In keeping with the tradition of adventure, Sarah and I went on a big trip for Christmas and New Years!

This year, we met up with Sarah’s family in Italy, traveling to Rome and Florence; not quite a perfect midpoint for everyone, but it was close enough. And, also, you know. Rome. Florence. Amazing!

Please forgive me for some of these being a bit out of order… the posts are organized somewhat chronologically… but also organized by theme and location.  Some may not be exactly in chronological order, so for reference please see the initial summary post, which has a complete day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the adventure.

 

Monday, 25-Dec-2017

A quick aside from the previous day’s adventure: after our Christmas Day lunch, I was feeling a bit more restless than the rest of the group. So as to not stress everyone out by pacing around the living room, I picked out a random destination from some interesting historic sites in Rome, and headed out.

My target was the Drusian Arch – one of the oldest known arches in Rome, who’s history has been lost to time. It’s also called the “Arch of Drusus”, though history doesn’t show any connections between this arch, and the Roman commander named Drusus.

 

Either way, it was a fairly short walk (maybe 5 miles total) from where we were staying, and seemed as good a destination as any for my quick constitutional.

It turned out to be a truly lovely walk – I passed the Forum and the Colosseum on the way, and traipsed through some really interesting little gardens and squares as I went. That’s what I enjoy most about European cities; the fact that they’re steeped in so much history, and that every little square has something neat about it. “Ohh, this is named after Georgius Ponteius, he invented the number eight”, or something similarly ridiculous and cool.

That’s… that’s really it. I walked to the arch, took a few pictures, and then looped back to the house. The arch itself was… smaller, I think? Yeah, smaller than I expected. I didn’t expect anything huge, of course, but this was surprisingly less intimidating than I’d expected. That may have been caused by the fact that a road went through the arch too – a literal “I’m driving home from work today” one-way street.

That’s Europe, though. “Ahh, walking home from work. Almost there, just have to pass this unfathomably ancient piece of history, then I’ll take a left onto the next street.”