August 2 - Rome, Italy

art in the Pantheon

Pantheon's oculus

Weather is a repeat of yesterday…H…O…T

We nothing scheduled at all today – that is very nice after 2 weeks of very scheduled. We sleep in a bit, take advantage of the hotel’s included breakfast – it’s quite good…everything we could possibly need…I could use a bit more of anything with fiber…this old lady’s body NEEDS its fiber! Of course there is espresso, which of course we have!

Trevi Fountain

Our first stop is the Pantheon. I have to admit I know very little about most of Rome’s monuments, but am learning as we go – a guide would be great, but we can’t always have a guide. We considered on for a walk around Rome, but we have a tour scheduled for tomorrow and another one for Saturday, so we thought that would be enough. What I did learn is that this is a former Roman that is now a church. The architecture of the place is a big deal – apparently the dome is still the world’s biggest, unreinforced dome. It’s very well preserved because it’s always been in use. This place was pleasant both because it wasn’t overly crowded and was quite due to it being a church (what wasn’t quiet was the announcements to be quiet.)

crowd!

Next we found the Trevi Fountain – this place was CROWDED! Wall to wall people! Somehow we made our way to the front of the fountain and even found some shade. This thing is pretty impressive…big, beautiful and draws a crowd. Apparently, there are 3000 Euros thrown in every day and 1.5 million USD was thrown in last year! WOW! One of the photos shows the crowd.

Of course there was a church (Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi!) across the street (they really are everywhere) and we check this out. Even the random church that isn’t on the tourist route is beautiful and completely decorated. This one impressed me more

Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi

than many we’ve seen, all of which are beautiful. This one had decoration EVERYWHERE. I was able to just point my camera anywhere and get a shot of something interesting.

We are a bit spoiled for choice for what to do, so we find a monument a bit far from where we are and head there figuring we’d find some interesting surprises along the way. What we found was the shopping area…and as we do all cities that have

soccer, the soccer shop for AS Roma. Firstly, being in a shop means AC! The shopping is secondary to the cooling effect, but we were able to pick up a few things.

Then we found the monument in the piazza we were headed to – monument in the middle and fountains on either side. We read before we arrived in Rome that they were going through a drought and that the fountains were turned off. We’ve found all of the fountains before the 2 here full, but these 2 a dripping a trickle of water.

Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi

On the other side of this piazza is a Leonardo da Vinci museum…sounds promising, right? NOPE, another bamboozling by the Italians. It wasn’t terrible, but nothing was original. It was very educational, but I want WOW and education. A copy of his inventions that I was encouraged to play with didn’t do it for us…and there were no facilities and the AC wasn’t great. Until today I thought I could always count on at least a loo and usually climate control – I guess I learned more than just about da Vinci.

Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi

We next saw the Spanish Steps…not really sure about the allure of this place…a wide, set of stairs, long ago connecting the

By now we had worked up a serious thirst and were also a bit peckish…the hotel breakfast was long gone. We needed to find somewhere to get a drink and a bite, but not just anywhere would do. The place we were looking for had to be in the shade (of course) and with fans AND misters. These big fans with water mist sprayed in front of the fan, do an alright job of cooling the air. Once we do find this we are served olives and chips, so we decide to forego the food as we were quickly in the sun as the shade was disappearing.

deciding what to have for dinner

Piazza Del Popolo

That was a nice break, but we figured we were about done with the heat. What do you know…as we made our way back to the hotel we ran right into a shoe shop. Chris bullied me into at least looking

dinner

to again get some AC…as I said – the shopping is secondary to the cooling effect. After trying on a few pairs, I decided on one.

Sant'Andrea della Valle

After relaxing, napping, and cooling off for a while at the hotel (the AC is great!) we headed back out into what was supposed to be less heat as the sun was down. It wasn’t at all hot (relatively speaking…it really was hot, but with a bit of a breeze and the psychological effect of no blazing sun it wasn’t so hot) that is until we sat down at what was a great, simple, local-ish place completely sheltered from the breeze. WOW was it hot, I can’t remember the last time I actually had to find a loo to actually relive myself…what I need the facilities for is for the reprieve from the heat. I’m not sure why we insist on sitting in the heat when there are perfectly good tables inside in the AC…I’m not the only one…the tables outside are PACKED!

After dinner we wander a bit…that spot we chose for dinner definitely was sheltered from the little breeze, once we got up, the breeze cooled us down a bit – I was still melting, but not as quickly! An after dinner beer and then to bed.

random ruins...can expect around every corner

even at night I was melting

Spanish Steps

overlooking Piazza Del Poplol