Friends, Romans, Countrymen…

 Over 3000 years ago, on the sight of 7 hills, the ancient city of Rome began, morphing into a superpower that took the world by storm.  Even today, the Eternal City oozes strength as every stone and ruin shares a story of its past.  With our love of history, Italian food, and Rome itself, Ken and I took a weekend break to visit this city that always captures our hearts and imaginations.  We ventured through the familiar sights of the Colosseum, the Forum, St. Peter’s at the Vatican and the Pantheon.  We then made our way to several new places including La Bocca della Verità or the Mouth of Truth. 

 

This stone face, which supposedly bites off the hand of a liar, begs tourists to tempt fate and insert their hand…which, of course, we did (you might recognize it from Audrey Hepburn’s  ‘Roman Holiday’).  Guess crossing my fingers all of these years has paid off…whew!   We stuffed ourselves with so much crispy crusted pizza and traditionally cooked pasta that we considered changing our names to Margherita and Linguini.  Of course, that didn’t stop us from finding the local gelateria where Ken gave top marks to the mint chocolate chip.

As we sat in the Rome airport discussing the highlights of our trip and reminiscing on past trips to this historical city including one that I took with my parents two months before my dad ‘s death, we notice a huge billboard size picture of a bright red cardinal, his wings outspread.   As this was dad’s favorite bird, it seemed fitting to see this giant photo while sharing special memories of dad in Rome, especially since the day we saw this cardinal was the anniversary of dad’s death.  I love those little eternal reminders that those we hold dear to us are still very close to our hearts, in more ways than one!