Let's Make a List

By Saturday Morning Kelsey and Becca had been in Rome for nearly two days and had only seen Vatican City and Piazza Venezia. Kelsey only had a day left. I had my work cut out for me. At dinner the night before we made a list of must see's that Kelsey and Becca had in mind, and I added a few things I thought they might want to see. We started off the morning early, for spring break that is. We immediately began exploring, with our starting point at Piazza Venezia. We walked around the beautiful building and along the roman forum, with plenty of picture stops along the way. I pointed out what I knew, which was very little, and we continued on to the Colosseum. Kelsey wasn't keen on shelling out the eleven euros for a tour, so we walked along the outside and made sure to get a good look at the arch of Constantine, and a not as great look at the arch of Titus, which is in the forum, and off limits for those who don't have tickets. We turned back down the same road we came up on, and this time we walked along the other side, by the imperial forum. There isn't as much to look at on this side, with the major exception being the very impressive Trajean's column. Next, our course took us down Via del Corso towards the Trevi Fountain. We sat and enjoyed the peaceful nature that the fountain manages to exude in blatant disregard of the hordes of tourists that plague it. We moved from the Trevi to Piazza Navona, one of the many roman sets for Angels and Demons. It's a beautiful Piazza with several fountains that I hadn't visited since one of my first weeks in the city. There was a diverse art market in the middle of the Piazza that I wished I could afford. Very pricey but beautiful works. We hung out in Piazza Navona for awhile, and this is the first location we ran into crazy pigeon lady. She was throwing bread to the pigeons and attracted at least fifty of them, it was mildly frightening, but mostly amusing. We also saw a group of Buddhist monks who came through the piazza chanting and playing little instruments, it was pretty sweet. From Piazza Navona we decided to walk across the street to Campo di Fiori, the fresh fruit market and site of past executions, now the location of the french embassy. Kelsey had been looking for fresh strawberries all vacation, and finally found some along with fresh raspberries. Becca and I split a fruit cup with pineapple, grapes, and strawberries. It was a perfect snack to tide us over until lunch. We then worked our way back toward the Pantheon which I had yet to explore. For the size of the building it doesn't take long to see the inside. The monuments and tombs around the inside were attracting a lot of attention, and I almost missed Rafael's tomb. After we had seen and photographed everything inside to our hearts content we finished the short walk to the end of the tram line (with a second spotting of crazy pigeon lady, she had a bike, and beat us to the piazza of the pantheon) We returned stopped by the grocery store to buy supplies for a picnic. Becca and I opted for sandwich bread and turkey with cheap potato chips while Kelsey preferred fresh bread and cheese with pringles. We also bought cookies at my insistence. I just couldn't handle a picnic without them :) We stopped back at the apartment to make our sandwiches and pack away our groceries into our purses. We headed for Tiber Island to sun ourselves and eat our lunch, and overall just take a nice relaxing break in the middle of our arduous day. We shared the Island with students and Italians alike, I'll soaking up the warm roman sun. We sunned ourselves for forty minutes or so, and fed a pigeon our crumbs, which quickly turned into kelsey scaring off the one pigeon turned half a dozen. We eventually parted from our sunny spot and headed back to the apartment as Becca had forgotten her camera. This gave me an opportunity to look us bus routes to St. John in Lateran, the next stop on our list. I knew how to get there on foot, but we had done plenty of walking for the day already. St. John has a side building with a set of steps that Constantine's mother brought back from Jerusalem with her. She claimed they had some association with Jesus, and they are now a popular spot for pilgrims. People come to the stairs to ascend them on their knees, saying a prayer with each step. We decided to pass this up for now, and simply observed the building and stair goers instead. The only person who has ever stood on the stairs is Martin Luther, this site is where he had his epiphany, pretty cool. While we were waiting for our bus back to Piazza Venezia Kelsey purchased some gelato, and Becca bought a few postcards. From Piazza Venezia we walked down Via del Corso towards Piazza del Popolo hoping to get inside Villa Borgese before sunset; we made it, barely. We climbed up to the beautiful park, and after the view of the city skyline I showed them the only part of the enormous park that I know, one of the many pretty fountains. We sat and chatted and giggled at a couple who were aggressively making out (it was pretty intense) We talked about supper options, and decided to eat in again for our budgets sake. We had yet to eat the frozen meal I picked up earlier in the week, and decided that would be a good plan. On our way back to the tram we stopped for gelato at the 'expensive but amazing selection' gelateria on the way home. I don't recall what flavors I got, but I remember they were delicious :) Once back at the apartment we were pretty exhausted from our one day tour of Rome, it was pretty cool to be able to do touristy things, I took a lot of photos of monuments I see once or twice a week, and hadn't bothered to photograph yet. After supper it was time to crash with the promise of an early morning.