Dial C for Classy

The goal for today was to hit the odds and ends that we hadn’t seen yet. After breakfast we walked over to the ancient part of the city (well, the major, excavated part) to check out the Capitol building and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The building is massive and impressive and there was a nice treat – the museum inside is free, and so is entrance to the church up there. The main exhibit was about Italy during the late 1800s up to WWI and the bringing back of the Unknown Soldier, so that somewhat rounded out our knowledge of Italy. Ancient ruins first, the 16th – 19th centuries mainly yesterday, and the 20th century and on today. Not that the instruction was super extensive since the exhibit was mostly in Italian, but still. There was also an exhibit in the midlevel of photos taken by different photographers of different Mediterranean countries, which was nice. My favorites were from a guy named Ivo. A few floors (and another small exhibit with a really old recording of an exuberant Italian song) later, we finally reached the exit and set off towards the Pantheon.

Happily, it was not closed today! Admission is actually free as well, which is awesome. The Rick Steves audioguide was cool to listen to again, so I’m glad we brought those. The building itself is pretty intense – the dome is as wide as it is tall, 20ft thick at the base and 5ft thick at the top, mathematically perfect before calculators and computers and formal engineers. Steves noted that this year is the 1400th birthday of the Pantheon being a church, I think – it’s about 2000 years old in all. Some of the decorations have changed, and it’s officially gone from a polytheistic to monotheistic crowd, but it is essentially the same as it was in Hadrian’s time. Pretty cool. And watching the sun stream through the hole in the dome is very picturesque! As a bonus, Rafael is buried there, and some kings. A pretty classy place.

We relied on Steves again for lunch, going to one of his recommended places (Miscellanea) because he suggested we would get fragolino if we set the book out on the table. I don’t think we would have stopped there without knowing that bit of info, because it was jam packed and the food didn’t look super awesome from the menu. But eventually our food came, it was massive and good, and sure enough, we got two little glasses of fragolino at the end. Hooray! It was lighter and fizzier than the one at the Osteria but it was refreshing and smelled pretty much the same. Not sure how they got around whatever laws surround it, but we picked up a bottle just in case we don’t have the opportunity again. Pretty exciting!

Killed some time shopping, waiting for the churches to open back up from their midday nap. Peter had wanted to go to the church of Saint Ignacio but wouldn’t tell me why, so finally we got in (no fee yay!) and I figured it out. As you walk in, the first fresco has a lot of perspective and adds the illusion of another floor up there, but it’s pretty obvious that the ceiling is only curved. There is one darker circle ahead, though, that is painted in such a way that you completely don’t notice that it doesn’t lead up into a domed ceiling until you’re right underneath it. Very clever! It looks like it really needs some cleaning but it tricked me even without it. Optical illusion church, very good. The rest of the place is none too shabby but I guess they wanted an extra something. By the entrance they also have wooden replicas of a lot of famous churches, which was cool.

The last stop in this area was San Crispino, a much-lauded gelateria near the Trevi fountain (which was near some unsuccessful attempted shopping we did). They are the ultimate in gelato purists, using no artificial ingredients and serving only in cups, as the cone might interfere with the flavor of the gelato. We tried honey, melon, raspberry, blackberry, chocolate and straticcella (that would be three cups…) and they were all very good. They succeeded in freezing honey, something that the grade-school me with an ice cube tray of cold but unfrozen honey appreciates. I have to admit it wasn’t as tasty as the blackberry or the chocolate, the two winners this time, but it was novel. Full, we headed to the subway and negotiated our first post-Roma pass entrance to get home. I’m pretty impressed that we did so well without the Roma pass today – I was worried we’d hit a bunch of things we’d have to pay for, but apparently not. Given, one of the museums takes Mondays off for some reason, but still, the lack of a metro pass was the bigger loss.

After a long nap and a good shower it was time to eat again, but after sweating all day in capris (so the churches wouldn’t get angry looking at my knees) and needing them for our travel day tomorrow it was decided to do another load of laundry. Very exciting I know! But it gave us an opportunity to go back to the big supermarket, where Peter decided we would eat dinner. We got some meat rolls from the ready-made section, some yogurts, and some prepackaged tiramisu. The meat we ate while walking back to the Laundromat – very romantic? – and the rest we ate on the steps outside, waiting for our clothes to dry. Our last night in Rome, watching the moon over the Italian streets and drinking yogurt like hobos without spoons (actual hobos are probably more prepared). We then took our laundry, went back to the room and used some cookies we had bought previously to spoon out the tiramisu. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know how many calories that was but it was pretty good at least. The whole dinner elevated us to a whole new level of classy traveling, but it was pretty entertaining. After that was some packing…I’m glad we took the suitcase now, as it’s full of fun stuff. We also finally booked the rest of the hotels for our trip – one entire expenditure finalized! I suppose we are drawing into a close, as we’ll reach our last country tomorrow. But we still have a week or so. Pretty exciting – but it’s superlate, so time to sleep!