and ready (hurray!) we returned to the hotel to drop it off. The receptionist told us that there was an atm in the opposite direction that we had looked that would probably work, and it did. All that fuss, ah well. It was definitely more walking than we had anticipated for the morning but I guess it was just warming us up for the day to come. Our first stop was the Spanish Steps, where we watched some rose peddlers (pun not originally intended) run away from the cops, which was fun. Then we climbed them and wandered around the Borghese gardens, where there was great sights AND great shade. We tried to go see the biopark, but our Roma pass didn’t bring down the admission as low as we would have liked so no zoo for us! Just outside the complex, though, they did have lots of Frigo items and a little shop with excellent sandwiches for only 2.50E. That’s super cheap in these parts and it was totally unexpected, coming from a super touristy located joint. An appreciated surprise though!

From there it was time to hit the Borghese gallery. Originally the lines looked like we probably shouldn’t have prebooked because they were short, but the museum is weird in that it only lets in so many people per two hour limit. So the people standing in line in front of us probably weren’t getting tickets to get in immediately, and being able to go to the gardens only once (without leaving after purchase and coming back for valid wandering time) is pretty useful. This was one of the few sights that Peter hadn’t seen, apparently, with a lot of works he recognized from his Latin books and a lot of grand rooms. So we saw the Rape of Persephone and a lot of famous works. My favorite was Daphne and Apollo, showing the moment that she starts turning into a tree to avoid Apollo’s advances. The sculptor spent a lot of time making leaves, and they all connected very delicately and well (just like the rest of the statue). Very cool. My only issue with this museum is that everything looked a little too perfect – I mean, it was originally a museum, so naturally everything has been well preserved. But in Rome something that is only (only!) 200 years old is less noteworthy, especially if it looks like it was only made yesterday. Interesting!

We tried to get to the Pantheon afterwards but people were getting married in there (“oh yes, well we just got married in the PANTHEON!” …wtf.) so we raced around on the 3rd day of our Roma pass trying to find another place to get into so it pays itself off. We ended up finding the Museo di Roma, which was nice. Info, photos, clothes and furniture from Rome between the 18th – 20th centuries…just another museum with cool stuff as far as I’m concerned but Peter seemed to enjoy it. I liked our following trips through the Piazza Navona (tall buildings, large statues, big fountains, very impressive) and the Trevi fountain (huge carving, huge pipes, one bricked-in window at the top?) better though. Lots of tourists but it made sense since there was a lot to see around. Walk walk walk.

But tiiiired. We’ve decided that Rome has the most steps and hills of all the cities we’ve experienced and so it makes us more tired faster, and therefore grumpy. Grr grr. We went back to the hotel and showered but didn’t take naps this time, which might have been bad. But instead we went and got pizza because Peter was very insistent on it. We got the whole ‘pay by the gram’ (aka whatever you tell them / they decide to cut) experience and the food ended up pretty okay. Fortified, we used our Roma pass (on its last day of life, very sad) to get to the Colosseum again to see it at night. It was definitely a cool view and I finally remembered to bring my jobo tripod, which was definitely helpful. Looks very different at night, I’m glad we checked that off.

Got some gelato on the way back but that was a temporary perk - Peter’s faaast asleep by now and I keep falling asleep midsentence, woo hoo. So it is sleepytime. May tomorrow be full of less crankiness!