We basically finished up our trip in Pesaro, a resort town on the Adriatic Sea. Well, there plus one final day in Rome before our flight home.

Why Pesaro? Seaside resorts aren't usually our speed. Well, Pesaro is the birthplace of composer Gioachino Rossini and hosts an annual Rossini festival. Now, I like Opera but I wouldn't travel across an ocean to see some Rossini so how did we end up there? It's Natan's fault. This year was the first year since graduating Michigan when he's been able to take a real vacation. We decided we wanted to do a family thing and since he's had the fewest opportunities to travel gave him the choice.

He, being a Rossini fan, decided he'd love to attend the festival. We built the trip around that. Unfortunately, as the planning progressed it turned out we weren't able to do a whole family thing since Batya had to be up in Illinois to start grad school concurrent with the festival. Still, a great trip.

As Rossini's birthplace, Pesaro has a Rossini museum and you can tour his birthplace. Both very interesting even if you're not big on Rossini or opera.

Beyond that we didn't do too much touring.

We did go down to the Adriatic where we found this sculpture:

It reminded me of the World Trade Center Sphere crushed on 9/11 that was on display outside of Stuy for a while until it was relocated to a permanent home in Battery Park. Any similarity though was just coincidence as the Globe in Pesaro was created and installed years prior.

Also, in spite of my persistent hip issues, I did get a run in early by the sea:

And another highlight was yet another Church - the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. A thirteenth century church built on top of a sixth century Basilica which itself was built atop a fourth century Roman Basilica. The cool thing was that part of the floor is exposed to show the extensive mosaic work on the earlier floors.

For the festival, I saw two operas, Zelmira and L'Italiana in Algeri (The Italian in Algeria).

I enjoyed both but Zelmira, being a production in the round (in a modern space) detracted from the performance. If you want a deep dive into both productions and the festival in general, check out Natan's blog.

L'Italiana in Algeri was staged in the Teatro Rossini, an 1818 old school opera house.

Really fun opera and production and great performances and it was a trip to see it in an old school venue. For details, again I refer you to Natan's blog.

The downside of the Pesaro part of the trip is that we were well into holiday season so even more restaurants were closed. Combine that with Italians eating later (most restaurants didn't open until 7:00 or 7:30) and the operas starting at 7:00 or 8:00 made dinners a challenge. That said, we did have some good food including a terrific no frills seafood place for one of our lunches.

From Pesaro we were back to Rome for a day before our flight. There we checked out two more sites.

First was the Vittoriano and the Museum of the Risorgimento within. THe Vittoriano is a monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy and is really impressive inside and out. The museum was really cool telling the tale of Italy's unification.

Our final official stop was the Capitoline museum, right next door although we had to walk down the hill and right back up. Of course, every time I read "Capitoline Museum" I hear Samuel L. Jackson saying "what's in your wallet?"

On the Capitline Hill, the museum (or collection of museums) is an archaeological museum with artifacts from ancient (Greek) times through the Renaissance. Highligths include Marcus Aurelius on a horse, a bust of Medusa by Bernini. and much much more.

After that, we had our last dinner (last supper?) and then the next day, back home.

Great trip, now to plan the next one.