![\"DSC00015\"](\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/DSC00015.jpg\")
<\/a>The gang in St. Peter’s Square<\/p><\/div>\n
Our hotel was located right across the street from the Vatican museums. We could see the tops of the buildings from our windows and we could look down on the lines each day to get into the museums.\u00a0 We had tickets for the museum later on in the visit.<\/p>\n
Castel Sant’Angelo<\/p><\/div>\n After a bit we went on, walking down toward the river. We passed Castel Sant\u2019Angelo, an enormous fortress that sits next to the river, crossed the Tiber and went on into the old part of Rome. We mosied through a number of narrow back streets lined with small shops and restaurants, enjoying it all immensely until a shower blew up. We got pretty wet, but since the temperature was quite hot before it, the drenching wasn\u2019t as unwelcome as it could\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n Still, it was time for supper and we ducked into a small restaurant serving pizza, salads and sandwiches. Had our first pizzas and glasses of wine in Italy, though neither were particularly distinguished. After that we headed back to the hotel for showers and sleep. All in all, it was a good introduction to the city and set the stage for much of the trip in a couple of ways.<\/p>\n It would stay very hot for our entire trip. Rome (and in fact most of Europe) has been suffering through a heat wave. Every day saw highs soar into the upper 90\u2019s and it hit the 100 mark a couple of times.\u00a0 And we walked and walked, taking care to drink plenty of water and make lots of stops to cool off.<\/p>\n We arrived in Rome at just after mid-day.\u00a0 Our son Joe, daughter-in-law, Steph, and 14-month-old grand-daughter Freya had arrived an hour or so before we did. They found the driver of the car I\u2019d hired to take us to the …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[32,26,27,31,12,25],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-castel-santangelo","tag-italy","tag-rome","tag-st-peters","tag-travel","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1043,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>But right then we just wanted to explore, so we walked along the Vatican wall until we got to St. Peter\u2019s Square.\u00a0 Stopped to gawk at it for a bit.\u00a0 The curving rows of columns topped by statues that sat in front of the colossal church of St. Peter\u2019s is well worth more than one gawk.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"