When we checked into the hotel yesterday, we were given instructions on how to order breakfast. The ordering process appeared to be stating what time we wanted it delivered to our door. The breakfast itself would be an “Italian Breakfast”, with no definition of what that actually might mean (as opposed to a “continental breakfast”).
Turns out it means: A LOT OF FOOD.
Pastries, rolls, Nutella, a bunch of other spreads, cheese, fruit, yogurt, biscuits, and stuff I’m forgetting. Literally could not finish it all.
And then we were off on our first adventure of the day – a Segway tour! It’s become sort of a tradition when we travel – if the city we’re visiting has Segway tours, we do it. This tour was very short- only an hour. Which is about as long as I can stand it. It was perfect.
We were the only two people in the group, so we had a private tour. We could stop any time we wanted to. Our guide, Sergio, was very understanding of my total inability to stop and get off a Segway. This is a known problem. I finally figured out why last summer when we were in Berlin. It’s because, duh, I’m a child sized adult. As in, I’m short. Stepping off a Segway without killing yourself and/or destroying the Segway requires long enough legs and arms to be able to step off while holding onto the handles. My little T-Rex arms just don’t do the the trick. The guide has to hold the thing still so I can step off.
Anyway, besides that challenge, riding a Segway in Rome – on narrow, non-stop cobble stone streets is really hard. It’s harder to steer, turn, stop, everything, plus the constant pounding of the stones. Good thing it was only for an hour.
We stopped at Piazza Navona:
We saw stumbling stones – mini-Holocaust reminders of people who were deported from Rome and sent to their deaths:
Our second stop was the Pantheon. Here’s a panoramic shot of the inside:
After the Segway tour, we headed to the Jewish quarter to visit the Jewish museum inside the Great Synagogue of Rome. This was the entrance gate to the Jewish quarter:
The museum consists of 6 rooms describing Jewish life in Italy, which apparently goes back a couple of thousand years. Who knew?
Italian Jews are not Sephardi (Portuguese/Spanish), nor are they Ashkenazi (Eastern European). They are Italian, though their customs more closely resemble Sephardi than Ashkenazi.
On the same floor as the museum was a little Sephardi synagogue:
We waited for the 1:15 tour to be able to go up to the main sanctuary:
It was lunch time by then – we went to a kosher restaurant down the street from the Great Synagogue. I had a kosher seafood risotto (seafood = salmon) and Andy had ravioli with grouper and zucchini.
After lunch we decided to walk over to the Colloseum – in theory only a mile away, but between the segway tour and all the walking on cobblestones, it took over an hour to get there. Andy was able to buy a “Gladiator” tour for 5:30.
I was able to take a bathroom break before the final stretch to the Coliseum. There’s always at least one bathroom story on every trip. And here is the first one:
This was the first bathroom I had to pay for. I’d lucked out until now. But it was worth the money, because the bathroom guy washed the floor between each person! Oh boy!
A bunch of us stood in line for 2 single bathrooms. One marked Men, the other Women, though they were identical as far as I could see. Naturally, more women than men in the line.
A young guy comes up and breaks in the line – the bathroom guy just let him take the next turn when the men’s bathroom was empty. OMG. All I know is if this happened in NY, there’d be blood on the floor.
And when it was my turn, I discovered that my 1 euro got me a toilet with no seat on it. This not uncommon in Europe, and boy is it ever annoying.
BUT – The Colosseum is amazing. I think it’s my favorite Rome thing. In this photo we were standing at the arena level.
The tour lasted a little over an hour. The tour guide extolled all the things the Romans had invented, NOT THE GREEKS. Of course.
It was time to head back to the hotel and figure out what we were doing for dinner. Andy’s sisters, Susie and Janet had arrived in the morning and had spent the day roaming around Rome on the hop-on-hop-off bus. I leave it to them to tell their own adventure stories.
Now our crew is complete – Andy, me, Janet, Susie and her friend, Tom. We had dinner together to kick off our cruise that starts tomorrow.
It’s been a very, very long day.
LOOK OUT EUROPE: THE SHELDONS ARE COMING
Tomorrow: our 3 hour tour of Rome and then we board our ship.
Maryland Meshugas 