Roman Holiday Day 4

On Friday we planned to go see the catacombs, but before we headed out there we decided to walk around the city a little. First stop: the Church of St. Peter in Chains which houses the tomb of Julius II and Michelangelo's Moses.


After that we strolled past the Colosseo and Forum again.

Here is Brian with a statute of Caesar Augustus.


And here I am with another shot of the Forum. It is beautiful even in the rain.


While we were wondering around in the pouring rain with only one functioning umbrella, Iain was snug and dry under his rain cover in the stroller. He slept through the whole storm. Since it was the middle of the day and we were far from where we needed to be, we broke down and bought another umbrella from the ubiquitous street vendors. We were haggling over the price when another one saw his opportunity and began walking towards us. Seller # 1 saw that too and quickly gave us the price we wanted. The free market is a beautiful thing.

These are soldiers standing guard at the Victor Emmanuel monument over the Italian tomb of the unknown soldier. Those guys are out there rain or shine, day or night.

Hungry and wet, we were glad to stop for lunch in a crowded little gelateria (ice cream shop). Here is Papa snuggling his boy!
And here is our ice cream. It was good, but not as good as the tartufo we had earlier in the week. It looks amazing though, doesn't it?

While the catacombs are within the city limits of Roma today, they were once on the outskirts and were pretty far from where we were staying. It took a metro ride, a walk, and a bus ride to get there. So you can imagine our disappointment when we arrived and found a sign saying they were closed! Thankfully, they were considerate enough to post a map showing two other catacombs in the area.

So we had a little walk through the rainy countryside to the catacombs of San Domatilla. Once we got there we got to a 30 minute guided tour.
There are over 100,000 people buried in just the once section of catacombs we visited. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I'm afraid I don't have any. The catacombs were pretty much just graveyards for early believers, but it was really interesting to see their faith reflected in their early art and in the way that they died and were buried. They weren't worried about taking treasures with them like people from other religions and they didn't worry about trying to preserve their bodies. It was so neat to be down there and to feel a kinship with those who have gone before.

We were delighted to see a rainbow when we emerged from the catacombs. This building is the roof for a chapel that was built into the catacombs later on.

When the sun came out we were amazed at the beauty of the countryside. We walked around for another hour or so before catching the bus back, just soaking up the sun and the scenery.


We headed back to the hotel early for a bit of a rest since we had decided to make the most of our last night in Roma by taking a walk by the Tiber and getting a nice dinner. Here is is Iain relaxing on the hotel bed, munching on a bread stick.

And now, here is the story of our last night in Roma. The first picture is from our hotel balcony. The big lighted building is Termini, the main train and bus station in Roma.

We walked and saw so many lovely things, but we weren't sure what everything was and it was too dark for the photos to come out well. These are the Boarium Temples.

And here is the fountain that is in front of them. The fountains at night were so lovely.


Across the street from them is a church with the Boca della Veritas (mouth of truth) in the portico. This is a huge cover or plate with a man's face carved in it. Legend has it that if you put your hand in his mouth and tell a lie, his mouth will close on your hand! We couldn't try it, so they place was locked, so now I guess all those questions I had for Brian will have to wait for the polygraph test.
Then we walked past the theater of Marcellus. This served as a model for the Colosseo. In medieval times, it was used as a fortress and there are modern offices in it now!


Here is a partial view of the Victor Emmanuel Monument. Everything was so pretty lit up at night and we had a great time strolling around taking it all in. Poor Iain. It was a bit of a late night for him, but he was a good boy.

One of many hidden piazzas. We thought about stopping here to eat, but we eventually decided to keep going. We had a great dinner just around the corner from here. I had fresh linguine with mushrooms and I can't remember what Brian had. We had an amazing dessert of what I think was ice cream cake with all kinds of syrups drizzled over it. Iain was a big hit with the staff as always. We stayed quite late, but nobody minded or was in any hurry to rush us out.

On our walk back to the hotel, we passed the Colosseo one last time.


It was a great night. It was our last in Roma and we will always remember it. We had most of the day on Saturday to look around and I will post about that very soon.