Italy in Three Posts: ROMA

This is the door to our apartment building in Rome. Cool, huh? We stayed in an area called Campo di Fiori, which means "field of flowers." It was a perfect place for us--central to everything (including Abby's several times a day visit to Blue Ice for gelato) and in a true neighborhood.

This is the view from our apartment.

A picture of the daily market just steps from our apartment. Each morning, we would walk to a pastry shop for treats, a coffee bar for cappucino and the market for fresh fruit. Ah, Italia!

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The colosseum....we took a tour. It was amazing to "see" the history and the context of the times in early Rome.

"The Howletts 4" (but not for long!)

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The famous Trevi Fountain

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Drum roll, please....

And now, for the best part of the trip (according to the girls):

There was an actual cat sanctuary a couple of blocks from our apartment. In the ruins where Julius Caesar was murdered! The ruins are sunk down about 20 feet from the current street level. In the ruins, and the adjoining cat care center, there are about 250 cats! Most of them are street cats, but the sanctuary takes them in, sterilizes them, feeds them and gives them medical care. They are free to roam in and out of the ruins and the care center. The cats could leave the sanctuary, but they don't! It became our evening routine to walk to the ruins and count cats.

Very deep? Not so much. Very Howlett-esque? Absolutely.

(By the way, most evenings we would count eighty or more cats.)

The ruins...

If you look closely, you can probably see some cats!

Several of the girls' souvenirs came from the gift shop here (proceeds support the sanctuary), including very-cool "gatti di Roma" t-shirts that show the cats among the ruins.