Rome: exploring = Lost

The first full day that we were in Rome, Doug was at his conference from 8 am until 8 pm. This meant that I had to do some exploring on my own. I have NO sense of direction. I told Doug that I should just stay in the hotel, but he insisted that I go an explore and that I would be fine. Reluctant as I was to actually go, there was no way I could stay in the hotel room with Ella for 12 straight hours! So after a later breakfast we headed out.

Ella was in high spirits and it was an absolutely gorgeous day. Me (with my lack of direction) made my first mistake by taking a left out of the hotel instead of a right!!  The hotel where we stayed gave us a little map with mostly the top tourist places to visit.  Throughout the day, I don't know how, I seemed to wander my way OFF the map!! I had no idea where I was or how to even get back to our hotel. I tried to stay calm and enjoy the sights, but I have to admit I was terrified I might not make it back to our hotel. Ella and I spent 4.....yes 4 hours, just wandering all over in hopes of actually coming to a street I could find on my little map. When I finally came to a bus stop that had the "you are here" on the map, I was able to use that map, along with my little touristy one to head in the direction I needed to in order to actually get back to our hotel.

Along my lost adventure I really got to see a different side of Rome than the sights where Doug and I went together. Like I said, I took a left out of our hotel. This took me North and East of our hotel. The major city and tourist attractions were South and West.  Here's a little of what mine and Ella's adventure looked like:

Small skinny rows of buildings:

Drinking Fountains: They have fountains like this all over. Apparently you can drink straight from the fountain because Rome has the best water in Italy due to the fact that it has a high quality of calcium. It just didn't look appealing though.

Laundry out to dry:

this was almost of the top floor of a large apartment building; cute little baby clothes

I don't know if anyone actually lives here or not. It looked like a run down apartment building. You could see furniture inside and some of the windows were missing. It felt like the scene of a movie. 

can you see the little kitty?

By now it was almost lunch time. Thankfully I had packed us some lunch. I stumbled upon this hilly woody area, even though we were in what seemed like a smaller city. I decided, what the heck, I'm already completely lost, lets see what it is! There turned out to be a library building at the top of the hill, secluded by all the trees and walking paths. There were benches and even a small playground......JACKPOT!! This gave Ella a break from the stroller. We don't have any baby swings in Holland so she absolutely LOVED the swings! This tired her out enough that the remaining two hours it took me to find our way back let her take an afternoon nap.

 

A few more buildings that I decided to snap photos of:

And finally, I noticed through the locked gates of another apartment building, that their front gardens had orange trees. Later in the week Doug and I walked down a street where both sides were also lined with orange trees.

I promise the next Rome posts will have more of an explanation since I knew where we were and what we were looking at (thanks to my navigator DOUG).