Henrys Roman birthday party

I was feeling a little sad about being far away from family this year for Henry's birthday, so on a whim we decided to go to Rome. We bought plane tickets, rented an airbnb apartment and 4 days later, we were off! After all, you only turn two once, so why not celebrate in style, right? ;) Considering his favorite things right now are fountains, pizza, ice cream, motorcycles, and cool cars (seriously, he points at little cars and says, "cool car!"), it was sort of a no brainer to go to Rome, a 2 year olds paradise.

We stayed in a beautiful modern loft apartment right next to Rome's Termini station, the main train station, so travel in and out was very easy. The apartment also had an amazing roof terrace with views of the city which we thought would be nice to enjoy during Henry's naps or at night after he went to bed, but we ended up being quite the night owls exploring the city so we didn't use it too much. Rome is a late city - most restaurants don't open for dinner until 7:30 or 8:00p, so we mostly tried to get Hen to nap late, then we would wake up around 6, explore Rome at night and eat dinner at 8, and put him down to sleep around 10:30/11 (which is RIDICULOUS, but he was such a good sport about it).

We arrived in Rome the day before Henny's birthday, so after he took a nice long nap, we woke up and walked to the famous Trevi fountains, got some gelato, and threw all the coins we had into the fountain. Henry was over the moon.

On Henry's birthday, he woke up to some yummy Italian pastries, then we checked out our loft rooftop to gauge the weather. It was going to be a cloudy/rainy day, but we made the best of it. We spent the morning exploring the Roman forum and searching for the Capitoline museum, which we never found, but we did happen upon the Altare della Patria, or the Alter of Fatherland, which commemorates Italian unification, and is an eyesore to local Romans apparently - it was built in the 1800s and destroyed some of a medieval neighborhood - but we went inside to escape the rain and found a museum dedicated to recent wars, which was sort of interesting. On top of the building, we ate lunch at a nice cafe with good views over the city, which was a good place to be during some heavy rain. After the rain, we retreated back to our apartment so Hen could enjoy a nap and we could regroup and rest. Round two was much better - we walked to the Pantheon, which completely took my breath away, gave me chills, and was our absolute favorite thing we saw in Rome. We spent some time walking around the Piazza and then found dinner at a nearby restaurant. I tried Pasta Carbonara and it lived up to the creamy hype. Then we walked through a few narrow crooked streets to land the best gelato we've had in our lives, at Giolittos.  Yes, that is fresh whipped cream on top of the cone! They gave Henry a free little cone with a bit of vanilla gelato. He loved it - his first ice cream cone, too. Not a bad place to have your first ice cream, Henny!

I'll share the rest of our trip from Rome tomorrow - more beautiful Rome, Vatican City, and Spanish Steps.