New Post After Two Days... Sorry About the Wait!

Sorry about the lag between posts everyone. I was going to do one on Friday night, but Adam, John and I became inexplicably lost on our way home from the Colosseum. We went through some nice neighborhoods... And then some places that have seen better days. They were not bad neighborhoods, pretty much just abandoned in a really creepy post-apocalyptic type of way. (I'll have pics of it when I feature the work of Adam Aalgaard again.) That was really a new experience for me. That area of Rome is under some urban renewal, and just has some empty parts of it that not a lot of people go to, at least at night on a Friday night. Speaking of night in Rome, when I walked home from studio tonight at like 10 pm, there was a massive amount of people eating out and socializing at the local cafes and bars on Trastevere. (Note: A bar in Italy is just a place where they serve food, drinks, coffee whatever. More of a hang out place with food than an actual bar as we know it in America. Great places to pick up a cheap lunch on the go.) These places have seemed somewhat empty in the past couple of weeks, but Sunday night just must be the night to go out at 10 pm and grab a late dinner or just hang out on the town. Every time we have eaten out, it has been almost a ghost town. We are probably just eating too early...

In other new, the lady at the register of the Billa grocery store thought I was Italian! She only asked me like 3 things, and I had practiced answers for them but you gotta take heart in small victories along the way. And this was one. Look for a photo post later this week from Adam's camera. We went to a church where you weren't supposed to take pictures with a flash and my camera just wasn't having it. I will write more this week on churches and the mystery of the Italian lavatory.

Ciao!

A personal favorite of mine. Bramantes Tempietto... and only 1/2 a mile away!

Not sure what this is, but I think it is a fascist Monument. Something really more modern than Bramante.

Next door is this fountain. Not seen in the picture are the armed guards with big guns. I think someone important lives behind this thing (it is essentially a porch for a house that is hidden behind it)

A camera version of a Mexican standoff

Rome from the hilltops. The dome in the distance is St. Peters. It seems small in the picture, but it is huge and really, really far away. Did I mention it was big?

Mike finding the way home. At the bottom of the stairs is the Tiber river with across to the old city of Rome