Gallery Borghese

 Here is a museum that I have never been to and I’m excited about seeing some of the works in it, but it’s starting to rain as we walk there and I’m hoping that we get there before it pours.  As we reach the museum, I see another mother coming out with the same 

Bernini's David

 stroller and ask her if she was allowed to take it in and she said that absolutely everything had to be checked.  Even my tiny little purse that can’t hold anything but Euros and a credit card, and most definitely wouldn’t accidentally knock into a piece of art, so I’m a little put out.

Pauline Napoleon as Venus

  I go to stand in line with the stroller to check it and realize that there is also a line for the bathroom. I put a student on the line with the stroller and go wait in a stifling hot line to get into the bathroom, but have to jump out to help with the stroller and throw my purse on top of the diaper bag in this bin that is 

Oscar likes flesh and blood women better

 wide open.  So, I have all my worldly goods sitting in this open bin and now I’m really pissed because John and Rachel neglect to tell me that this is the Ferris bin and is our group and locked after us.  I’m still a little irritated at not having access to diapers if I need them and 

the most dressed up assassin I've ever seen

 having to go wait in line again for the bathroom, but we make it into the museum with a couple of fruit snacks to keep Oscar quiet for a time period.  He also gets held by some of the students which calms him and then we let him walk up the stairs to the second floor, so we

get to see the museum with a minimally fussy child.  This place is the Borghese family villa and is chock a block full of incredible statues, paintings, ceilings, floors, fireplaces, and walls.  There is not an inch of the place that is not decorated and I would imagine that living there would give one a 

this is the ceiling

 migraine.  I wanted to ask where the white, calm, meditation room would be, but Rachel pointed out that the grounds of the villa that is now a huge park would have been the serenity place.  I think that I would still need a little bit of quiet in this house which was bursting with color, pattern, and gilt.  After spending the evening in the museum and having them close the café and the museum shop on us, while we waited out a

how did Canova make stone look so soft?

 severe downpour, we only got slightly wet on the way back to the hotel.  The students scattered and we wandered until it was time to eat.  Rachel and John now think that I have some ability to find good restaurants, but I feel that I only find things out of desperation,

  so I’m not sure that I have the nose that they think I do, but I pick a tiny place on a side street and they get a high chair for Oscar, fix us a great antipasti plate and we have a good dinner.  I’ve been amazed how easy it has been to get high chairs, straws, other little things for Oscar everywhere we go.  

this is a fireplace

We have not had to break out his spoons, his little tent for sleeping in or anything else really besides the stroller.  So, Italy has been more baby friendly than I had thought it would be, except sidewalks big enough to run the stroller up, which you can’t blame them

 that there town is so ancient that people didn’t have these problems to begin with.  Rome hasn’t had a Haussmann to redo it’s streets like Paris did.  On the way back to the hotel, Rachel and I stop at a store that has Oscar’s packets of food and I get some lotion too because I dry out so fast in the sun and have learned that the place that you get sunburned pushing a stroller is your forearms.  Never thought of that and didn’t put much sunscreen there, and am paying for it.  Think about driving with your arms at 10 and 2 and not having UV protection on your windshield.  It doesn’t take long for those arms to soak it up and turn red and with my sun allergy it’s doubly bad.  We head to bed again really late, which takes a toll on Oscar, me and John.  John because he has to be up early to take the students, Oscar because he’s not used to being up that late, and me because I can’t shut my brain off when we finally do get in bed.  So, I lie there and try to sleep because I know I need it and it makes is more elusive.