Itinerary

Day 7 – Today, enjoy the free day at leisure to explore the city on your own. Dinner at a local restaurant. Overnight will be at your hotel.

Leisure Time

Today we decided to go all-in on the “at leisure” part of our day with no planned activities other than tonight’s group dinner.

We slept in but still made it to breakfast (along with many others in our group) before the bountiful buffet closed. Our bus was going to run as a shuttle around 9:30 to one of the main squares for those that wanted to go shopping and/or further exploration of the area with a return pick-up mid-afternoon. With two more full excursion days ahead of us, Dave and I determined that we’d rather pursue a rest day today after all the go-go-go of the trip so far.

So, we spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon reading, resting, and I got the initial itinerary post (Note 118) published. Then I worked on the writing the next several posts for Assisi, Florence, and Pisa. At that point it was time to start loading all our pictures into my Adobe Lightroom program on my computer for review, editing and selection. That’s when things really bogged down as the hotel’s internet connection was v-e-r-y slow – at least for attempting this activity – and I didn’t get any more posts published until after we returned. And, as you may have noticed – I’m still trying to finish over a month later – so much for being timely!

Anyway, in early afternoon, we decided to go explore the neighborhood around the hotel and find some lunch and gelato. As I mentioned previously, our hotel is only a block away from the walls of the Vatican with St. Peter’s dome rising above. And, yes, there is a Burger King just outside the walls!

As we’d already been there – we turned the opposite direction and spotted a couple of cafes and gelato places, plus the restaurant for tonight’s group dinner. We did a walk-by and checked them out as we continued down the street until it turned more residential. We turned around to go back to one of the gelato stores which was very busy when we passed earlier. As we were walking by an extremely crowded pizzeria, all outside sidewalk tables were full and we could see it was jam-packed inside too, we commented that it must be really good as it appeared to be more locals eating there than tourists. The waiter on the sidewalk held up two fingers and motioned for us to follow him inside – which we did although we couldn’t see any open seating!

All the tables for two were only maybe one-two inches from the next table in groups of four. We were initially seated and had placed our order when they came and asked us to relocate to a different table group so they could use the group of tables where we were for a party of 8! No problem. Several of the grouped tables had multi-generational families seated – a typical Italian Sunday gathering!  

We ended up sitting next to an older couple from the Netherlands – who were surprised when I guessed where they were from until I explained that I had worked for Shell and had made several trips there and had many colleagues there. On the other side of us – with an empty table between – were also two young women who had been relocated – they were college students from the University of Michigan travelling Italy on their Spring Break.

We were so engaged in conversations with both sets of diners that I forgot to take any pictures of our wonderful pizzas – we should have split one – but we each wanted something different. Then they brought us complimentary tiramisu, and we realized gelato wasn’t going to happen now! They also offered limoncello which we turned down. But we encouraged the college students to give the limoncello a try (when in Rome after all!) and enjoyed watching the faces they made! You either love it or hate it!

We finally got our bill – after repeatedly asking politely in Italian (il conto, per favore) and English! The Netherlands couple were also getting a little frustrated about it – at first, I thought the waiter was just joking with them when not bringing it, but they had to keep asking as well. Really not sure what the issue was there, but since we didn’t need to be anywhere any time soon, it wasn’t too big of a deal. All-in-all it was a wonderful, unexpected experience and great way to spend a lazy afternoon, but I was rather bummed to miss out on the gelato that I had anticipated!

The restaurant for the group dinner was almost next door to where we’d eaten lunch, so thankfully, a very short walk this evening.

After a restful night, we should be fully ready for our day trip to Pompeii tomorrow!