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Italy: Rome, Saturday 3/23/24; and Journey Home, Sunday 3/24/24

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Saturday took an unexpected turn.  At 4:00am, we were woken up by Greta, who'd fallen out of her tiny twin bed and gashed her eyebrow on the corner of her bedside table. Andrew gave her some ice; the bleeding stopped; we decided it was a surface wound and would be fine. In the morning, however, it was very clearly not fine--in the light of day it showed itself to be a deep, terrible gash. I began Googling around for doctors. We decided to go to a pharmacy near our apartment as a first step, to get a pharmacist's opinion (pharmacists in Europe are more doctor-like than they are here). Greta and I were taken into a little room behind the counter, where a lovely pharmacist disinfected the gash, confirmed that it needed professional attention, and directed us to go to a pediatric hospital. The hospital was within walking distance, so we all made the trek--climbing about a thousand steps to reach the hospital. Greta and I went into the ER, presented our passports, and were seen with
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Italy: Rome, Friday 3/22/24

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Beautiful as our apartment is, with its artwork and ceiling murals, the bathroom situation puts this Rome AirBnB into the "unsatisfactory" category. There are two bathrooms but only one shower, and that shower is a tiny, tiny, shallow little tray with a shower curtain around it. My elbow kept hitting the handle, turning off the water; the tray overflowed for Mom and Dad. Alas. Our day began with caffe lattes, cappucino (Greta), and pastries at the Cafe Miami. We had a great day exploring the Roman Forum and Colesseum. We'd gotten advance tickets--a necessity--but there were still a variety of lines to go through to actually get in. Ruins generally aren't my thing, but we all actually loved visiting these sites. A couple of weeks ago I'd found at a library sale a book that shows then-and-now pictures of the Forum and the Colesseum, with transparent overlays that bring pictures of the ruins to life by transforming them into what they must have looked like in their t
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Italy: Rome, Thursday 3/21/24

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We had just a little time in Florence this morning before our checkout and train ride to Rome. We took some pictures in front of the Duomo and Santa Croce, then had another breakfast at Forno Ghibellina. We dragged ourselves and our bags to the train station to catch our train to Rome. We'd chosen seats where four were situated around a table, and the girls and Mom and Dad had a gin tournament on the ride--a tradition they started during a train ride in Portugal last year.  We got two taxis at the Rome train station to take us to our Air BnB. This apartment was gorgeous--murals on the ceilings, artwork everywhere, lots of portraits--but the bathrooms were ancient to the point of being almost unusable. And the beds were very very narrow. This is an important detail, but we won't realize that for another two nights. Famished, we went right away to lunch at a place across from our apartment, Bistrot Navona. We squeezed around a table outside and had: Drinks: glasses of prosecco (m
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