Digging through Rome's garbage...

The Pantheon's Oculus.
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Our Second day in Rome: We awoke fairly early in the morning and enjoyed our hotel's buffet breakfast before heading out to see a list of important sights throughout the "eternal city." On the top of our list was the Pantheon.  I had learned about this building in an Art History class that I took back in 2000.  I could hardly wait to see the ceiling and its oculus.

We found a newsstand near the hotel that sold all day bus passes and transportation guides.  Christy ducked into a camera store near the bus stop to purchase an additional memory chip for her digital camera.  Mike and I waited at the bus stop.  When she came out of the store she began to open the plastic packaging surrounding the chip and proceeded to hand me pieces of plastic .  Once she freed the chip, I walked over to the garbage can and threw out everything she had handed me. I did not realize that  she had also given me her only working camera chip! Panic ensued and I desperately began to try and retrieve the chip from the garbage can.  Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the city of Rome locks down the lids of its public trashcans! I reached into the can as best I could (I had antibacterial spray and wipes in my day pack.) and began to pull out all that I could;however, I never did find the chip.  I got the strangest looks from the Italians waiting at the bus stop but Christy remained incredibly calm about the whole incident, in fact she just kept laughing about it! (Incidentally we later found out that her camera was broken.)  I purchased a few disposable cameras for her and we got on a very crowded bus and headed towards the Pantheon.

A beautiful gate in a typical Roman alleyway.
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We accidentally got off at the wrong stop but it didn't matter.  Because of this we were able to see something really interesting.  A Roman church had recently been torn down and underneath it the construction crew had found ruins from a Roman temple.  After snapping pictures of these ruins, Christy, Mike and I made our way to the "Victory Monument" and then finally to the Pantheon.

There was a substantial crowd both inside of the Pantheon as well as in the square outside of the building.  The clusters of people on the inside of the structure,the odd light distribution and the sheer immensity and shape of the building itself made good photos of the interior nearly impossible.  I couldn't help but think how much better it would be to climb on to the top of the roof and take a picture through the oculus.

The famous Trevi fountain.
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After the Pantheon, we looked at various souvenir stands before heading to see the Trevi Fountain.  The fountain was beautiful and very clean.  It was very sweltering outside and the coolness of the water looked very inviting.  The fountain looked as it always does in all of the movies that you see it in. Christy pointed out that it was attached to a building which is something I had never noticed before. The three of us did the proverbial coin toss into the fountain before leaving to see the Spanish Steps and Piazza Navona.

Giacomo della Porta's Neptune Fountian in Piazza Navona.
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The Spanish Steps were under construction and were covered with scaffolding so I didn't bother taking a picture of them.  We then headed to Piazza Navona where we ate lunch outdoors at one of its many restaurants.  It reminded me a lot of  "La Plaza Mayor" a public square I spent some time in on a high school visit to Madrid.  The main difference being that Piazza Navona had several fountains in it.  We finished our lunch and had to head back to the hotel to meet the rest of our charter group for dinner.  We walked part of the way before boarding bus #61 back towards the Vatican.  Upon our arrival at the hotel Mike noticed that Bus #61 is called the "pickpocket express" by travel guru, Arthur Frommer.

Later that afternoon we gathered in our hotel lobby where we met our tour director, bus driver and the other members of our tour group.  We took our bus to a small, odd little restaurant on the other side of the city.  The host escorted us down into the basement banquet room.  There we were treated to a five course meal and serenaded by local musicians. The banquet room was very strange.  The wait staff had to scale an enormous, steep staircase behind an automatic sliding door to gain access to the kitchen.  I couldn't help but envision a tiny waiter carrying a huge tray of pasta dishes from the kitchen, walking briskly down the stairs towards the dining room.  What would happen if he walked so quickly that the sensor on the automatic door didn't detect him? I wondered if that scenario had ever happened and could only picture what a huge mess it would make if it did.

Daily lesson learned: Always make sure to not throw out anything of importance in Roman garbage cans!