Day 11-- Rome

After posting the blog last night we went into the Pantheon, which was originally an ancient temple built by the Romans in 20-something B.C. and then consecrated as a Christian church in 609. It’s pretty amazing. From there we walked to Area Sacra Argentina, the ruins of four Roman temples that now house a cat sanctuary. There are hundreds of cats there of different sizes and colors. They seems to be happy and very friendly. The sign says that they are all spayed, vaccinated and can be adopted. Lots of people gather there to pet them, take pictures or just to watch. From there we walked to a little island on the Tiber called Isola Tiberina. There is nothing much there, but it’s pretty and peaceful. There used to be mills there in Roman times. Not far from the island is the Jewish area, the former ghetto. We intended to go to one of the restaurants there for dinner, especially to try the famous artichokes. When we got there, however, we weren’t hungry yet so we just walked around and continued walking until we were so tired that we had to sit down. By then we were pretty far from the ghetto so we had dinner in a regular restaurant along the way. Nothing to rave about. We will go back to the ghetto for the artichokes, though.

This morning we decided to leave early. We wanted to go to the Vatican and the guidebook said to get there before 9 am to beat the crowds. We took the metro and got there at 9:05 and there was already an enormous line to get into St. Peter’s. It moved pretty quickly so we got in and wondered around with the guidebook not to miss anything important. It’s huge, it’s amazing and it’s crowded. After the basilica, we walked some more around the square, sent a postcard from the Vatican post office and made our way through the overwhelming crowds that had filled the piazza by then. We decided to get out of there and took a bus back to the hotel to have some rest.

After an hour respite we embarked on a walk to Villa Borghese, a huge park that used to be the summer estate of the Borghese family. It was a nice walk. After entering the park we saw the Borghese palace which houses an art gallery with the treasures accumulated by the family. We wanted to go in, but the tickets were sold out until Tuesday so we just admired it from the outside and continued walking. We passed the Zoo and got into Galleria Nazionale del Arte Moderna, where we had some sandwiches and beer in their lovely outdoor café. Reinforced, we continued walking through the park to the Pincio gardens that overlook Piazza del Popolo. On the way we encountered a gelateria which we couldn’t resist and had some strawberry and pistachio gelato (delicious). We descended down the hill to Popolo, walked along Corso stopping at a couple of amazing churches and then took a bus/metro back to the hotel to rest.