Rome, Italy

For Easter break we headed to Rome, Italy. We arrived the day before Easter and left the day the Pope died. Without the large numbers of news cameras focused on St Peter's Basilica I'm not sure we would have known the Pope was even ill again. Our apartment (that we found on VRBO.com - great resource for traveling anywhere) was right in the heart of Rome. It also was far more luxurious than we needed but worth it for a weeks stay with the kids. Each day we could just walk out and head in a different direction to see the sights without worry about public transportation at all.

The trip exceeded my expectations. The weather was great almost the whole week. We also are getting pretty good at knowing how to keep the kids happy during sightseeing trips. Italy is the perfect place to go with kids for food, at least our kids anyway. Everyday they had pizza for lunch and pasta for dinner and gelato (ice cream) for snack. They couldn’t have been happier with the food choices.

At the end of the week we had each of the kids pick out a 5x7 watercolor painting from a street vendor as their souvenir. Amazingly enough each of them named specific sights they wanted as a souvenir, like the Coloseum or the Pantheon or Trevi Fountain. They actually paid attention during the week!