Sat. Sept. 8 , Still in Rome

The bus group went on an all-day excursion today - and G went with them but I didn't. Part of their trip includes a city tour, a visit to the coliseum (Cdn spelling) and to the Forums. I chose to not go. I have a hard time sitting in a bus and being whizzed around a city to "look here, look there, etc" and I know I didn't give G enough time yesterday to get to know the other two sites, so he has gone back today to redo with a little thingy in his ear, which doesn't bother him but drives me crazy.
I have chosen another subway ride to another new area of the city where there is a plaza that I haven't seen and a street which runs from it that is the main shopping street for the home folk.
My day went pretty much as planned. I found the plaza and shopped, going into every door and saw many very cool and new things. I'll say one thing for these Italians: they are well dressed. Many of them were on the streets today and I, for sure, do not belong. I managed to find a few replacements for the clothes that we always have to ditch because they don't hold up to the constant hand washing and ringing that we give them every second day.
On this unique street I found 6 new churches or basilicas and ended up walking about 4 kms right to another plaza where a special water fountain is. The saying is that if you touch the water, it's supposed to be that you will return back to Rome.
After much more walking, I headed back on the subway and went into an industrial flea market to purchase the food goods for the next two days.
By the time I got back to the hotel and put everything away, G knocked on the door and so we gathered up our things to head to the outdoor patio for supper and share our day's adventures.
Seems mine were more exciting than his but he did manage to gather more info on the Forums and coliseum and he did mail one letter home from the Vatican and manage to walk an entire city in one hour. (That's the Vatican City) :)
Tomorrow G is supposed to be going on the catacombs tour but there might not be enough people to go, so we will head out and go together if need be. Otherwise, if he is on that, I think I will spend the morning swimming in the hotel pool and then leave the afternoon for something that we haven't done yet.

In Allmesbach, end Aug. to Sept. 5

We stayed for 8 days with G's cousins in a small dorf about 30 minutes outside of Stuttgart. We have been treated like royalty - so we had to put a stop to that :), we much prefer to be as family and help out.
We had a chance to do our laundry properly, rest up a bit and de-velocitize from our bus trip which was always go, go, go.
Allmesbach is a most interesting place for a very small town. It is in a valley surrounded by walkable mountains with high temps and growing everywhere all around there are grapes and other fruit trees in abundance. The most interesting thing though is one of G's favourite friends. Each morning at exactly 04:20 a rooster would start his singing for G's wake up call. Thing is, it didn't have a normal song such as "cockle doodle do" it was only "coc dooooooo" over and over again. On one of our walks, we spotted that dear friend of his and we had to hold G back from getting even better acquainted.
One moment there were kids on bikes then horses on your sidewalk, then old tractors and next mooing cows and the ever-ringing every 15 minutes church bells.
We stayed on the top floor of a large dwelling where the cousins had the whole middle floor and a renter had the basement area. We slept each night with our window wide open and so it was cool enough to sleep. We spent our days eating, playing cards, eating, napping, eating, walking, eating, more games and cards and lots and lots of laughter.
On the weekend, we went on a small trip in the "wohnmobile" or camper, to stay the weekend with three of G's second cousins who didn't get a chance to meet us last time. Now that was a house full of people and they and G enjoyed sharing stories and getting to know each other.
We leave on the 5th of Sept. headed for Rome and south to Sicily and then a short cruise in the Terranean sea. We will be staying 3 days on a small island off the coast of Italy. We are expecting to see so many beautiful coastline sights and I am eager to smell the salt air once again.