Our 2nd morning in Rome we got a bit of a slow start. We went over to the French cafe again and had breakfast using our hotel vouchers. Their breakfast pastries and the service were great. It's almost like a mini holiday to Paris. :)
After breakfast we began our day of wandering around with no schedule. We started out by walking over to see the Pantheon. We had no idea that this was in such great shape and was so actively used. The building is estimated to be from around 126AD and houses several tombs of prominent Italians. It was built by Hadrian. The crowds at the Pantheon are thick but it's not too annoying. It is free to enter and they asked guys to remove their hats. Ladies didn't have to.
After the Pantheon we made our way through the twisting and narrow roadways of Rome. Vehicles and people were both squeezing along these corridors and there were constant stoppages of the traffic due to deliveries. The streets are lined with leather good stores, gelato shops, souvenir shops, pizzerias, and random other businesses. It's all pretty touristy.
We made our way over to the Trevi Fountain. This fountain was built in the 1700s to mark a significant point in the Roman aqueducts that brought water into the city center of Rome. Those aqueducts served Rome for more than 400 years. Along the way to Trevi there are an enormous amount of street vendors and people panhandling. The best thing you can do is act like you can't hear them at all. Just keep going. Don't look at them, respond to them, argue with them, justify yourself to them or anything. Anything you do to these folks will only empower them to engage with you and let them try out their deeply planned sales pitches.
So we made our way through this giant crowd of people, sales persons and panhandlers to take a look at the fountain. It was actually quite impressive and worth making the walk over to see. Another thing that is very evident when walking around Rome and visiting sites is that most people do not have manners or care about what you're doing. You have to be kind of aggressive at times to try to get a spot on a railing for a brief photo opportunity. Or if you want to make it down a path quicker than someone in front of you then you should be prepared to pass them. They won't move over or speed up. Often times we would stop to let people by or let them cross in front of us but then the flow of people would never end and nobody would let us go. So you have to know when to cut it off and get your own travels back on track or you'll be standing there forever. We wedged our way down to the edge of the fountain and took a couple shots and got out of there as quickly as we could.
After the fountain we decided we would head over to the Spanish steps. All of these monuments were about 10 minutes walking distance from each other and around 15 minutes from our hotel. When we got over to the Spanish Steps it was again super crowded and we got to the bottom of the steps and did some quick photos and got out. I took a few crowd shots to show what it is like around there.
We were pretty worn out from visiting those three monuments. We stopped at a restaurant down a busy but shady street. We had a few cocktails and some olives they brought us to nibble on. After the drinks we wandered home slowly and stopped into a few stores to check out the things for sale. We also picked up some gelato. I had an affogato which is espresso over gelato.
We went home and spent some time relaxing before dinner. For dinner we went to a place just a couple blocks away called Cantine Cavour. We had a bottle of Turus Chardonnay, grilled octopus, greek salad, cheese ravioli and I ordered a chili and garlic pasta but received a mussel pasta. The food was overall pretty good but the bottom of the mussel pasta had 2 hairs in it and I felt grossed out about that.
That is the end of Day 14.
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