It was still hot as hell. Nothing changed. Why should it? It was Rome in July. Anyway, Joyce remarked that on our last visit, eleven years ago, we always took the Metro. We might still have taken it had the weather been agreeable. It's not all that far to walk to the Termini station. But it was really too hot. And don't forget the aging and the blister, and oh, yeah, the three weeks we were on the road already.
So we go there, and right away, Joyce had to have coffee. Not really unreasonable. We never, ever could get the coffeemaker in any of the rooms to work. We just flat gave up on that. I don't need any coffee; I got off caffeine altogether in Kenya and never went back, and even then, it was Diet Coke, not coffee. So we sat in a cafe and had coffee (American for her, cappucino freddo for me) and watched people for a while, and there were a lot of them, too. And I started feeling better, just like any other time I wasn't in the hotel. I would enjoy Rome every day until we went inside the hotel. I mean, we stayed there instead of going straight home because we love it.
Lotsa people.
And weird stuff like this.
And nuns. Yes, Joyce got hold of the camera again. I almost never take pictures of people unless it's unavoidable, and I don't like stupid stuff like the suit of armor you can wear to have your picture taken. None of that. I hate it when she asks people, especially waiters, to take our picture. Maybe you've noticed we have a lot of those. I'm not sure why, but it irks the crap out of me, and moreso on a day after a night like we had just had. But I gritted my teeth, and as you see, we have the pictures to prove it.
Well, luckily, the Pantheon is quite cool inside, crowds notwithstanding. The pictures we took in there totally suck, but there are a couple of salvageable shots. like the Oculus:
and the unbelievable travertine floor.
There's a bunch of tombs but they didn't come out so well. So go see them yourself!
I always wondered what happened in the Pantheon when it rained. So I looked it up, It gets wet! It rains right in, and they rope it off so people don't slip and kill themselves. There's a special drainage system for runoff under the floor. Solved that mystery!
So I had a map and the Piazza Navonna was only about three blocks away. Too bad all the monuments were lined up facing the wrong way on the map, causing us to go in the opposite direction. But while lost, we had yet another wonderful amirena gelato, and Joyce couldn't resist taking a picture of Our Lady of the Motorcycles.
Snappy, up-to-date Radisson BLU paint job.
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