Tramjazz

Thursday, January 30, 2014

After yesterday's day long visit to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, yours truly needed a day of recuperation.  One of my hips, the "Dechief" one, was protesting loudly because of all the stairs it was made to negotiate, as well as the museum shuffle that it had to endure.  So I spent my day with my legs up, taking a long hot shower and napping periodically.

Bill when out for a stroll around the city, while Rheaume and Cheryl set off on their own to see what they could find.  The weather was co-operating somewhat, with intermittent wind and rain, but Cheryl and Rheaume have learned that this is the time to make your way into a church or other large building to explore. There are no indoor malls to be found in Rome!  They had their own bus woes today as what should have been about a 20 minute ride, took over an hour.  Later we found out that there had been a protest march along their bus route that had caused the delays for them.

Everyone then came home and had a rest because we were booked to take a Tramjazz dinner tour of the city later in the evening.  We walked down to the meeting point abut a kilometer from the apartment, where at 9 o'clock we joined about 36 other people on a older model tram car for supper.  The tram car travelled around the city for the next 3 hours.  We had a 3 piece band that entertained us with Brazilian jazz, during that time.  In my opinion the food was not as good as we had last time, a little bit bland and not very hot (but that isn't unusual for food her - they seem to like much of their food tepid).  The food wasn't bad it just was not memorable.  The meatballs which were served as part of the main course were the greatest disappointment to me.  They were tough and on the dry side.  Typically Italian meatballs are these morsels of soft, tender deliciousness that almost melt in your mouth.  That being said, liberal amounts of wine were offered and consumed, kind of mitigated any concerns.

I didn't get many good pictures because of the time of day and low lighting and movement on the tram, but here are three.

Our starting point, one of the ancient gates of the city - Porta Maggiori

First of many glasses of wine this evening

Brazilian trio performing jazz

No buses were running to our place when we got off the tram after midnight, but the weather was beautiful, so we walked or way home.  Our latest night in Rome so far.