First Full Day in Rome

Templo Adriano, down the street from the Trevi Fountain
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Our hotel is nice -- I especially like the green marble on the floor in the bedroom and bathroom & the room is a nice size.

Breakfast is included so we wandered downstairs to the quaint breakfast patio. A nice man came over & asked Gary a phone question -- later on we saw him & his wife at the Pantheon-- turns out they are on our cruise and are from Pacific Palisades (near Los Angeles). Gary took a picture of them together with their camera.

...a real neighborhood restaurant

Restaurant where we had dinner
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After breakfast, we tried to get tickets to the Borghese Gallery which was something on the top of my "to do in Rome" list. I'm very very disappointed to find that there are no more tickets for a full week and the next time we are in Rome on the way home will be on Monday. As everyone knows, all museums are closed on Monday in Italy.... out of luck... :-( Very, very disappointed!!! When we return to Rome, we will go. Apparently there is a new exhibition there which is very popular.

Off we went with Gary's camera this time. We caught a taxi and went to the Colosseum. (I'm really here !!! :-) Walked all around it, in the park above (the one with Nero's Golden House), to DHL to make a shipment and then back through the Forum. We took lots of pictures of the three columns that are the remians of the Temple of the Vespasian. We have a copy of the Candaletto painting of these columns in our entryway at home.

Pantheon at Night!
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Some of the pictures that Gary took today are incredible. There is one of a fountain in which the shutter speed was 1/1600 th of a second... Amazing! You can see the individual drops of water!

We have walked miles today-- definitely worth it. After the Forum, we headed back towards the Pantheon and stopped at a little outdoor cafe for lunch. After lots of water, Diet Coke and a Yummy "Pantheon Salad", we walked to the hotel where Aunt Barbara stayed earlier this year to verify the location of a restaurant that she had recommended. We easily found it and then proceeded to find the bookstore we walked by last night and were able to pick up some good atlas map of northern Italy to help us later on in our trip.

Fontana di Trevi at night! What you don't see is the huge crowd sitting on the steps behind the camera...
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While I rested a bit at the hotel, Gary walked down the road a bit to an overlook with a great view of Rome. While there he answered a question and then had a conversation with a lady who also, it turns out, is on the same cruise with us...

Tomorrow at this time we will have started the National Geographic Expedition trip and already seen the Sistine Chapel after hours-- am looking forward to that.

At about 8p.m. we called another taxi and Gary told the driver that we needed to go to Piazza San Ignazio. He kind of chuckled and told us the proper way to pronounce it (basically the g is quiet).

Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, mama mia, that's a monumento monument!
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By 8:30 we were seated at an outdoor table at Ristorante di Sabatino a S. Ignazio (www.dasabatino.it ). This is the place that Gary's sister, Barbara had highly recommended. She couldn't remember the name of the restaurant (she's nearing 50, you know (comment added by GB -:), but we went to the Minerva Hotel and asked the concierge, as she suggested we do. The restaurant is off the beaten path a little way behind the Pantheon -- we noticed it was mostly frequented by locals -- a real neighborhood restaurant with a very friendly staff though most everything was spoken in Italian. We highly recommend this place to any of our friends who visit Rome!

Ah, the Colosseum at Night. Only a few people meandering about.
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If you ask your waiter to bring many different types of food, they will. Tonight we had some wonderful fresh seafood. Also, their Tiramisu was the best I've ever had! It just melted in my mouth. (Thanks, Barbara for the great suggestion! After this, we will definitely try the place you have suggested in Florence. Grazie!)

We left around 10:30 and headed to the Pantheon, then Trevi Fountain, other monuments & fountains and walked all the way back to the Colosseum so that Gary could get all of the night pictures he was hoping to get. They turn out great!!! It's after midnight again... off to bed.