One of my favorite parts of each city we visit are the walking tours. We get to spend a few hours walking the streets, people watching, and learning about some of the cooler places they have to offer. Today was one of those days. We started off at the market. Most cities in Europe have these and they remind me of the Fall Festival back in Franklin Indiana.
The Piazza Navona is pretty close to our apartment. We have taken late night walks in search of gelato in this square. The circular road around the fountains is the same shape as the race track that was built in 80 A.D. 25 feet below the current street level.
This fountain was built by Bernini and each of the four statues on it represent the four known continents of the time. The one falling back is Uruguay's Rio de Plata, and Danube is turning to look at the obelisk. Nile and Ganges are on the other side.
At this point it started to rain a little harder and we found refuge in The Pantheon which is actually open at the top of the arch. You can kind of see the rain coming through to the middle of the open space.
It also is the resting place of Raphael, one of the most famous artists of his time. We ave seen a lot of his work in various museums.
The first day we arrived in Rome, we unfortunately planned on walking to our apartment. The website had said it was 400 meters from the station. The website was wrong. We walked for about 25 minutes when we looked ahead and saw that the road we needed to take was blocked off by the Roman Guard. Seeing as we were tourists all carrying good sized backpacks, we didn't think we had a chance of getting through. After a break on the steps of some building, we found an alternative route. Today we found out what was being guarded. This is the parliament building along with an obelisk that was stolen be Augustus from Egypt.
We trudged through the flooding streets to see the famous Trevi Fountain, snapped a few pictures with rain splattering our cameras, told ourselves we would come back on a better day, then set off to find the Spanish steps. At this point mom took a group pole "Who wants to find the Spanish steps another time" the response "ME!" from us kids was immediate.
Soaking wet and chilled to the bone we turned back and spent the rest of the day thawing and eating chocolate.
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