Everyone else was asleep. I had agreed to forage for breakfast. I made myself a coffee (it was pleasant, but not as good from a moka pot as what I could make with my Pavoni at home, and I decided I would have to try their on-site espresso) and set out. The streets were freshly washed, and here and there sweepers were at work. Almost no one was out, except some people "walking" their dogs. (If Rome has a poop-and-scoop law like even Paris seems to have now, it was not evident underfoot.)
Just about everything was closed (it was a little after seven); even the Cafe Settimano was just opening. I walked as far as Viale Trastevere, located the Standa (a department store with a supermarket in the basement) and determined that it was open in the mid-morning and late afternoon. On the way back, I found a somewhat basic pasticceria open, and bought four croissants ("cornetti"); then, checking on a bakery called Panificio La Renella that I'd seen the night before, I found it open, and bought a loaf for N.
Everyone was still asleep; I lay on the comfy couch and read guidebooks for a while. N had heard me come in and got up soon afterwards; we woke the kids about nine. "These croissants are like the ones in Barcelona," A said at breakfast, meaning they were basically bread dough treated croissant-style and weren't properly crisp and flaky. The bread met with more approval.
By the time everyone got changed and sun-screened, it was ten-thirty when we set out. The Rough Guide had told us that Via dei Fori Imperiali was closed to traffic on Sunday from Piazza Venezia to the Colisseum, and I thought it might be a good idea to walk through the Forum without spending too long looking for details (since we were all still acclimatizing). It was sunny and hot; we wore hats, though the kids complained that that made them even hotter.
We walked down through Trastevere along the same streets I had traversed that morning and the night before, though since I had gotten my bearings I could lead everyone in a straightforward fashion. We kept to the shade of buildings wherever possible; there wasn't that much traffic.
We crossed the river by the Ponte Palatino and found ourselves by the Republican temples, the little round one popularly called the Temple of Vesta and the rectangular Temple of Portunus. Despite their being much more complete than most of the structures we were about to see, their air of ruined glory was accentuated by the long grass, broken sidewalks and gravel paths, and windblown trash that surrounded them.
Moving up the Via del Teatro di Marcello in full sun, we saw the impressive arcading of the structure which gave the street its name, having survived by being incorporated into a medieval palazzo. We crossed the street, circling under the Capitoline Hill, until we reached Michelangelo's ramp (the Cordonata) up to the Campidoglio.
We climbed up between the monumental statues of Castor and Pollux and onto the piazza, which was quite effective from ground level -- I had seen aerial photos and was prepared for it to not look as perfect. There were plenty of people around, mostly clinging to the shade by the fountain and the museums. We, too, perched just under the fountain and had a drink of water; the kids wrote in their notebooks while I scouted around the back.
There was a terrace with a view over the Via dei Fori Imperiali, indeed devoid of traffic, though it was so hot that no one was on the road, the sidewalks being slightly cooler. By a short descent, I gained a view over the Forum, just above the arch of Septimius Severus. There was a steady stream of tourists climbing up past me; presumably they were let off their buses at the Colosseum and were being picked up again at the base of the Capitoline. I heard many complaints about the heat.
I went back, retrieved the kids and N, and we made the descent to the Forum. I told them only a little about what we were seeing, since our intention was to come back for a more detailed visit later. We proceeded down the Via Sacra, clambering up to look at the Temple of Vesta, since N had made a model of it in school. Only a short section of circumference remained, and even that was reconstructed.
There were some larger fragments to our left: the portico of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, built into a church, the large barrel vaults of the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius. Beyond that, the terrain and the vegetation constrained us to a narrow and crowded path. Tourists perched in every bit of shade. The kids sat on a rock in the shade of the Arch of Titus and had another drink of water. Then we walked under it and down towards the exit near the Colosseum.
I remember the Forum as being a bitter disappointment in 82. I had no documentation to tell me what I was looking at. The arch of Septimius Severus was completely covered in scaffolding at the time; I entered from the Via dei Fori Imperiali, and spent some time poking around the remains of the Basilica Julia before exiting. I don't remember anything that wasn't lying on the ground, and I remember being more impressed with the monument to Vittorio Emanuele, not realizing until later that it wasn't ancient.
This time, I noticed many more partly-standing buildings or monuments, and had a better sense of what everything was. I suspect the kids mostly saw a bunch of rocks, though, on that first visit.
