Italy: Day 6

Finally, a morning where we had a leisurely breakfast! This time, we got to enjoy our bread (JJ really started liking the hard bread that they kept giving us while I still stuck with the croissants) and our cafe au lait. I'm really going to miss the great coffee here.

Now that we're experts on the public transportation system, we bought a bus-pass for the day and made our way around the not-so-easily accessible parts of the city. Our first stop was the Santa Maria della Vittoria where Bernini's famous sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, was located. We walked outside by the Moses Fountain,


and then, we hopped on a bus towards Campo de' Fiori. We got off by the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina and along the way to the square, we saw the biggest mortadella ever!


Once we got to the square, I had expected more but it really was just farmer's market. Some weird looking squash:


Moving on, we headed towards the Jewish Ghetto. Walking along the road by the Tiber River, we found the best parking job of the day


and the police directing traffic.


In the Jewish Ghetto neighbourhood, we had some of the best pizza in the city! Who would've thought that potatoes and eggplant on pizza worked so well!


Back out to the Tiber River, we saw Tiber Island,


the Temple of Venus,


and the Mouth of Truth. JJ did not get his hand bit off so that's good news heehee :)


Wandering further south, we found the site where all the taxis were parked because of the taxi strike that was happening.


And took a break by the Circo Massimo (where the World Cup celebrations, and numerous ancient Roman chariot races, were held!)


You can see the Palatine Hill behind the Circo Massimo too.


We stopped to check our map to see where we should go next (that map got a lot of use out of it!)


And headed to the Piazza del Popolo to check out a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit about his machines. It was cool because they had all these little wooden models of his inventions from his sketchbook and they included the helicopter,


studies of friction using these bearings,


and this mirror closet!


Continuing with our hodge-podge of activities, we went for a walk through the Villa Borghese. It was owned by a rich family but their actual house (now, a museum that you can only go to by reservation and it was closed on Monday anyway) was closed. Anyways, there was this pond where you can rent a boat and row around in it. It looked pretty slimy though...


Next, we wandered over to the Termini which is the giant terminal where all sorts of buses and trains stop. It would be where you take the Eurostar but we didn't this time. Inside, they had these shops and we saw a Nike store! Donna means "lady" in Italian so it was funny seeing it all over the place.


Around Termini, there are a lot of cheap eats and after days of Italian food, we really wanted some of the gyro fast food joints that we saw almost everywhere. In the end, we settled for a nice dinner of Italian food since it was our last dinner in Rome. It was pretty good but you can tell that it was priced for tourists. We both thought our dinner near the Trevi Fountain was much better (better prosciutto, better bread, better meats, better potatoes, etc) but it was still pretty decent.


And for the first night, we went back to the hotel a little early because our feet were so tired from walking for 6 days straight!