End of kidadulthood?

There are moments that symbolise the fact that you have become an adult – and a responsible parent. For years every time I went to Rome me and my friends we headed down the hill to Trastevere and frequented Bar San Calisto, a bar with a certain reputation but visited by everybody from retired ladies having their afternoon tea, families buying ice cream to young couples having a beer with their student friends and local drug addicts. The nights were long and wet but now for the first time I did use their latteria service. They are one of the bars that provide milk outside the shop opening hours. After an early supper I and Archaeologist Husband bought a litre of whole milk and a bottle of white wine. Something for Number One Son and something for the parents who stayed in to look after him while he was sleeping. This one act demonstrated us that we are truly older now.

Bar San Calisto (photograph by Daria)

Travelling during the hottest time of the year with a toddler changed the rhythm and the extent of our travels. Since we were on a hill slightly outside the centre of Rome overlooking the city on the western side of the Tiber, we stuck to Trastevere and did not even try to reach any famous squares in the old city centre with Number One Son. Forum Romanum would have been murder; it is a true sun trap. I ventured farther away for some work-related tasks but as a family, we descended the hill and looked for an early evening meal.

We did have a supper around 5.30 pm, which meant that our selection of open restaurants was not great. We were stuck with the ones offering the all-afternoon opening hours that are directly targeted to the tourist market. The food was not necessarily great and service was sometimes lacking but these restaurants did not exist ten years ago so one has to be grateful one can eat somewhere else than McDonalds. They clearly have changed the eating landscape, since one of the traditional Trastevere pizzerias, Ivo, was open for business already at 6 pm instead of the more usual 7 pm on our last night.