Roman (not) roaming

We have made our way to Rome for about 48 hours before ferrying off to Elba on Sunday! The last week in L'Aquila was quite lovely, and very productive! Unfortunately productive =/= lots of pictures, so therefore it has also not equalled many blog posts.
     But we had a very nice time visiting with the lab group at GSSI - they took us out to lunch most days, and they hosted a very nice dinner out as well at a very tasty local place. Of course, because time zones are wonky I had a cannot-miss telecon at 8:45, meaning that I had to leave right as food started coming out. Fortunately for me, the lateness of dinner was a two-sided coin - when my telecon wrapped up almost two hours later, I headed back to the restaurant in time to catch the last course and dessert!
    Other notable things from the week - on Friday L'Aquila hosted the finish line of the 7th Stage of the Giro d'Italia, which is basically the Tour de France of Italy and apparently kind of a big deal if you follow cycling. So the town got all decked out in pink (the color of the leader jersey) and hosted a big street fair Thursday night and Friday with lots of food trucks and music. Unfortunately it rained Thursday night, but cleared up nicely on Friday afternoon. We didn't stay for the race - to see anything would require tickets, although the finish line was literally right outside the GSSI buildings we'd stayed in all week. Instead we caught the bus back to Rome, which was once again a very scenic ride.
   We are staying in an adorable airbnb literally across the street from the walls of Vatican City. The views from the balcony are lovely, and it has a very modern-cozy feel to it. There was a bit of a comedy of errors on arrival - from the train station (which is super close), we had to hoof it up a pretty significant set of stairs and navigate some very European-city backstreets. The hostess met us here and showed us around the place... and then absentmindedly took the keys with her when she left, which we didn't figure out until we tried to go find food for dinner. First we tried the idea that if one of us left to forage the other could open the door on return, but it turned out that without the keys we were also locked into the building compound, so... the hostess came back as quick as she could but Rome is huge and trafficky so that took an hour and half. So we had some more time for balcony sitting instead. And since it started pouring rain a bit later in the evening, that time was well spent! The sounds of rain on the roof is really quite lovely in this apartment. So there was slightly less roaming about Rome today than planned, but Saturday should make up for that some.

Dinner out with the lab group at a very lovely place.

The reason for being.

Streetfood tastyness! It was pouring rain, so I guess that makes us pretty determined tourists.

So it's far from an award winning picture, but that's the spot where awards were won at the finish line of the 7th Stage of the Giro d'Italia in L'Aquila on Friday!

I kind of love our rooftop airbnb in Rome. It's got a lot of angles going, but is really sweet.

The view over the city is really lovely.

After getting locked in the airbnb and waiting for the host to return the key, we made do with what we found in the cupboards. Juicebox wine wasn't the worst wine ever. And the balcony view was pretty great.