Rome, Day 2

Apparently, I have married someone so incredibly similar to my father, it's scary at times. Mike had us awake and ready to start the day by 7:30am. One morning I even was greeted with the phrase "We don't want to waste the daylight hours." :)
At least we packed everything and laid out clothes the night before so that we didn't bother the other people in the room. We got the Trevi Fountain before the thing was even turned on. But on the up side, there were very few people there and less of a chance of being robbed. And we did see tons every day.
This fountain is absolutely amazing, AND HUGE! It takes up one whole side of a building and about half of the piazza. The detail in the sculptures is incredible as well. After throwing a coin over our shoulders and into the fountain, we headed off to see more of Rome.


The Spanish Steps was the next stop. Every morning we tried to hit the really touristy spots so we would not be robbed. Nearly every person we ran into had some story of them being robbed or someone they knew. While we never walked around with tons of money or lots of credit cards (one guy had his wallet stolen with his passport, ID, 5 credit cards, and 140 euros), we still didn't want to deal with the hassle of it all. We arrived here just as they were done watering the large amount of flowers. The views from the top of the steps and the church at the top are both wonderful. And interestingly enough... the French paid to construct this, not the Spanish!


We walked over to the Mausoleum of Augustus next. It was interesting but during Mussolini's reign, he put an ugly wall all around it. It was unfortunately, not open to the public. The picture on the left is of Basilica dei SS Ambrogio E Carlo. It was one of the many churches we visited while we were there. Obviously there are loads of churches in Rome, and, of course, not all of them are listed in our guide book. We must have visited about 10 churches a day while we were in Rome. Many of them looked interesting, or we just want to sit for a minute, so we would pop into one and poke around. What we found interesting is most of the churches were all built in the period where churches were incredibly plain on the outside and incredibly breathtaking on the inside. Very few are from other periods. AND most of the churches close from noon to 3pm. Kinda like a siesta period in Spanish speaking countries, but only for churches. It was rather odd and meant that you really had to plan your day around certain churches closings and openings.
The Piazza del Popolo was quite interesting. They were having all sorts of activities going on as they are trying to host the Soccer World Cup some year in the future. They was all sorts of stuff going on to try and back their bid. And they sell little bike-mobiles. They reminded me of the "cars" from the Flintstones! It is supposed to be one of those "must see" places when visiting Rome, and it was beautiful, just full of people.
The park, Villa Borghese, is right above the Piazza del Popolo. The view from the Pincio Terraces are amazing as well. You can look out over Rome and the piazza below. The park is wonderful. Our guidebook map was horrid, but there is a wonderful map up next to the terraces. Be careful of the man wanting to "give" you a rose though. After Morocco, I learned to always keep my hands hidden when some man tries to "show" me something. But the walk through the park was lovely and it was like you weren't even in Rome.
Castel Sant' Angelo is right next to the Vatican and is one of the many spectacular museums in Rome. Since we got into it for free with our Roma Pass, we decided to go - might as well make the thing pay for itself. It was quite interesting with apartments all re-decorated and fresco paintings all over. And the views of the city from the top were wonderful. You can see over the Tiber River, across two amazing bridges, and have great views of some of Rome.


After the museum and a quick look at St. Peter's Piazza and Basilica, we wandered through the streets of the Trastevere neighborhood. It is a charming area filled with winding streets, picturesque buildings, beautiful churches, kids playing soccer, and scooters. It was great fun to wander all the streets and take it all in. We visited a beautiful church there called Santa Maria in Trastevere where we were able to try out our new camera tripod. Low light shots have been a hassle in the past as we have to try to stand incredibly still. This, surprisingly enough, has been hard for me. The tripod worked wonders.
The night before we had walked for about an hour and a half searching for a restaurant that our guide book said was great. We finally gave up after circling the area for the second time and settled on some restaurant that served us something microwaved from a box (it was quite bad). We decided to give the book another chance. After 45 minutes of looking (only 1 1/2 circles this time!) and consulting 2 other maps, we finally found it. The restaurant that was supposed to be open from lunch through to dinner was still not open yet and it was 6pm. After that we gave up on the guide book. At least the place we chose for dinner this night was spectacular!