follow the fountain
Rome, Italy
When the temperature gets up to the high thirties…and even creeps up into the forties…these little kiwis feel HOT. Fortunately, a fantastic place for this to occur is Rome with its over 1,500 fountains constantly spurting fresh cool deliciously sweet water. We trudged around the city, creeping from shadow to shadow, snatching glimpses again of the Coliseum and Roman Forum, looking up longingly at Palatine Hill (remembering filling water bottles and splashing faces there yesterday), admiring the Pantheon (how can a building so large seem so un-overpowering? yet how can such a huge crowd of people waiting outside it for a service to finish, so suddenly be swallowed up inside it so that it did not seem full?), poking nose’s into Pinnochio workshops, eating sandwiches but remembering yesterday’s pizza, discussing Vivaldi and Carnival, watching an artist at work, giggling at a dog transporter….all the while stopping at almost every fountain we came across to sip and splash….to throw a coin in the fountain that would apparently ensure our return to Rome……
Our goals for the day completed. By 2pm.
We try not to do too much in a day, preferring to take it slowly and not send the kids over the brink. But, as I say, it was only 2pm (the time of day when sensible people would retire to their hotel swimming pools for a couple of hours, leaving the heat to do its thing) and being neither sensible, nor staying in a hotel, we continued walking. When you’ve only got two days, you want to make the most of it. Besides, when we had voiced Rome plans to friends and family at home…plans that omitted the Vatican City….we received a flurry of emails in our inbox. You’ve got to get at least to St Peter’s. You can’t go to Rome and not visit da Pope. Who will crack the da Vinci code if you don’t go?
So we kept walking. Down beside the Tiber River, under the bridges, over the bridges. Right on up to the basilica. It was too hot to go find the spot where all the columns line up. We just tacked ourselves on the end of the entrance line and hoped the shadow cast by the building would quickly gather us in.
We spent so long in this, the biggest church in Christendom, that it was late when we came out. Too late to consider the trek to the Sistine Chapel, too late to admire any more art work, no matter how famous. Too late to invite the Pope to share our last bunch of grapes. Time only to stop at one more fountain before finding a bus to get back to the tram that would take us to our final bus (you can only walk so far in the heat, and the bus trip extended our tour of Rome!) When you’re only in Rome for two days, you push the kids just past their limits….and on the odd occasion are rewarded with them coping. Maybe it was the fountains.
Tags: 2008/09, postcard: Italy
rayres
Leave a Reply