Gelato, Fountains, and Obelisks

Today we visited stuff that we set out to find, and stuff that we found by mistake. Rome is pleasantly compact, making it easy to walk from place to place. Which is also good since the public transportation isn't all that great. It's probably the worst of the cities that we've been in. So it's lucky that things are much closer than they look on the map!

Our first stop was by accident. We took a bus and got to where it'd be easy to walk up to the Trevi Fountain.

We walked up and found the Piazzo Navona with the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in the middle. There were also people selling art on one side.

These Egyptian Obelisks are all over Rome (there's 13 according to Wikipedia, 8 which were taken from Egypt after Rome conquered it).

From here we walked and found the Pantheon which was just around the corner. "It is the best preserved of the Roman buildings and oldest important building in the world with its original roof intact"-- according to my guidebook. It's technically the second Pantheon (the original burnt in 80 AD, , but this one dates from 125 AD. That's old!

There's no closed roof on it, but an opening in the middle of the dome.

I like their road/alleys here. It's nice to get away from traffic, and I think I like the novelty of European streets

We kept walking and finally found the Trevi fountain!

We didn't throw any coins in. Supposedly one coin ensures a prompt return to Rome (don't really need that), two will bring you love in the Eternal City (done), and three will bring about your wedding (also done). So we bought gelato with our coins instead (ok, so really with bills...)

I got peach and kiwi this time. I really liked it! You just can't think of it as ice cream, and it's good :) We sat on some steps and enjoyed our cold treats

There were police everywhere blowing their whistles at people. Not sure what the people were doing. Putting their feet on the railing I think. At least they're protecting it.

We walked up to the Spanish Steps next. They were slick so we were glad they weren't also wet. These are iconic steps, but we don't really see what the big deal is. Even the back story is kind of boring. They just needed a way to connect two piazzas and there was a competition and now there are steps...

At the bottom of the steps was a fountain where people were drinking from the spouts and cooling their heads and faces off in the stream. People were wading in it and sitting on the edge with their feet in. When in Rome, right? So we put our feet in. After we left we heard police whistles, so maybe you weren't supposed to do that...

It was so refreshing though! Ice cold!

From there we walked to the Piazza del Popolo. This was a massive Piazza! The obelisk in the middle used to be located in the Circus Maximus and was moved here. It was the Egyptian obelisk of Rameses II from Helipololis. It's also the second oldest in Rome.

I took 4 pictures from about the middle of the piazza to show just how big it was to stand in

I also found a hat! We bartered with them and got the price to 5 euro. Which we thought was good. At another stand the guy wouldn't budge from 15. We still haven't found one for Doug though yet.

Doug wanted to see the Circus Maximus so we took the metro down to it (we were on the other side of the city from it at this point).

There's hardly anything left of it which is kinda sad. Doug was pretty disappointed. The Circus Maximus is where the chariots used to race (think Ben Hur). Now it's just grass with barely a ruin left. We wouldn't have known what it was except that we knew where it was, or where it was supposed to be. It sounds like they use it for concerts once a month now. It's mainly been destroyed because of the buildings recycling the material for other buildings in Rome.

We walked past the Roman Forum again to get to our bus stop. I took more pictures since it was from a different angle. Plus you really just can't help but take pictures of ruins.

We came back and went grocery shopping since it was finally open. We got drinks, milk, soy milk, cereal, cookies, grapes, peaches, bread, popsicles, ice cream bars, spaghetti, sauce, and muffins. And some candy. We walked back to our hotel and went down to our pool to cool off and lay out. I read some from my Kindle and just relaxed. Then we came back and ate our ice cream and popsicle bars on our porch. We watched some tv and then made spaghetti for dinner.

Enjoying the sun!