We could see people moving around on the upper tiers of the Colosseum, horse-drawn carriages circling its base, and people dressed like extras from Ben Hur or Gladiator walking about, presumably to be paid to have their photos taken. Andean music drifted down from the amplifiers of buskers on the Via dei Fori Imperiali, along which we walked back. Halfway back we crossed the still-empty street to look at Trajan's Markets, Trajan's Column, and bits of the Forum of Nerva.
At Piazza Venezia, trapped between Mussolini's balcony and the wedding cake Vittorio Emanuele monument, we crossed back to the left side and continued around the Capitoline hill back to the foot of the Cordonata.
From there it was downhill on the Via del Teatro di Marcello; we crossed over just after the Teatro and took the Ponte Fabriccio onto the Isola Tiberina (the kids didn't realize it was an island at first), on which an outdoor cinema had been set up. Then across the ancient Ponte Cestio (from which we had a view of the ruins of the Ponte Rotto to the east) and back into Trastevere.
We stopped at a restaurant called La Tana di Noantri for lunch, on the recommendation of the City Secrets guidebook. The place was almost empty; both it and the white-shirted waiters felt half a century out of place. Still, it was positively modern after the morning's viewings. Z indulged her tortellini kick by having them con crema di funghi (A shared her portion); N had spaghetti con vongole veraci, and I had gnocchi. The vino bianco della casa was light and cool.
We went back to the apartment; I caught up on my sleep, while the kids practiced violin with N. About six, I asked them if they were interested in walking up to St. Peter's. On being assured that it wasn't far, they agreed. I plotted a route that took us through backstreets to the Piazza, trying to remain faithful to Bernini's original intention of having the colonnade be a surprise after working through nearby streets. I amused the kids along the way by recounting the story of Tosca jumping off the parapets of the Castel Sant'Angelo at the end of the opera, and how various legendary performances had the singer bouncing up several times from the padding below, or followed off the parapet by ill-prepared extras dressed as soldiers.
There were wooden crowd-control fences all over, presumably because of the Sunday appearance of the Pope, but it did detract somewhat from the grandeur of the piazza. We stopped to hand out shoulder coverings to everyone (I had worn long pants), walked up the right-hand side, mounted the steps, walked past the tight security at the door turning people in shorts and spaghetti-straps away, and entered the church.
There weren't many people inside, and we moved easily up the nave. In 82 I had a sense of overwhelming size, but having since seen some stunning interior spaces (notably the French Gothic cathedrals, and the Basilica of Constantine in Trier) I was not overwhelmed this time. We remembered to go look at the Pieta, now behind glass, and difficult to see properly.
There was some sort of service being celebrated behind the grand altar, including a choir of young males who sounded thin and reedy. None of us felt particularly inclined to linger -- "too fancy", said A -- and we moved back and outside. Knowing that much of this cold grandeur was built by dismantling what remained of many temples and monuments in the Forum lowered our opinion of it further.
The sun was very low, and there were plenty of shadows, so we walked back along Mussolini's grand avenue and across the Tiber, then down the bank. The few people we encountered appeared to be Romans rather than tourists. We went as far as Ponte Sisto, and then cut inland to Campo dei Fiori.
Our destination was La Carbonara, the restaurant at the west, allegedly the birthplace of spaghetti carbonara. It wasn't on the menu -- penne carbonara was, but none of us had it. The kids couldn't agree on a pasta dish, so they each had their own: Z had penne all'arrabbiata ("It's spicy," said the waiter; "She can eat very spicy food," I said, and in fact, she didn't consider it spicy at all) and A had bucatini all'amatriciana. N had gnocchi al tartufo nero to start, and I had tagliatelle ai funghi porcini; then she had fior de zucca (zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies and deep-fried) and I had abbacchio (a hunk of roast lamb with potatoes). The food was good, though while we waited between courses, people came by to try to sell us flowers, and two men with a violin and an accordion came by and played cheesy music. N thought A would have done better, though outdoors in a piazza is not the best place to show off violin skills.
The kids were willing to walk for gelato, so we went up to Piazza Navona, and this time we went to the true Tre Scalini, and we all had tartufi (the kids split one). They were slightly smaller than the "fake" ones, but quite different in construction: there were small, thick squares of bittersweet chocolate all around some intense chocolate/cherry ice cream, with a cherry in the centre. It was quite good, though very rich (and we had declined the whipped cream topping!).
It was an easy walk back to the apartment, and we turned in relatively early. The apartment had a laundry sink, and N tried washing clothes by hand (which we used to do in the days before the kids), discovering that it worked fine (we strung a line awkwardly up in the ensuite and hung things to dry on various towel racks and shower rods). This became a standard way of ending the day, as we washed everything we had on (I did the wringing) before going to bed.