Which reminds me...
Oh, well. There are worse places to be without luggage, and it forced me to buy a new jacket. In Rome. 👍 Our bags did show up the next day, almost exactly 24 hours after we did. They looked tired.
We timed this vacation to allow us to go see the Italian Open tennis tournament. Here's John on the bridge across the Tiber to the venue:
(I'm guessing they used 6'6" Sasha Zverev's body for this cutout. Kind of cruel.)
Also, if you look over the railing of that same bridge, you see this:
Remember, graffiti is an Italian word. I've actually grown to appreciate it as home-grown art.
The tournament takes place at the Foro Italico - a really great venue and we had good seats for the match that evening between Novak Djokovich ("Nole" to the crowd) and Juan Martin Del Potro ("Delpo" to the crowd).
I happened to record a video clip from our seats in the stadium right as the players came in. It captures some of the electricity of the venue:
I imagine I wasn't the only flashing on Roman gladiators entering the Colosseum. (Djokovich won.)
Speaking of ancient Romans, part of the Foro Italico is a huge stadium surrounded by Mussolini era statues, each representing a different city in Italy.
Here's the one for Rome:
I'm thinking he didn't eat a lot of pasta.
Also not far away in the same area is the MAXXI museum of 21st century art. Pretty cool building, built just a few years ago:
Particularly eye-catching that day was the reflection of one of the older buildings in the windows:
More on our trip later. Off to go have some amazing food in Umbria.
