Day 2: Rome

Our first morning in Rome starts out bright and sunny. I have some work to do after breakfast so we don’t get out of the hotel until almost 11 am. Our first destination is the Giotto show at the Victor Emmanuel Monument (Vittoriano).

We walk over to the Largo Argentina and hop on a bus…I have a plentiful supply of Rome bus tickets in my wallet left over from previous trips. The bus stops on one side of the Vittoriano so we have to cross the very busy street (taking advantage of a traffic signal) and walk all the way around to the other side where the entrance to the exhibit space is.

The show–Giotto and the Trecento (1300s)–is nicely mounted and has a lot of multimedia materials but unfortunately for us, it is all in Italian.

So we rent audioguides to help us get the context and the relationships of all the painters in the show. Unfortunately the audioguide is not all that helpful….a combination of not enough information and very technical, ponderous narration…and the exhibit is very crowded making it difficult to maneuver for good views of the pictures. There are some striking paintings and frescoes in the show but we feel that we have missed a lot because of the lack of English explanations….certainly our loss for not understanding Italian well enough.

Back on the street after the show, the day has brightened even more– the sky is blue and the temperature is wonderfully warm. The churches across from the Vittoriano stand out beautifully against the blue sky and fluffy clouds

We cross over and take a look at the excavations at Trajan’s Forum and Trajan’s Column.

We decide to walk back toward the hotel and have some lunch. En route, we discover some new (to us) buildings with a Liberty-style (Art Nouveau) open atrium

as well as some old favorite buildings like the stock exchange in the Piazza di Pietra–the columns are from the 2nd century Temple dedicated to the Emperor Hadrian

and the Pantheon. Yesterday when we walked past the Pantheon it was closed. Today we get inside for a look around and up through the open roof. This most perfect building is always one of our first stops in Rome - now know we are “home.”

We chose a place to eat–Trattoria Pizzeria Pasquino–so we can sit outside in the sun and get some Roman pasta specialties. However, after waiting for fifteen minutes to have someone take our order we get impatient and leave. We give up the sun but sit outside at another place just up the street–Ciccia Bomba. The pasta dishes are very good–gricia for me (cheese, oil and guanciale) and cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper) for Diana and we also have an excellent tomato bruschetta…..just toasted bread, flavorful tomatoes and good olive oil–simple but delicious.

After lunch, the weather gets a bit overcast, so we head back to the hotel for some work and some rest and in the late afternoon when the sun comes out again, we cross the Tiber for a walk around Trastevere. Our goal is to buy some cookies at Innocenti’s, a famous biscotteria, across from an apartment where we stayed a few years ago. We then meander through the quiet back streets of this old Roman neighborhood

and back across the Tiber to the Jewish Ghetto. We browse at Limentani’s, a famous old housewares store–like a Pottery Barn on steroids–and sit and watch the parade of Romans and tourists on the main street.

We have a great dinner and a very pleasant evening at Maureen and Franco’s apartment near the Colosseum and I borrow an “internet key” that I hope to be able to use in southern Tuscany because the apartment where we are staying doesn’t have internet access. Tomorrow we plan to go to another show….this one at the Capitoline Museums, devoted to Beato Angelico, the Renaissance painter. It’s been a full, wonderful day in Rome.