Tuesday

Tuesday in a nutshell

Beautiful morning - decide to walk to Galleria Borghese
Internet cafe stop
Ste Maria Sopra Minerva
Pantheon pics
Walk up the Via Venuto pics
Villa Borghese - 1:00 appt. pics
Wonderful panini - find a portrait that reminds me of Sara
Walk back down towards Pantheon - gelati at Della Palma
Past the Teatro di Marcella
Isola Tibernia - St. Bartelemeo pics
Run thru Trastevere - past the bad guys
The Great Wall of Aventine
Vespers at San Anselmo
Dinner at L'Insalta Ricci

We headed out and stopped at the local Internet cafe. It turned out to be double the cost of the ones in the Western Union shops. The reservation at the Galleria Borghese was at 1:00, and you need to be there a half-hour early, so we headed off in that direction.

Just one block away was Santa Maria Sopra Minerva - this is the church on the small piazza with the little Bernini elephant. We stopped in the church - an ugly, flat exterior, with a beautiful large interior, and a Michaelangleo statue. On the external wall is a Latin inscription showing the high water mark of the Tiber's flood in 1422!

Rick Steves adds that Galileo stopped to pray here on his way to his Inquisition trial, and that it's the only Gothic church in Rome.

Right across the street is the Pantheon. This is amazing! Built in something like A.D. 64 as a pagan temple, it was the largest dome in the world for some 1700 years. The top of the dome is a 30 foot open circle. The Catholics took it over and made it a Christian church, which probably saved it from the same fate as the rest of the ancient ruins.

Here's a typical side street. Keep in mind that car and motorcycle drivers seem to have no compunctions about driving up a street like this. I think they get up to 15 or 20 MPH - they're just always ready to step on their brakes.
This is what we deemed to be the Tiniest Car In All Of Rome. I think it is a Fiat Cinquecento. There was also a make named "Smart" that was about the same length, but looked more modern. They are just about the same length as a motorcycle, and so can park perpendicular to the curb in a lot of places.
We kept on walking - Via Venuto is the fancy part of town. The American Embassy is at the top of the hill, right behind me in this picture. We passed a Lamborghini dealership. It is a beautiful curving street, lined with sycamores. The Rome Hard Rock Cafe is pretty unassuming (by way of comparison, Minneapolis' Hard Rock has a 30 ft. guitar out front). You can see the sign for it just over the white car in the middle of the pic.

Cardinal Borghese was crazily rich. His uncle was a pope, and the Villa Borghese is a vast park. How you free up that much real estate in a city like Rome, I don't know. The palazzo is now a gallery, and has some of the most spectacular sculptures imaginable.

How can stone look like this? The Berninis in the churches and piazzas are grand and strong - these are graceful and delicate. There is a Canova sculpture of Napoleon's sister (who was a hotty I must say) and the mattress upon which she rests her bare behind is so soft and inviting, you would swear it can't be marble.

Walking back down through town, we had fantastic panini at a side-walk cafe. Everything I ate was the best thing of that type I'd ever had. This was the best sandwich.

Window-shopping, there was a Murano Glass store, and in the window was a beautiful Italian woman's portrait that reminded me of our friend, Sara, so I took a snapshot.

We were ready for gelati by the time we made it back to the Pantheon neighborhood. The title for Best Gelati is hotly contested. Every guidebook tells you something different. But three of the leading contenders are Tre Scalini (where we had Tartuffo on Sunday), Giolitti's (where we had our Wednesday gelati [you can see the sign for Giolitti's in the street scene above.]), and then Rick Steve's new favorite, Gelati della Palma. This is where we stopped today. They had an interesting twist - a gelati mousse. Excellent. Their mocha flavor was especially fine.

We wanted to get down to the Aventine area for the San Anselmo vespers singing. We'd read about this in City Secrets, Rome, a great book Mom had bought for us.

On the way we walked by the ancient Teatro di Marcello, which appears to be lived in?! It looks sort of like the Colosseum, with apartments on top.

Crossing the Tiber into Trastevere, we took the oldest bridge in town. This bridge was built in 62 B.C.! It crosses onto Isla Tibernia, a small island. There is a nice church there housing the body of St. Bartolomeo, not to mention yet another fine cup of espresso.

Trastevere is the more artsy, student, part of town. It was also very un-touristy. We got onto this long, dark side-street. This was the only time I ever felt unsafe in Rome. In the dark, we passed these three 55-year old guys hanging out by their cars, not saying anything. We decided they were the mob, waiting for instructions on who to kill next.

We crossed the next bridge over into Aventine. The good news was that the Benedictine abbey where the vespers would be sung was just a few hundred yards away. The bad news was that it was on a hill, and there was a 50-foot tall retaining wall, that ran for 3/4 of a mile in both directions.

Anyway, we made it, though a little sweaty at this point. The abbey had a little gift shop, and a jolly young monk who spoke perfect English. He assured us that indeed the vespers service was a go, in just 15 minutes or so. There was one other American couple, and a single guy, and us in the sanctuary. The vespers are sung whether or not anyone else is there, of course. Apparently Benedictine monks all over the world sing daily at this time.

The monks filed in, each bowing to Jesus before taking their seats. Some were in street clothes, some in white robes; most were wearing the classic brown. The singing was simple and sounded beautiful in the high-arched room. Every so often, the monks would bend in half and sing with their faces kind of aimed at the floor.

Very cool - three thumbs up.

We walked down the hill and caught a bus back to our home base. We headed to L'Insalata Ricci for a little wine and dinner, then off to bed.

Monday

Wednesday