Roman Meanderings

Day 2

We had a leisurely start to our day.  Staying up that long is tiring, I think it was a 29 hour day by the time we went to bed!  Our hotel has a free breakfast which is better than I expected.  Although, I do find the interpretation of an "American Breakfast" funny sometimes.  But what they have is more than enough to keep us going.  And they have 2 types of orange juice, blond and red.  The red is delicious, I miss it already.

We started off with taking the metro to the Spanish steps, where I had my first gelato of the day.  The metro is easy and incredibly cheap to use.  Only it can be crazy busy.  We were like sardines in there.  And when you thought you couldn't get anyone else on more people got on.  I had to physically push people out of my way to clear a path to the door.

One irritation here is that people have a tendency to just stop where ever they are currently walking.  No  moving off to the side.  And then you have to dodge them and 6 other people doing the same thing.  I'm not sure if it's a Roman thing or a tourist thing.  Also, it's crazy busy here.  There are people EVERYWHERE.  It's far busier than I expected.  The economic stuff hasn't afffected them much at all.  Not too many empty store fronts and there are so many people everywhere trying to sell everything.  I think that in the 2 days of being here I've been approached 2 dozen times to buy things such as shawls, selfie sticks, bowls, weird sqyeaky balls that turn into goo when you throw them and the people for the hop on hop off buses. It gets old and annoying after awhile, and I've lost my Canadian politeness dealing with them.

Spanish Steps from above

But we easily found the Spanish Steps and the Piazza de Spagna.  It was as busy as promised.  There were people everywhere.  You can sit on the steps as long as you'd like, but no eating or drinking.  Only sitting.  We climbed up the steps and admired the view, it was a pretty easy climb.

After we headed south to the Trevi fountain.  It's pretty famous for being the place you throw a coin in to guarantee your return to Rome.  Only with it being "downseason" it was mostly covered up for restoration work.  They did have a little walkway to see the little bit that was covered up.  They even had a police officer watching.  Not entirely sure why but they were trying to discourage people from throwing coins.

Trevi Fountain

There was actually a really big police/military presence where we were today.  There were in all the piazzas and were walking down the streets.  I'm not sure if this is a regular thing or if it's in response to some of the recent world events that have them concerned.  But some of the locations had signs indicating they were embassies and consulates, but I've never seen any with a police presence out front before in any other big cities.  In Paris the hop on hop off bus drove past the Canadian consulate multiple times a day and there wasn't anyone out front!

After the fountain we toured the Pantheon, a round church.  It used to be a temple but was converted over the years.  It was really interesting to see the structure and the fabulous dome ceiling.  It was also crazy busy and they weren't as strict with the dressing rules.  Instead of stopping people with tank tops the guy was keeping people going in and out the correct sides of the door.

Pantheon

We then headed to the Piazza Navona.  It mostly just had a few fountains and a few restaurants, but was worth the visit.  There wer hoards of people all along the most travelled paths, we weren't the first ones by any means.  Many people along the way were selling "paintings".  I put that in quotation marks because all these looked almost identical.  They all pretended that they were the artists but so many pictures were actually identical.  Funny but sad.  And you'd think that if your living depended on selling art you've been working on you'd work on it while you sold.  We also saw one store filled with sweaters and scarves with an identical store half a block away.  I guess it all tricks the tourists at some point.

Tiber river

We also went to the Campo de Fiori which is home to a big open air market.  Most of it was food stuff, like making pomegranate juice from actual pomegranates in a press.  Or fruit vendors, or our personal favorite the crazy vegetable peeler man.  He had a really good show.  My personal favorite was when he julienned the carrot and had a guy hold a big pile of it.  Then added oil to make a salad.  In his hands!  It sounds dumb as I write this out but it was hilarious to watch.  We did cave and buy some, and he gave us some carrots to play with.

After we walked down to the Tiber river.  They such high embankments you can't really see much.  It's just a big waterway with huge concrete walls.  They do have an impressive amount of bridges.  We saw a river cruise but changed our minds after we read some reviews of how boring the river cruise was.

The rest of our day ws mostly us getting sidetracked on the way back to the hotel while I ate more gelato and getting ready for Pompeii in the morning.  It should be good!  The weather is still incredibly hot.  It was nice getting to walk in the shaded streets and get a break from the relentless sun.  I'm also happy to report that I havne't gotten sunburnt at all.