Our Life In Lausanne: A weekend in the Eternal City!

A few weeks ago while Kevin's brother and his girlfriend were visiting, we packed up the kids and headed to Rome for the weekend.

Ah Rome, you dirty, hot, bustling metropolis--they're really not messing around with the nickname Eternal City. This place and it's cities built upon cities is mind blowing. We felt especially lucky to get to experience it with an architect. I bombarded Brad with questions about arches and columns and structures as we toured around and we learned so much.

We lucked out and found an apartment near the Colosseum which proved to be a great home base for exploring the city. We walked through the Roman Forum marveling at the ruins and structures wishing we had a time machine to bring us back to 800BC when the forum was in it's infancy.

The kids, especially Quinn, loved the Colosseum. He loved talking about the gladiators and fights with lions and bears. We even learned that they used to flood the stadium floor and set up mock naval battles! What!?! Mind blowing.

While waiting around for the adults to finish gawking, Quinn and Anna took up their natural position and staged their own epic battles with their toy diggers.

As always we picked out a few good spots for dinner and, as always, Italy never disappoints!

This place called Gusto was delicious and even had a little cheese shop inside where you can take home a little midnight snack if you want to.

Unfortunately there are no food pictures. As you can see, I've licked my plate clean, it was that good. You'll just have to trust me on this one.

By far the highlight of my trip was going through the Vatican museum and seeing the Sistine chapel. I've been once before as a teenager and as I've been reading about the life of Michelangelo lately I really wanted to get another peek at the chapel. But first Anna needed a nap..

The kids were SERIOUS troopers and fought the crowds like champs. Quinn really liked the map room with all the maps of Italy. He told us that he wants to be a map maker when he grows up.

The museum also offered a kids audio guide that both kids really liked. It went through some of the major works and told a few kid friendly facts about each piece. The Chapel was really neat and we lucked out and scored some seats along a side wall. It was incredible to sit and take in the amazing frescos covering the walls and ceiling. Kevin and I even spotted Michelangelo's self portrait!

After a morning at the Vatican, we needed to stretch our legs so we headed to the Villa Borghese Gardens for the afternoon at the park.

They have the neatest little lake with row boats to rent and the kids loved trying to paddle the grown-ups around. Fortunately they didn't hit any of the other boaters.

Unfortunately, I had two minor boat collisions... Well, actually I just hit the same boat twice.. oops.

After the our little boat ride we tested the gelato and it was approved by all.

Nothing beats a nice cold gelato in the park!

After our sweet treat, the kids pretended to be statues and we headed out to catch some more sights on the way to dinner.

We walked to Trevi Fountain and Kevin tossed a coin in to assure our return to the Eternal City! We even got a nice guy to take our family picture...As you can see, the kids were impressed and, as always, camera ready.

After a long day of exploring we enjoyed a late roman dinner. Then headed home where we were surprised to see that the corner flower shop outside our window was open 24 hours a day!

Rome is such a great city to explore with kids! While there are tons of museums to tour, there are also so many neat historic sights, buildings, fountains and parks to see.