Italy 2019 - Day 2 / Rome

As most of you already know, it was a rough day. We had to make the unexpected and devastating decision to put down our beloved Fur Baby, our cat J.R. I won’t go into too many details here, but you can all imagine how it tainted the day.

Steps today: 21 396. Not bad! The weather is IMPOSSIBLE when the sun is out, but thankfully there was enough shade around that we were able to do a few nice long walks.

(light blue = on foot / dark blue = bus, metro, train etc)

We started with breakfast near the Colosseum, what a great view!

We did not tour the inside, the line-up were MILES long!! In October no less – imagine what the crowds must be like in height of summer. October is not the low season in Rome that’s for sure! Everywhere we’ve been so far has been almost overrun. I had no desire to tour in the inside anyway, so it wasn’t a loss. We visited it in 2003, that’s enough.

I’ll have to go back and look at my pictures of previous visits to compare, but it seems to me they are fixing the coliseum because many sections look brand new. Straight bricks, square corners, I don’t like it!! If they are doing it out of necessity to keep the place from crumbling down, then I suppose it’s a necessary evil but I liked the old broken look; isn’t that the point? It wasn’t built yesterday and it shouldn’t look so “new”.

We spend about an hour wandering around and admiring the area (the parts with no lineups or entry fees) and then it was off to the next stop: the secret keyhole.

It was not so secret… there was a line but thankfully it moved fast. The whole point is to see the dome of St Peters perfectly framed in the garden that is behind the door, through the view of the keyhole. It’s really neat! A little gem.

Here is a picture from the internet that shows you what you see... I could never get this with my phone-cam!

Next, we walked over to Trastevere for a drink where I had my daily Aperol Spritz, but I didn’t like the glass so it didn’t count. I made a point to go for a do-over later in the day.

We walked around after looking for a place to have some lunch and we found a nice al fresco terrace. Near the end of our meal, we got the message from my brother in law that the Cat Hotel had called to inform that our cat was very sick and we needed to call them. The news was not good, I was blubbering at the table, poor Frank did not know what to say to console me as he was also very upset.

Lunch was 35€ and I paid with a 50. She brought the change which I expected it to 15€, but she brought back 35 + 50!!! Frank told her she had brought us too much, but she didn't seem to react so we left. I suspect she was uncomfortable given the way we were acting...  or maybe a random act of kindness?  Or it was all a big miscommunication and she thought he was complaining that it cost too much? Ah well, we tried.

The uncertainly about what was happening with JR (who was at that moment being rushed to the vet) put a damper on the rest of the day as you can imagine, we tried to move on and continue our sight seeing, but we felt so unmotivated.

We wanted to visit the Fontana dell’Aqua Paola and thankfully the walk there wandering the streets was calm and not a lot to see so we could be a little more introspective and not miss any important sites; we had mentally check out...  the fountain was closed anyway. It was fitting.

We gave up on the idea to walk back because there was no shade and we took the tram to our next destination: the immense Il Vittoriano (Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II). Again, nice, fun, interesting…  but with such heavy hearts it was all a little dull.

We also re-re-created this pose, 2006, 2013, 2019

Next, we felt lost. Not really in the mood to do anything, but we can’t waste the day either – we walked to Campo de’ Fiori and sat down for a drink where I attempted my do-over to have a “pretty” Aperol Spritz.  It was, but before I even took a sip we got another message to call the vet and it was the heart wrenching news that we had to make the horrible, yet humane, decision to put him down.  So many tears, ugh, how awkward for the other people at the restaurant.

We were shell-shocked after that. As corny as it may be, we found a church to light a candle. I'm not religious, but it made me feel good to make some kind of gesture.  Heaven is a sweeter, furrier, cuter, softer, more adorable place tonight.

We then had a little supper at the restaurant in the same coourtyard as the church and called it a night.

I miss poor little JR already so much, but he’ll be looking over us as we pick ourselves up and resolve to make the most of our vacation.