Happy Easter From Rome -
No, we were not at St. Peter’s Square earlier today for the Pope’s Easter message. But, we did take the ‘Heart of Rome Walk”, as outlined in Rick Steve’s book. We had a sunny day with temperatures in mid-to-upper 60s, so the scene could not have been better.
Remember, as we proceed, I do not check spelling and often times in haste use the correct word to the ear, but not spelled correctly. I apologize for this, as I apologize for repeating myself, which is either haste or age, and may be a combination of the two.
Last night was a real rainy night and Marlene and I headed out, while the kids stayed in, which is their normal preference. On our way to the cab stand we stopped at a bar/restaurant down the street from our Trastevere apartment and enjoyed a couple of drinks. On the way to the cab stand we decided to reduce the total distance and not go to one of our researched restaurants on our list, but to stop into this nice looking restaurant nearby. A departing British couple told us the restaurant was quite good. Marlene had three pieces of lamb (one piece was a leg) and I had veal cut thinly with lemon sauce. No comment on the lamb and the veal dish, known in the U.S. as veal piccatta, was fine, but not as good as you’d get in most decent Italian restaurants in the U.S. with a side of pasta. The dish here came with potato chips. Anyway, the walk home in the pouring rain was short.
Our walk today took us about four hours, including a lunch stop, an ice cream stop, and a coffee stop for Marlene. Checking the photos, I liked the nondescript dirty church, which I just happened to notice. There are so many churches that this poor fellow goes totally unnoticed. We dined at Campo de’ Fiori, described as a bohemian piazza (plaza). The pasta was top-notch! The plaza was jumping, as was the entire route of the Heart of Rome Walk. We had incorrectly anticipated everything being closed on Easter Sunday, but actually everything was open and we finally saw lots of tourists for the first time during our European travels. See the photo of Keaka with some of the activity behind him. Yes, the streets are narrow, as you can see in the photo of the gang. One stop on the walk was Plaza Navona, which you get a pretty good look at. The horse and buggy is parked on the race track, which was constructed in 80 AD, thus the shape of the plaza. The church is St. Agnes, just in case we decide to have a quiz later. Also in Plaza Navona is the Four Rivers Fountain, which depicts the four rivers that man was familiar with when the fountain was built in 1650. That does not ring quite true to me, but I think that’s what I read. You can always look it up. We visited the Pantheon, which was built in 120 AD. An unbelievable structure. You see Sophia in front of the Italian Parliament Building. And, there was a throng around the famous Trevi Fountain, at which I snapped a photo of Keaka.
We’re heading to dinner. Quite a bit of time was just spent going over our list of 17 restaurants, compiled prior to the trip. Nearly half are pizza focused, and the word this evening was “no pizza”. I focused on two restaurants, but both are closed on Sunday night. So, it is off to 8 pm dinner at Checo er Carettiere, which apparently doesn’t have the small space and old charm we look for, but it’s been in one family for three generations, it gets decent review and it’s a walk from the apartment. From what I’ve seen in two days, folks eat a lot of pasta here, which is great as far as I’m concerned.
Tomorrow (Monday) we have a pre-reserved tour of the Coliseum and Forum. Tuesday we have a pre-reserved tour of the Vatican City Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica. We’re becoming real tourists!
Here at the end of day two, we’re getting a pretty good idea of what this center/old part of Rome is all about. We’ll cover the loose ends on Wednesday and move on to Naples on Thursday.
The Wilsons
