Anyway, afterwards we set off to see the markets in the Travestere area. We caught the same bus as we did the night before and we made our way down to Ponte Gariboldi (bridge), got off and walked around to find where the markets were.
We did find it eventually and made our way slowly through the place, looking at some clothes and other stuff along the way, but not really serious with anything there. We turned about at one point and headed down a different direction.
We had found our way back to the main street from the bridge, so we walked back up that way and kept on walking to get to the Palazzo Nuovo. The place was very very nice. A real picturesque piazza with fountains and statues, artists advertising their stuff, and restaurants lining the place. We walked around, took some photos, but then headed down some side streets to find food. After a bit of a walk down some really nice, pleasant streets we made it to a place where we got paninis and Emma got pizza. Yum.
Our next stop was the Pantheon. Much much impressive than I remember from the last time we were there. The columns at the entrance were fantastic. Kate pointed out, and I was feeling too, that you could feel the history of the place, could see the many different people throughout the years that had passed through that doorway into the old temple/church.
It did kind of annoy me again of the fact that the Catholics just used whatever temples they found and either changed them into their own houses of worship, or stripped the precious materials from it. I thought that the place must have looked spectacular when it was intact. Now, it was injured.
Inside was cool too. The roof, with its dome and hole at the top, was lovely and amazing, and the church itself was quite cool. The tomb of Raphael was there and it had a fantastic slogan that was apparently found written with him.
We made our way then to the Trevi fountain. The crowds were there already but it didn't seem quite as bad as I thought it might be. The fountain and its statues really were spectacular; much more than I remember. The combination of carved stone and natural, raw stone was great. The water was blue and looked cool. We got some good photos in too.
One really interesting thing I noticed was that there weren´t those people scooping out coins any more. There were several police (well, seemed like tourist police) in the area, pointing out people doing stupid things, and obviously having put a stop to the coin people. Nice! It made sure the romance of the place was still there.
After we had enough of the place we walked to the Piazza de Spagna and the Spanish steps. So many people. Last time we were there it was late evening, winter and the place was relatively clear, not like this.
The steps were cool. It started raining after a while, and it got quite heavy. The crowds fleed to seek shelter. We stood in the raining for a while until it got a little too heavy and we joined the masses trying to stay dry. Luckily, this had left the steps totally clear so that when it stopped raining we rushed back down to take photos. Good job, team!
We decided then to find somewhere to get coffee. We wondered a bit around the area near the steps and eventually found a nice little place where we sat for a while to chat and drink. Em and I had iced coffees, which were quite nice and different from usual. It was more like a cold espresso than a big, made-up iced coffee thing we were used to.
After chilling, relaxing, and chatting we headed off, aimed at getting to the hostel where there were toilets. There were literally none in the area we were in!
After a couple of hours at the hostel just resting, and a bit of blogging, we went out for dinner. We found somewhere to get pasta. Em and I had lasagne; real Italian lasagne in Roma! And oh my god, it was fantastic. Definitely, one of the best if not the best one I´ve had. For dessert we had some tiramisu, also very good.
That night we wanted to find a great jazz place (apparently) called Stardust. It was in an area just down from Travestere, so we did our usual and caught a bus there. The place was nice and grungy, full of student types and similar. We didn't find the places we were looking for. One was closed and the other had moved to Plazza Nuovo. Oh well. Instead, we went to a place which was full of people and had good cocktails. We had mojitos. They were pretty good.
We hung around for a while, stealing a bit of wall to sit on when it opened up. We got chatting to some Italian guys and it was just fairly relaxed for the couple hours we were there. We left about 12, when Em and I were both a bit tired, i think. We caught a bus back (now that we knew what to do!).
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