Rome - Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Basilica di San Clemente

Monday we had planned to go to the Vatican, but had some trouble figuring out breakfast and didn't want to go late (ie after opening time). Also didn't want to show up at the Colosseum late. Same for the other big sites. And all the museums were closed, and the Appian Way was open to traffic. Ugh. So... it took us a while to figure out what we were doing. We spent the morning planning out most of the week. Then headed out for the Partheon. We determined that Bus 116 would take us right there. But didn't pay enough attention and were pretty much at the Vatican by the time we realized. A few buses later, we finally found our way there.

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The Pantheon was big. And round. And bright. The area right under the oculus was roped off, as the floor was wet from rain. All in all, it was a bit of a let down, as it was really crowded with noisy tourists. It was smaller than we expected. And it didn't feel like a temple or a church, what with the noisy crowd. And we were in a bad mood after our bus adventure. But the marble was amazing. And it is truly a remarkable building. We hear it is quite nice early in the morning before the crowds arrive, and hope to return at opening time another day.

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Next we walked to the Trevi Fountain, which is quite an impressive Baroque fountain built in celebration of the reconnection of an aqueduct from ancient Roman times.

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We finished off the day at the Basilica di San Clemente, which is kind of a typical (to our eyes) medieval (12th century?) church. The cool stuff is in the basement where they have excavated a 4th century church, and then further down there are a Roman house and a temple to Mithras. In the Roman house there was flowing water, labeled as a "spring," though we'd not sure it wasn't just storm drain water. There wasn't much in the way of captions, nor much to see except the empty ancient buildings, but we stuck around until almost everyone (ie all the groups) left and we had it all almost to ourselves. In the quiet, down at the bottom level it was tranquil, and kind of magical to be sitting there in an ancient Roman house beside a spring, beneath the old church, beneath the old church. We sprinkled water from the spring on each other (this seems to be becoming a theme on this trip) and generally soaked it all up.

From Rome