Still just scratching the surface with exploring

We've been in Italy for 3 months now. We're still in a time of being surprised, puzzled and mostly pleased. You'd have thought it was long enough to know how to turn off the lights in our apartment. It's not - in one room we have 14 light switches and 17 not-quite light switches. It can take a while to work out which are on, particularly if a guest has turned on a switch behind a cupboard! 

You would also have thought we'd have been out our back door before now (which apartment has a back door?!). We only just got round to exploring there. We found that there's a roof terrace on our building, with a view out over the city to mountains, and over the first Italian King's wife's residence.

Mirafiori - now part of Sapienza University 

Out to the mountains

The interestingly designed Jordanian Embassy

We've enjoyed having visitors, exploring new things with them. A free concert in the ornate church of Aracoeli (with pillars recycled from Roman monuments), one of the oldest bakeries in the world, where Jewish cheesecake was invented, water under Trevi fountain, the most colourful cafe I've ever seen, an amazing Sardinian restaurant round the corner, fireworks at the Embassy. We've enjoyed catching up with the children's cousins and uncles, my cousin, university friends and a friend from our time in Cameroon. Layers of our own history, to go with layers of history everywhere in Rome.

We've not had that many weeks without one of us (mostly Tim) leaving the country. I'm about to go back to the UK for my third work trip. Tim has been to Istanbul, Madrid, Malaga, Zagreb, Ljubliana, Crete, Athens and Budapest. Just Malta left to go before Christmas. 

Three months in, and sometimes we feel as if we've just arrived, because we're still discovering so much. I'm not sure that will ever quite stop.