A Scrap of Life

Happy Leap Day! In Rome, one of the only English stations we could find on our hotel tv was CNN and it was doom and gloom about the Coronavirus. Then we get an email from the state department yesterday requesting no non-essential travel to Italy. By now, Brian and I were just ready to go. And then we walked outside to meet our car this morning and came upon a huge x in the sky right outside. If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is. About half our day today was spent in transportation. We had quite a jump to make, going all the way from Rome to our next stop - Dublin, Ireland. Once we arrived and got through security we grabbed a taxi into town. Our driver was quite the introduction to Ireland. Every other word was the f-word or “shite”. He wanted to go over our plans and make sure we weren’t wasting money at the Temple Bar or going to the Guinness storehouse. It was pretty funny. A terrible storm has hit the area and our original plan today was to take a walking tour around town but...

Our last day in Rome started with crossing off another item from Brian’s bucket list - visiting the Colosseum. We had early tickets, just after opening time, and were so thankful we did. We got in while it was fairly quiet and had a chance to really look around. It’s a lot smaller than we imagined it would be (the floor is smaller than a football field) but we loved seeing where the elevators would have been and learning more from our Rick Steves audio tour. We spent a good hour or more here and Brian was wowed the whole time.  Next up was the nearby Roman forum had some great ruins and neat columns. You can really imagine what it looked like as a bustling part of early Rome.  One of Brian’s favorite parts was seeing the place where Caesar was burned. We walked up to Palatine Hill next and got some great views of the forum.  Then we walked the long way around to get out. We sauntered back towards our hotel and, as usual, had to stop at some churches on the way back. O...