Rome – October 11, 2023 – Walking Tours of Rome today!

Planned Activities: Jewish Ghetto and Trastevere Tour / Moonlight Rome Walking Tour

Lovely jet lag – bed at 8pm, exhausted and you would THINK that alone would allow me to sleep through the night along with my mind at ease due to a plan with Liz to make sure I am awake by 8am and what time do I get up?  It’s 3am!  So I optimized my luggage and repacked my hand luggage.  Good, time for rest before breakfast which starts at 7am.  Nothing like European breakfasts – 7am to 10am – my style (that is the 10am part)!

Liz I found out is also up early too, so at 7am we encounter the breakfast room and quickly find the gluten free items – very cool – what I remember from last year in Italy!  Liz meanwhile broke the coffee machine by spraying milk everywhere (but she did clean it up like a good Canadian) and we ate some of the buffet items of cold cuts, cheese, yogurt, fruit and a GF item or two along with making sandwiches with the really awesome GF breads that I like here called NutriFree.  They have 3 types of GF 2 slice packages of bread – I like the multigrain one – they make excellent sandwiches which you can eat without liquids to wash them down!  🙂

Off we went to find our way from the hotel to the meeting point at the Piazza Venezia to start our walking tour of the Jewish Ghetto and Trastevere and to finally meet up with Anne and Richard.  Luckily we are only about 6 blocks downhill through a park from the coliseum and once we were there, I remembered the way around and to the Piazza Venezia.  Oh wait!  SO MUCH construction has hampered my visual cues!  Had to refer to my phone a couple of times and we did make it to near where we needed to be.  NOTE: Crossing streets with tons of traffic in Rome – do not hesitate AND if a person has a walker, it is Liz’s theory is let them go first to stop the traffic! She refers to me as the “plow” going through traffic (and people) and she just follows right behind! 

After walking around a bit, we asked the local men in blue (police) who were standing around having a coffee and they told us to go to the other side of the piazza – that is where the church meeting point was.  So off we went to cross another big and busy street and the policeman came running after us and said we were actually in the right spot!  So where were Anne and Richard then?  They were across the street in the park beside the palace which is at the end of Piazza Venezia! We finally figured out how to meet up using the statues on top of the Palace at the end of the Piazza as a waypoint.  Finally we meet up!  We had actually ended up at different convent hotels that have very similar names…

Tour of Jewish Ghetto and Trastevere – off we go walking!  We went back to near the Roman Ruins and down by a theatre that was new to me and listened about how the people of Jewish ancestry had this “district” in Rome many, many eons ago.  It was fascinating!  We saw arches, stores, bumpy streets, and the synagogue – which was funny as Andrew and I had ended up at this same synagogue when out walking on my yarn store mission last time we were in Rome.  However I was not pulled in the direction of the yarn store this time!  Then we walked into Trastevere and I started feeling a big faint.  I thought my blood sugar was acting up but I only had one sensor for my arm and I wanted to wear it during the tour so I quickly tested and sure enough it had tanked.  So emergency Coca Cola purchase to the rescue and a 10-minute wait for the sugar level to rise a bit and I was ready to go!  But at that time, the tour ended at a beautiful church in a piazza!  Anne, Liz and Richard went to visit the church while I hung out taking pictures and researching a restaurant we wanted to go to for lunch – everyone was getting peckish! 

I had known from research that there was an awesome restaurant called Mama Eats in Trastevere and so I looked it up and some angel must have been looking down on us as it was 2 blocks (which are tiny) away down a lane/narrow street.  We were there in a flash and what an awesome experience!  To have 15 pizzas, pastas or salads you can order that are already gluten free or can easily be prepared GF – no problem, no extra cost, is downright amazing.  Two people had pizza and two of us had salads.  Awesome meal sitting outside in the heat, while the trucks and cars that ply the little streets of Rome drove by!

Anne and Richard wanted to explore other areas of Rome, so Liz and I were going to walk back to the hotel which was about a 3km walk and I was aware of the route as Andrew and I had gone that way previously.  So we walked to an intersection that I was aware of (my ONLY bus ride in Rome previously) and as I felt I was hitting a wall, Liz and I split after studying my Google Map online, and I took a cab back to the hotel.  Liz arrived a few hours later having taking a few “long” ways around but got back safe and sound nevertheless!  As we had sandwiches from breakfast we stayed in and were not able to join Anne and Richard for dinner which was too bad but the next day was the start of the tour and I wanted to be in top shape to start!  So off to bed early for me!

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