We did a few more morning things like printing out boarding passes and the like, and eventually the museum opened up and we were one of the first people in. The national museums have several branches in Rome, we went to the best one first, affectionately nicknamed, by Jessie, the marble head museum, for obvious reasons. The highlights were definitely all the busts of all sorts of people and the very detailed and interesting descriptions below. They had some larger statues, too, including a couple of huge bronze statues with intriguing histories and structure. The upstairs had slightly less interesting mosaics and frescoes, but the downstairs had the single most impressive coin collections I’d ever seen. Coins from every era from ancient Rome on to modern Italy and the Euro. They also had them mounted under glass with a neat motorized magnifying glass to check them out better. Very cool.
I am very concerned about these coins.
After the museum we were *starving* so we ate at a couple of different places. I wanted to eat at a Donner Kebab place, I’d seen them around and I was curious. I still don’t know what kind of meat it was, but it was pretty good. Then we swung by a Trattoria to get some pizza by the square. It was hyper-greasy, but we saved some of the meat and crust and went back to our hostel for a bit to feed the kitties. Once we started throwing meat for them they got really excited and all four of them came over. We tried to give a little to each, but ‘bold kitty’ got the most. May have been pregnant, it’s hard to tell, and rude to assume.
That's 'bold kitty' in the front. Slightly bold kitty behind, white kitty, and scaredy cat way in the back.
Then we took the metro up to Piazza del Populo, another famous square that, on this day, was being taken over for the anniversary festivities of the Italian Police. They had all their sexiest cop cars out, including a Ferrari and one helicopter on the ground and another circling in the air. We didn’t spend too much time there before deciding to head up to a nearby park, with a gorgeous panoramic view of the city. We relaxed in the park for a bit before wandering along random roads for a bit and, eventually, stumbling upon the Spanish Steps.
Historically significant, the steps are mostly a meeting place for tourists and locals alike. Lots of people sat on the steps, hawkers strolling between them all. When we walked down the steps a trio of guys ran by us carrying wares in white cloths. Jess called it: those were the guys selling fake Coach Bags and other knockoff stuff, and there were cops approaching. I just assumed it was skeezy, I didn’t know it was illegal, too.
Resting, but resting *historically*.
We sat on the steps and rested for a while, then wandered through some more streets. We got more gelato, a guy in front of his store let me know he had some fresh noodles and slapped me on the shoulder, which was fun, and I found my souvenir at a garden store. They had a whole bunch of terra cotta and stone figures, like angels and cherubs and other such things inspired by old roman ruins. I got a little vase with a lid that had been decorated with the sort of details and cherubs that I’d been seeing all over Europe. Evocative, cheap, and a container. Even better, not made out of plastic. Good find.
We made our way back to Piazza de la Republica and this time went into a nearby Church: Santa Maria degli Angeli. Very big, like St. Peters, but much less busy, the silence was nice. We wandered around in there looking at the decorations and the borderline-insulting display about Galileo that was doing its best to assure everyone of the compatibility between science and faith. The church had some huge arches, big paintings, and a lot of neat stuff to look at, including some sort of star chart on the floor. We couldn’t really figure out what it represented.
This is one of my favorite pictures from the entire vacation.
We exited and wandered into one of the other national museums, but a much less impressive one. They had a lot of random stone fragments and, oddly enough, a tree that had been, presumably, planted by Michaelangelo but had been so damaged that only a few tendrils actually led into the ground. Weird. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but we did see another cat.
We rested back at the hostel for a bit then went out for a nice dinner, a big fancy affair for our last night in Rome and the beginning of our journey back home. We found a place down the street that had some nice set menus and sat down for a many-course meal. I had the fish meal, of course, and Jess had regular pasta and stuff, but between all the bread, pasta, salad, and dessert, and house wine, we felt very well fed and like we had capped off the city quite well. Cheers!
That was a really good dinner.
We came back to the hostel after that, relaxed and played rummy for a bit (Tie!) packed up our stuff, showered, and did our best to get to sleep before our preposterously early wake-up call the next day.
-N
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