Intro

This web site is about me and my family's trip to Rome between May 25th and June 2nd 2005. It was long time due that I should travel somewhere with my lovely girlfriend Fredrika and my wonderful (almost) ten months old daughter Emilia, and have some time off from working and sitting in front of the computer. Of course, this ended up in me sitting at the computer day and night when we got home to create this web site...

There might be some errors in the text in different places, so I ask for your understanding that this is the experiences and reflections from a tourist. Please send an e-mail to robnyman@gmail.com to let me know of any factual faults. If you want to write a general comment, please do that at the main web site.

Our different excursions and happenings are described below and in the different options in the menu to the right, or go straight to the Immagini section for pictures or the Pellicola section for videos. It should also be noted that the Lonely Planet - Rome book was a life-saver on this trip.

I guess everyone have their own specialty...

We got to Arlanda, the airport in Stockholm, at the ghastly time of 06.00 and checked in with all our luggage, stroller, travel bed for Emilia and all sorts of bags. When it was time, we went to the gate handed over our tickets to a woman. One of our tickets didn't go through their machine, so she handed it over to a guy whose single job was to tear the small part off, and he then gave it back to us. Swedish efficiency. I guess everyone have their own specialty...

Picture of Emilia in the air plane

Before we left we were naturally nervous about flying with Emilia, since she's just a baby and it was her first time flying. But things went great and she even slept and didn't wake up when our first flight landed! The first flight was to Copenhagen, where we would have to wait some hours and then take a connecting flight to Rome. Since I had my Diner's Club card, we were able to go into the business lounge. That was really an entertaining experience! It was about 8 in the morning when we got there and it was full of scared business men and us and Emilia. Emilia threw off some high pitch screams with other assorted sounds. I can just imagine one of them trying to make a business call with his cell phone:

-Johnson, where the hell are you?
-Uh, in the airport..
-Yeah sure, I can hear the kindergarten in the background, ok?!

We arrived in Rome, and after customs and getting our luggage, we eventually found our driver, Luca, and walked to his car in the 29º Celsius heat. He got us to our hotel, Albergo della Lunetta, where he got too much in tip and took off. The hotel is located in the Piazza Paradiso, just a block from Campo di Fiori, and the reason we chose it is that it's basically in the centre of everything in Rome. Walk west and you have the Vatican, walk east and you have Colosseum (and so on, you get the drift). For some reason, someone had written his tag, "Gollum", on a wall next to the piazza.

Our room was located on the third floor, nine(!) flights of stairs up. I'm telling you, nine stairs does not take you to only the third floor...
But it didn't matter, it gave us exercise. Besides, it was in room 307 that Emilia took one of her first steps and also where she almost managed to climb her travel bed!

I used to trick Fredrika so we just "happened" to walk by Pantheon.

Picture of a view of the Pantheon

After we had gotten settled in the hotel, we got out for a walk. Since a lot of the streets in Rome consist of cobblestone, we had a hard time trying to navigate with Emilia's stroller, but after a couple of days we had got used to it. First, we walked by Piazza Navona, and then strolled by Bernini's Elfantino statue before we got to the amazing Pantheon. Pantheon is truly an extraordinary building/place and you can't help feeling an aura of power when you see it. General Marcus Agrippa first built a temple at this location at 27 BC and then Hadrian constructed the current version around 120 AD. In the upcoming days, since I was our map navigator, I used to trick Fredrika so we just "happened" to walk by Pantheon. And once there, of course we had to stay and feel the tingling atmosphere for a while...

After seeing all these places, we walked by someone with an IKEA bag. Fredrika then uttered the word that neither Piazza Navona, Elefantino or Pantheon could pull out of her: -wow!