A home cooked breakfast and we were out the door greeting more blue skies!
We wandered over the bridge to Piazza Navona where we had our first espresso for the day (Todd's favourite part!) One our way though we decided to walk into a church and were just so blown away by the roof. These incredible paintings ... covering the roof .. almost coming down from the ceiling.We came home and googled it and it was something like 14th on the list of things to do. It was called the Sant'Ignazio Church.
We were disappointed to find the Trevi Fountain under repair and boarded up. I guess in a city this old there is always going to be repair going on.
We kept walking until we made it to the Vittorio (or the 'wedding cake building' as Mandy and Graeme say!)
It is so bloody huge ... we stood for a while soaking it in and then decided to walk around it to make our way to the Roman Forum. We stopped for some fruit from some vendors on the way and then walked until we made our way to Palentine Hill. I loved the tilted pine trees that seem to be 'classic Rome'. We spent some time walking around up the huge hill for a view back over the Colosseo.
Hard to believe that it's still standing ... we had an audio guide each and wandered around. Very grateful to see it with a big blue sky backing it!
We took the metro then over to St Peter's Basilica and found our way to the square. After a bit of a hunt we managed to get two tickets to "see the Pope" .. for his weekly general audience. We'd heard you could get tickets from the Square and we were told to go and see the Swiss Guards. These purple, jester looking men then asked us if we had a reservation ... "Um, no" so they reached in a small hole in the wall with a little door and handed us two purple tickets. VERY Willy Wonka ...
That night we ate at the osteria next to our apartment in Piazza S.Giovanni della Malva. A hilarious meal due to our lack of Italian and their lack of English but we ended up with a litre of wine and a really lovely meal. Probably the best meal we had in Rome??
A walk through Trastevere at night afterwards to work off a huge meal (and a litre of wine ...)