Holiday "chillin' with the fam"

We finally had some family come from the US.  Our Irish cousins visited earlier this fall, but my family had to cancel their 2019 travel plans and were finally able to make it.  It was so much fun to share our city with them.  

My brother and his wife came for a little over a week in early December.  We saw so much and walked so far.  They are avid step counters and had several days over 20,000 steps.  I had two over 20,000 and two more well over 15,000.  Before arriving they weren't sure if there would be enough to do to fill their time here.  There was more than enough and now they want to come back for more.  They were able to sneak in a trip to Naples and Pompeii on the one sunny day they were here, but there is so much more to see.  I hope they come back when it isn't so rainy.  It was one of the wettest weeks we had all winter and they were such troopers.  We seemed to get caught in the downpour any time we were at Piazza Venezia after dark.  It just dumped on us.  Fortunately, the first thing we did on the trip was stop at Decathlon and buy waterproof hiking shoes.  Coming from Utah, it doesn't rain much.  You might need shoes and boots for snow, but not for rain.  By the end of the week they had gotten their money's worth out of the new shoes.  We saw most of the big things and a few other things as well.  We ate gelato at least daily and tried new restaurants, but there is so much more.

St Peter's square and the Vatican

They were here just in time to see the Christmas lights and decorations going up.  I love the holiday lights.  There are a few trees around town, especially at St Peter's and Piazza Venezia, but the Presepe are the true Italian Christmas decoration.  The Nativity displays show up in every church of course, but also in shop windows and other unexpected places.  This year the main Presepe at the Vatican was from Peru.  It included condors, alpacas, and people in colorful traditional dress of the Andes.  It was lovely.

Piazza Venezia

Landmark lights on Via del Corso

The family was here for My Girl's birthday.  It was a Saturday so we spent the day at the Colosseum and Forum.  We were lucky, the rain stayed away until we were home.  We had the traditional family cake and candles.  It was a true party with guests and everything!

I loved our little tree we bought at IKEA, but it just wasn't meant to be this year.  It died after a couple of days and started dropping needles.  It also triggered annoying allergies for some of the family.  Then it fell over during the night and lost a LOT more needles.  Fortunately, there wasn't any serious damage to my precious ornaments.  I love my glass Vespa and the little ceramic bobbles.  Our new straw ornaments rode out the crash safely.  We took off the ornaments and put the tree outside on the balcony with a couple strings of solar powered lights.  No more allergies.  No more worries about crashes and dropped needles.  We can still see the lights through the window and the neighbors get to enjoy it as well.

With three weeks off school for the kids we had great ideas for this holiday.  The main idea was Christmas markets.  One trip to a place with traditional markets and a trip within Italy to see what has been off limits for so long.  But, we floundered.  Our first choice was Vienna.  With so many restrictions, travel to Austria became unreasonably difficult.  Second choice, Germany.  Then the Christmas markets closed.  We still could have gotten into the country I think, but started looking for a Plan C.  We looked at a lot of options outside of Italy, but decided to stay in Italy instead.  Part of this was because we bought a car!  We found the cheapest non-manual transmission Toyota for sale within a reasonable distance and bought it.  We test drove it and signed a contract in October, the same weekend as the G20 summit.  I remember because the traffic was horrible and the public transport was a mess that weekend.  It was also Halloween that weekend.  They wanted to change the battery and needed time for paperwork, but expected it to be a week or so.  After a month and repeated phone calls with no response we started to get worried.  More phone calls...  Finally, we heard from back in early December.  Great!!  Then it took more time to get the insurance and for the payment to go through.  We spent the rest of the month thinking that it would be just another day or two.  We finally picked up the car on January 7.  The whole thing was disappointing.  We finally had time when John was in town and the kids were off school and we didn't go anywhere or do much.  There was plenty of down time and we did a few of the little things we enjoy.  

My Girl and I went to a few museum exhibits together.  It's fun to have a museum buddy in the family.  We are both learning a lot about art and history.

From Quoyola: Re-coding

We visited the non-Catholic cemetery with its weeping angel monuments and Gothic markers.  The people here are mostly non-Italians who died while in Rome, including famous British poets, Keats and Shelley.  It's not just the British, there are monuments in Greek and Japanese as well.

Happy New Year!

Of course we celebrated the New Year with fireworks.  It was an uncharacteristically foggy night, but we enjoyed our fireworks anyway.

Another trip to a museum, this time to see Gustav Klimt.  I really enjoyed seeing his work and the work of his contemporaries.  It is such a different style than we usually see here in Rome.  Am I getting burned out on Baroque?  It all makes me want to see Vienna.

The first week of January we had more family visitors.  My sister-in-law and her daughter came to celebrate her graduation from college.  It was so good to see them.  We had a great time together.  We showed them some of our favorite places, including the best tacos in Rome.

Near the Pantheon there is a shop where they sell painted shoes and accessories like purses and things.  During the Klimt exhibit there were shoes with Klimt's The Kiss.  This day it was my favorite fountain at Piazza Navona.  They are pretty impressive.