After an ear infection diagnosis, and forgetting the all important Ergo, and enduring a temper tantrum on the flight (she was totally bewildered about the new place and why we were not letting her walk around), We reached Rome in the morning and not wanting to repeat our misadventures in Paris, took a cab to our hotel. The hotel was located 2 blocks from ‘Fori di Imperialli’, the main street leading to the Colloseum and the Forum. Our room was ready on arrival and all 3 of us collapsed gratefully. Waking up, we feasted on the Chapathi I’d made from home and decided to go in search of a baby carrier similar to the Ergo.

We used the carseat + gogokidz combination as a stroller and dragged it uphill and downhill – all over the cobblestoned roads. She had a bumpy ride, but seemed to enjoy it. We went down to a store on Via Nationale, but they were out of baby carriers. After I had moaned enough about the loss, we decided to walk down to Trevi fountain. We again dragged the carseat + gogokidz combination uphill and downhill – all over the cobblestoned roads, navigating the map until we found the Trevi fountain.

Trevi Fountain
We knew we were in the vicinity of the fountain, but were startled nevertheless when the small (and cobblestoned) road suddenly opened up into a crowded and noisy piazza. It looked like the entire city was there that night! Having the “stroller”, we were not free to walk around as we pleased. So we took turns at walking down to the fountain. Sudha Parimala, of course enjoyed the fountain and would dive from our arms to wet her hands. Ideally, we would’ve liked to enjoy the fountain more and stayed there longer, but it was just too crowded.

We left the Trevi after a sampling of the tasty gelato and tried to make our way back. Our map lead us the the Victor Emmanuel monument and then … lost us! We had to backtrack our steps quite a few times before we found the correct little road leading to Fori Di Imperialli’. En route to our hotel, I took the opportunity to look down on the ruins of the Forum Romanum and felt goosebumps. I was going to finally explore and walk in Caesar’s Rome the next day. We decided to go to a nearby Indian restaraunt for dinner where met an Australian couple with whom we had an enjoyable discussion on the boxing day cricket match that was being played at Melbourne. But since Sudha Parimala was getting rather too boisterous, decided to bring the food back with us rather than risk her throwing food on the other people at the hotel.

That night was rough – with us feeling sleepy, but Sudha Parimala wanting to explore and play because of the different time zones.