Flat Sierra arrives in the heat of a Roman summer

Hi! My name is Flat Sierra. My good friend Abigail has agreed to send me on an adventure this summer. A few years ago I went on a journey to Topeka, KS, Branson, MO and Wrightsville Beach, NC. She says it is time for me to travel again. She is trying to learn about different places in the world and decided it was less expensive to send me than to travel by airplane herself. I could hardly believe it when she said that this time I will be traveling to Rome, Italy! I can’t wait!!

Abigail wants me to find out some interesting things about your life in Rome and some of the famous sights there too. She would appreciate if you could keep her updated regarding my travels on your blog. She plans to share all about my trip with her friends at church, Chippewa Evangelical Free Church in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, USA.

(Brian writing) So you can see that Sierra has arrived in Rome. She just showed up in the mailbox of our apartment this afternoon. And it is a hot one, about 31°C. You figure it out. A good approximation for converting centigrade to Fahrenheit is to multiply the degrees centigrade by 9/5, then add 32°. In any case, she was tired after flying over the ocean and is taking a nap.

At the top of the picture you will see the little balcony of our apartment. Like many city dwellers in Europe, that's all the "yard" we get! Our whole apartment is only 915 square feet. But that's normal, too, for Europeans in a big city. The other detail to notice in the photo is that the shutters on the balcony door are closed. It keeps the apartment cooler (in theory) to shut it up completely during the heat of the day, especially the mid-afternoon.

Rome has always been hot in the summer. Emperor Hadrian escaped the heat at his Villa situated in the mountains outside of Rome, in Tivoli. And the Popes have summered in Castel Gandolfo, just 15 miles to the southeast of Rome since the 17th century.