Walk, walk, walk.

Santo Maria Aracoelis (next to the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II) 

Who needs a hop on hop off bus? Today is our first full day and we walked everywhere we could-- in a leisurely manner. But first, after our last post yesterday, we decided to go out for dinner even though we had three in flight meals that day. We went into the neighborhood, which is actually old town Trastevere to grab a piece of pizza. And wine. Well, we really ordered a mini pizza, a plate of grilled veggies and a bottle of Multepulciano. 

Just outside our apartemento

Yum prosciutto and fungi pizza 

We made a couple of new friends last night, even though our common language was Spanish and if you know anything about my grasp of that language...it wasn't a very extensive conversation. But we did bond over funny smart phone applications, including an 'electric razor' iPhone app. 

With a newfound flip flop tan line and some red shoulders, here I write in our adorable one room apartment that sits upon ruins (of course), about the LIST of places we stumbled upon, tripped over and got lost and found.We finished everything minus a few bites and definitely were in good spirits. 

How festive.

We left our apartment at Via di San Francesco di Sales this morning with the motto "lets get lost" and that’s what we exactly did. We crossed the Tiber on the Sisto pedestrian bridge, only a five minute walk. We saw the Piazza Farnese, then over through Campo Di Fiori, and up to Navona...Where we meant to hop on a double decker bus. We soon couldn't find the stop and reevaluated our plan. Truly, this place is small and condensed enough to just walk, so it was ok. The Piazza Navona was way bigger than I had thought, with three fountains and an obelisk topping the middle one. So, just over to the east of Navona is the Pantheon, only a few blocks away. It”s June and it”s nice out so you can imagine how many people were in and outside of this mammoth building. 

Up and over to the Trevi we said, and soon the hoards of people appeared and the massive fountain emerged, almost dwarfed by the crowd. First gelato experience, pineapple and Mom had pistachio, and it was glorious. 

Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II 

Tragen's Column 

View from monument, scary sky for a while.

From the Trevi we went straight south to the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, and just to the side is the Roman forum. Mind blown at how close everything was. I'm looking at a different map than Mom is right now and its funny what the map people did and did not put on these-- well, now we know which ones are the good ones.  






Anyways the monument was massive and cool, we went inside and walked to the second level that had an incredible 360 view of Rome. We could have paid to take the elevator up to the very top, but we decided to move on since the view was already great. 

Salad not shown...eaten. 

We had lunch near the Theatro di Marcello-- beer, salad with anchovies tomatoes and peppers, and toasted bread with cream mushrooms and artichoke hearts. The weather at this point was still hot and sunny but the clouds were starting to get a daunting grey look, but only an hour later it was blue skies all around. Thankfully our outside piazza lunch was under umbrella and encircled by green bushes. We are SO lucky for this weather. 

Finally, we made our way to the Jewish Ghetto, really on the quest to see the Bocca della Verita to recreate Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Pecks experience from Roman Holiday, but we remembered which bridge it was off of wrong. Phooey. But instead we found a cute leather shop... might be a good place to return and purchase some presents. All of this was just across and down from our apartment, so our return trip back home was quick and easy. Bocca another time! 

We're going to go to dinner in Trastevere, again, was incredible. This time it was a four course meal, and oops, we ordered a whole bottle of wine again. Well, do as the Romans do. I'll post pictures later. 

Cooking class tomorrow morning. Yay!