Tuesday July 26th

Tuesday July 26th

No alarm this morning. We all slept in til 930am. What? Apparently we needed it.
We got dressed and out the door at the crack of 1030. Yay us.

We headed east across the river and found a sandwich spot for lunch in a little hole on the wall diner run by a 25 year old gal who'd never spoken a word of English her entire life. We muddled through the poorest attempt at Italian in the history of mankind and English that sounded like Graham Greene and "dumb bear - Dunbar " scene to much laughter by both of us! Fun way to start the day!
We headed over to Piazza Navonna but this time early in the day when hundreds of tables were setup for a marketplace. It was madness! We bought some somewhat fresh fruit and toured some shops, bought a couple hats after haggling from 20 Euros down to 10 - change ching!
What I haven't mentioned yet this trip is the incredible heat and humidity we aren't used to being from Calgary. 
It is easily 30 degrees by 9 am and add on crazy humidity and by noon it's killer. From 10-6 is crazy warm and then the evenings smarten up a bit.
We drudged along all day and wandered into piazza after piazza and church after church and found something new everywhere we went. 
We went up the hill to the crypts which turned out to be a bit of a bust so we changed gears and hiked a mile up the hill to the richness of the Borghese family.  They own acres and acres of land in North Rome and we went to see their palace and museum. 
We rented an electric assist 4 seater pedal bike and boy was it awesome! 20 Euros an hour and we covered 3km of the estate in no time flat. It had a specific speed going uphill buy downhill would go superfast as there was no limiter on it. Krista screamed everything we went downhill! We were rocketing past others and the boys had a blast. I swear it was the most fun thing yet and Nicholas didn't complain for a whole hour for the first time in a year. :)
The downside was that my Calgary Flames hat fell out of the basket somewhere in my travels. ; (
Ah well. Time to wear my Italia 1816 hat.
We marched down the hill across some switchbacks to yet another gargantuan piazza with a spire a fountain and a beautiful 500 year old church. They're absolutely everywhere.
We grabbed a gelato and spent another hour walking past castles on the river before grabbing the boys a hot dog and pop and dropping them off at home so they could have some Internet time.
Krista and I walked into the heart of Trasteverre one last time and after perusing 20 different restaurants, we settled on La Marra, the one the owner had been begging us to try all week as we walked past him twice a day.
We had a delicious antipasta of mashed olives on bread to start. Krista had veal and I had a phenomenal pasta with ham peas mushrooms in a cream sauce that was to die for.  We had a shot of Lemoncello liqueur for dessert and I now completely know why Italians have so many children. Wow - what a kick!
We wandered home at midnight to find the boys unconscious so we charged up their phones and put our clean laundry out to dry. Up early tomorrow for our first train ride!!!