Rome - if you want to. Day 1

 We did want to.  And, apparently, so did LOTS of other people!

First, we had to get from the station to our hotels.  Long taxi queue.  Gypsy cabs selling rides for ridiculous amounts.  $50 for less than a mile?  We walked.

We passed this guy on the way to our hotel

We checked into our rooms and headed straight out.  First stop, Spanish Steps.

We fired up a Rick Steves walking tour and worked it backwards.

Aquaduct-fed fountain at the bottom of the steps

The column of the Immaculate Conception

Trevi fountain - and a few other folk. Too many for Google Eraser, I think.

These sights are just like in the movies...plus a thousand people or so!  Moving on...

Galleria - 100 year old shopping mall - looks a bit like Penn Station Baltimore to me.

Galleria from the outside.  

6th century BC Egyptian.  taken after Rome conquered Egypt

Parliament - curved front to make it look larger

Pantheon

The holy hand grenade of Antioch?

A quick peek into the Chuch of St Louis of the French.  

On to the Piaza Navona.  Used to be a race track for training Coliseum events. 

Four Rivers fountain

The four rivers were the Danube, Nile, Ganges and Rio de la Plata (guess they hadn't figured out the Amazon, yet...)

Fountain a the other end of the piazza.

Pasquino.  From 300 BC. Worn out over the centuries for being used as a political speech "bulletin board".

This is Campo de' Fiori.  A couple things to see here.  This is the site where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death.  Also, the site of a Roman theater.  Columns from that theater are visible in the apartment building beyond the statue.

The statue is of Giordano Bruno.  A grouchy priest from the 1500s.  He wrote plays tweaking church morals, thought the earth revolved around the moon before Galileo.  Got tossed from Rome.  Went to Geneva and joined the Calvinists.  They tossed him.  Went to England. Pissed off the Queen.  She tossed him.  Went to Germany.  Lutherans excommunicated him.  Returned to Rome. Arrested by inquisition. Six years prison then burned at stake.  

A Renaissance palace, now French Embassy

Ancient granite basin in Piazza Farnese

We finish the walking tour and it's getting dark.  We are hunting dinner when Eris yells, "Wait!"  We wait.  We are just passing a restaurant one of Eric's colleagues recommended to him.

...So we eat! ...and drink!

Some night scenes on the way back to our hotels.

Tomorrow, the Vatican and other things...