Rome-in around We are back from 4 days in Rome and what we gained in teeth we lost in sleep and topiary. I obviously lost a few marbles also.

We were finding it hard to get very excited about our trip to Rome. The fact that we had booked our honeymoon flights a few days before didn’t help. Then on Thursday afternoon I got a telephone call from the creche: Garman has a temperature can I come and collect him? He perked up in the afternoon so much so that I left the GP’s clinic without staying for our appointment. I knew he would just say that Garman was teething.
Our flight was at 7.30 Friday morning and our son who normally sleeps like a log had a most fitful night sleep. He had a sick stomach (many apologies to the nice taxi man with the lovely Merc) and his face was all swollen. He was not well at all.
We arrived in Rome early on Friday, went straight to the hotel and put Garman to bed. Although he perked up a bit again it lashed rain all afternoon and as his coat was dirty from the incident in the taxi we couldn’t venture abroad too far. We ended up eating Chinese on our first night in Rome! It was the only restaurant near the hotel and even though there was a restaurant in the hotel it was a rip off for poor quality food. The Chinese was very nice and Garman was well behaved and made new friends for us. This family were there with a daughter a little older than Garman. Both the parents were deaf but I was really confused as to whether they would understand that we didn’t understand them because they were speaking Italian. But we explained eventually and the father told us that he was coming to Ireland in a fortnight. I think.
On Saturday we went to the Colosseum which was amazing. Garman became very unwell. I actually got a real fright at one point because he was so pale and so still. Horrible. We brought him back to the hotel and he slept for 20 hours and woke up with not a bother on him. So on Sunday we took it really easy and went to St. Peter’s square and sat outside a caf� in Campo di Fiori where Garman could keep an eye on all the woof woofs and beep beeps. We also managed to finally get some decent coffee, ice cream and dinner at last on Sunday.
We went to this great restaurant in Trastevere in the evening. The food was great: there was a big buffet of all kinds of antipasti. You could watch the chef grill all the meat and the staff were just brilliant. One of the waiters, every time he went past, he chucked Garman under the chin so that by the end of the evening every time he as heading our way Garman would lift up his chin in preparation! Garman had the whole place charmed of course and we felt like celebrities when we were leaving, everyone waving and smiling at us. Mind you if we had been celebrities there would have been a car waiting outside; instead we had to walk halfway across Rome to find a taxi. Is it true that you cannot flag a taxi in Rome? Well even if it isn’t there were none to flag. I’ll post some of the many photos as soon as they are developed. Actually I can’t wait to get them developed.
It was great to see where all that marble from exciting Carrara ended up. For those of you who didn’t know me in my pre-blog days we once spent a fortnight’s holiday in a town called Carrara which is where a lot of that beautiful creamy Italian marble comes from. When we ended our fortnight in Rome, visiting my cousins, all their friends kept saying to us “Carrara? Perch� Carrara?” the same way you or I might say “Moate? Why Moate?” We tried to stick up for Carrara: it was handy for Pisa and Florence and best of all the Cinque Terre. My parents went there on their holidays 2 years later and thoroughly enjoyed. No offence to my darling parents but nuff said.

Top this So when we finally arrived home and never so glad to see it somebody had hacked off our ornamental pine (see on the left/ bottom of this photo). Although we were not particularly attached to said plant and we were quite likely to get rid of it in an attempt to create enough space so that we can open the doors on both sides of the car, it was our piece of topiary and now it is no more. In fact it is nowhere to be seen.