Asheville Wedding and Portrait Photography - Tuesday's Frog Photography: Roma: Day 2

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Roma: Day 2

Waking to the sounds of traffic, Mark and I ate a late breakfast (hard breads, cold eggs, and thick, warm milk) and then ventured out on the streets of Rome on day 2. A brief rain gave way to sunshine and bright skies in the morning, for which we were grateful. We soon discovered that the streets were not as far apart as they appeared to us on the map, which gave us the opportunity to take in many sights throughout the day.

Our first stop was at the Fontana di Trevi, or Trevi Fountain, which is apparently the most photographed fountain in Rome. We’re not quite sure why it deserves this reputation, but it iss certainly frequented by many tourists! Venturing on we enjoyed a rendition of “La Vie en Rose” from an accordian player who played under the Tempio Adriano (who knew that marble columns provided such good acoustics?)

Soon the Pantheon loomed before us, and we were able to enter the building even though there was a Sunday mass being performed. After admiring the gorgeous design and vast amount of marble, we headed on to the Piazza Navona. If you’ve seen the movie “Return to Me” I believe one of the ending scenes was filmed from this location. At any rate, it’s filled with artists displaying their paintings as well as pigeons and a miscellaneous statue or two. (It’s amazing how blasé one can become about statues when being surrounded by them all day!) We stopped for two hot chocolates (did I mention it was cold while we were there?) and some more “Spaghettio pizza.”

After lunch we crossed over the Tiber River and discovered that we were very close to Vatican City. Bypassing the many peddlers selling rosaries, knock-off Gucci purses, and what-nots, we entered the square overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica. We decided to send a few postcards from this location as well, since the Vatican Post is more reliable than the notoriously slow Italian postal service.

Crossing back over the Tiber, we continued back downtown to view more of the Roman ruins and rest for awhile (we’d been walking all day!). We noticed a large crowd of people gathered around the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II (pictured in the last photo from day 1) as well as several news crews. Later while watching (and attempting to interpret) the Italian news we discovered that the Monumento was the location of the wake of the Italian spy who was shot by American soldiers while attempting to rescue a journalist.

After wandering a bit more, and stopping at a small trattoria to warm up and eat dinner, we headed back to our last stop of the evening. Just as we set up the camera across the street from the Colosseum it began to rain again, but after cleaning off the lens a few times I think we got a pretty neat parting shot of Rome.

Labels: Italy

posted by Joanna Bolick @ 9:43 PM

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