Rome, Italy

Today was a long, but good, day. We landed in Rome a bit after 9am and hit the ground running. We made it through a long line at customs (they literally only stamped our passports), got our luggage, and found the driver the hotel arranged us for transport. Driving in Rome isn’t as crazy as it is in San Jose, Costa Rica, but it was similar. The driver dropped us off at the wrong hotel but the people working there got us sent to the right place. Somehow we still managed to be on our way sightseeing by 12:30!

We come back to Rome towards the end of our trip and have some plans for specific sights to see on those days, so we decided to hit some of the big tourist spots we won’t see then. We took the subway, which is quite easy to use but is very limited in destinations as there are only 2 lines. We started out at the Spanish Steps. They were recently under renovation but opened up last week. This Roman landmark was made famous by an Audrey Hepburn movie from the 1950s.

From there we walked to the Trevi Fountain. Now, we are here at just after he end of the high travel season for Rome. I’m sure there’s no true low season, but I was still amazed at how packed it was at he fountain. We couldn’t get up to it without pushing through large crowds so we went for photo spots rather than getting to the water. The fountain is huge! Right next to the fountain was a church that had some frescoes in it. The top of the stairs going into the church also gave us a good view of the fountain.

After Trevi we made our way to the Pantheon. This is an impressive ancient building! From the outside you can see various where the building was revised/remodeled many times. Inside there are tombs of some of the Italian kings, but the really impressive part is the oculus. The roof is a rounded dome and at the center is a circular opening to let in light. Seems simple, but it is quite pretty as you can see the stream of light coming in the building.

We wandered around more and ended up at Piazza Navona where we had a late lunch of pizza in a cafe on the square. At that point we were a ways from a subway station and decided to walk farther out to get to one. On the way we saw the outside of the Castel Sant’Angelo. We plan on going inside when we are back in Rome later. We got a view of he Vatican and then headed back to the hotel for a nap. (We had already been up for over 24 hours)

We wanted to get nighttime views of some of where we had been earlier so we went back to both the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. We actually walked up the Spanish Steps this time, giving us a chance to get a view from the top down. Trevi was still very crowded, but we managed to make our way to the fountain and toss in coins. After dinner on a restaurant near Trevi, gnocchi with tomatoes and mozzarella for me and linguini bolognese for Paul, we took the subway back to the hotel and crashed.