When in Rome, You May Get Wet

It's still raining. Sometimes a lot. And sometimes there's sun. I really swear that we left New England.

We had originally anticipated going to the Colosseum this morning and spending time in that area, but who wants to explore outside when it's raining (pouring, or just an ocean) outside. Instead, we made our way down the street to explore inside a very large and very beautiful church: Santa Maria Maggiore. I'm just going to put the picture of the ceiling down below and let that speak for itself. This church is special because its one of the first and oldest churches in Rome. You can tell by its flat ceiling and small windows just at the top. It has a piece of the manger of the Lord underneath its main alter in a beautiful statue display.  They also had confessions going on all the time. You just had to kneel right outside the confessional, which Rachel thought was really neat.

From there it was off to the Capuchin Crypt. Ever wanted to see several thousand friar's worth of bones decorating 5 out of 6 crypts? Yeah, Nick didn't either. But so far, it may be one of the more interesting sights that have been seen. We couldn't take pictures, but look it up for yourselves.

And yet somehow after looking at that many human bones, we decided it was lunchtime. Nothing particularly special at this location other than people watching Italians on their lunch break in a Wine Bar (honestly not as fancy as it sounds, but still decent. We had wine with our lunch since it was cheaper than getting a soda.


One observation about Roman pedestrians: They are crazy. They have absolutely no fear. We watched as  a group casually strolled out into oncoming traffic to cross the street. No one runs across the street, everyone takes their time, even when a car is about to hit them. I may have said it before, but this place is a bit like Boston, except smaller streets, crazier drivers and pedestrians and many hundreds of years older.

As the day progressed, we headed to pick up our tickets for the Papal audience tomorrow morning! Since that put us near the Trevi Fountain, we decided that was the next stop in the newest round of rain. It was huge! It was majestic! It was...very closed and empty for restoration. Rachel is smiling on the outside, but feels nothing but wet socks on the inside:

Afterwards, we decided to take a walk and window-shop for a bit. Which would have been more fun without the umbrellas, giant puddles and even wetter socks. We wondered for a while and got lost, suddenly finding ourselves in front of a giant old building. Rome is so filled with giant old buildings, this one wasn't even labeled on the map.  It was, however, close to a restaurant a friend recommended we check out, so we decided to continue out wet walk that way.

The restaruant turned out to be down a small dark street, no where we would have ever gone on our own. Something we have noticed about Roman restaurants is that they are all like the North End, only one or two small rooms with just a couple of tables. This one was no exception. The waitress was excellent and the food as amazing as the hype.  So is the wine. We both finished our pasta dishes but they didn't leave you overfilled like American food usually does.  Our stomachs were happy the entire walk back.

Still no Gelato. It's hard to eat in the rain holding an umbrella. We will be making up for it tomorrow.