We arrived home yesterday after a wonderful week in Tuscany. I will get to that – I’m still on Rome. I just uploaded my favorite Rome photos, which you can find at the photos link or here on flickr.
If you click on individual photos, I wrote where they were taken (when I remembered the name).
On our first day we walked from our hotel to the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. We looked in St Andrea della Valle church which is very elaborately decorated on the inside. In the evening after dinner Steve and I walked to Vatican City, to St Peter’s square – this was the closest we got to the Vatican. It would have been interesting to go inside – maybe next time. We were more interested in seeing the Roman parts of Rome on this trip and were happy to avoid long guided tours and/or lines. We had dinner at a small outdoor restaurant in the square Campo de Fiori, which has a market in every morning and lots of outdoor restaurants set up once the afternoon siesta is over.
I was pleased how many churches were open for visitors to look around. In other places I’ve visited churches tend to be locked when there isn’t a service going on.
We were surprised how pervasive the afternoon siesta is – stores and churches all closed for it and we later found out that even gas stations are closed then. It certainly makes sense to have one when it’s as hot as it was on our days in Rome.
On our second day (our only full day) we headed for the part of town with the most substantive area of Roman remains. It was rather hot to be walking around outside in the sun but this was our only chance to go. We went in the Colosseum and then into the Palatine Hill site, which has remains of houses of wealthy Romans. We walked from East to West, past the Roman Forum, up another of the seven hills Rome is built on (I forget which one) to the Piazza de Campidoglio and then back to our hotel for a break from the heat. We ate dinner at a restaurant our hotel recommended – the food was great. Lots of people were out Friday night – where we were had a very active nightlife.
On Saturday morning I went out early and there was trash everywhere – beer bottles, food, papers all over the streets. In a nearby square men were using brushes to sweep beer bottles and other trash out of a fountain onto the street where a small truck (all vehicles in Rome have to be small or they couldn’t fit through the streets) then swept them up. I don’t remember seeing any ‘”Don’t litter” signs – I was interested that instead of trying to stop people littering they had an organized procedure for cleaning it up the next morning.
After breakfast we all walked over to St Maria of Travestere, a very interesting church (12th centure I think) which used lots of Roman bits and pieces in its construction and which had a ceiling with lots of gold in it. After that we met up with my mother, who had just flown over, and picked up our rental car and drove up to our villa in Tuscany (I’ll post photos from Tuscany soon).
Your trip sounds fantastic!
I also went to St Maria in Trastevere when I went to Rome and we spent the whole evening in the square, sitting outside a restaurant. I loved that the square became a huge meeting place with family bringing their kids out to let off steam, at the same time that it was crowded with tourists.
I LOVE your pictures of the Pantheon… mine didn’t come out nearly so well.
Thanks ss. It really was a fantastic trip – and I haven’t finished writing about it yet!
I can imagine the square at St Maria in Travestere would be a lovely place to have dinner outside. We ate in Campo di Fiori the first night – I expect it was similar; bustling with a mix of tourists and local people; a generally happy atmosphere, not a threatening one.
The Pantheon is hard to take photos of. I’m glad the indoor one came out the way it did. For my indoor pictures I’m indebted to my son figuring out that changing the ASA from auto to 400 makes the difference between impossibly slow shutter speed and something just about viable.
He got his own camera in the Spring and I expect he’ll put his best photos on flickr soon. He didn’t do the ‘tourist’ thing much – he doesn’t have as many sightseeing ones as me. But he probably has a few I wish I could have taken. His camera is better than mine. In the second half of the trip my husband started borrowing my son’s camera to take photos of interesting doors. I’ll be interested to see what he does with those photos.
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