roma: day two

We woke up early on Sunday, our first full day in Rome - there were hardly any people walking around our neighborhood when we set out! We stopped at a cafe a few blocks from our apartment and had our first Roman cafe experience - it was a little hectic, but extremely inexpensive and with a friendly staff who didn't seem to mind too much that we paid after ordering instead of before because it was our first time and we didn't know any better! After our €1.20 (!!) cappuccino and €1 croissants, we started wandering north, eventually heading for the metro. It was nice to actually see some parts of the area we were staying in - we saw the old gate (Porta Settimiano), the Gianicolo hill that rises above Trastevere, and lots of winding streets.

















On the way, we walked over the Tevere, saw the fontana del mascherone (not sure of the English name, but you know...the weird, ancient sculpture), passed through the market at Campo dei' Fiori, and saw the cat shelter inside an ancient forum that I first saw back in high school! Maybe a half an hour later, we arrived at our chosen Metro stop! We were impressed at how easy it was to ride the train, how there were announcements saying which side of the car the next stop's platform was on, how often they ran, how clean the stations were...basically how much nicer things can be than our falling-apart excuse for mass transit!





About 15 minutes later, we arrived at the second-to-last stop on the line and got out. We hadn't heard too much English up until this point, but we didn't hear a word of it out here! We walked a few blocks from the metro station and arrived - at the Parco degli Acquedotti (part of the Parco della Via Appia, which we unfortunately didn't have time to visit!). And there were just a bunch of ancient Roman aqueducts standing in a huge field! With modern Romans walking their dogs and jogging and mountain biking on the paths around them. It was so cool!

















It was a big park, and we easily spent the first half of the day wandering around out there. Luckily! It wasn't sunny - there was absolutely no shade and it could have been super hot. When we reached the end of the park (we walked from the southern end all the way up north, seeing the various aqueducts) we took the metro back into the center of town and got out at Piazza del Popolo. It was juuust a bit more touristy than where we'd just come from! We wandered around and had lunch in a cute cafe before deciding to take advantage of the "first Sunday" thing in Rome.













All state museums are free in Rome on the first Sunday of the month! That includes the Roman forum, Colosseum, Capitoline Museums, Borghese Gallery, and a ton of other, smaller museums. We tried to get tickets to the Borghese ahead of time but they were sold out by the time we called. So we decided to go to a museum we didn't know much of anything about - but it was free! - Palazzo Altemps.













It's one of the four museums that house the state's ancient art collection - and it's all located in a Renaissance palazzo that Michelangelo designed part of (the courtyard, I think?). The rooms weren't super crowded with art, and there was hardly anyone there, even though it was the free admission day! The other really cool thing about it, speaking as someone who isn't knowledgable about or super interested in ancient sculpture, is that next to every sculpture there was a diagram that showed what pieces of it were original and what pieces were restorations. I had no idea that the ancient sculptures you might see in the Met or Capitoline museums can be such a mix of ancient and restored parts! It was really interesting - a figure might have its original head, torso, and left leg and a restored nose, right foot, and arm.

After that, we walked back over the river and hung out in our neighborhood until we got hungry for dinner and found a place a few blocks away. I had pasta all'amatriciana, which was new to me and so tasty! It's a tomato sauce with bits of crispy pork cheeks. I read that it was a local dish to Lazio so I wanted to try it and I'm glad I did!! We shared an appetizer of breaded & fried baccalà (salted cod), which is also a Roman thing.

...And now I'm getting hungry, so I should probably go!