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| The wonderfully touristy Fontana di Trevi. |
Our last full day in Rome was dedicated to exploring the
main touristy haunts of the city centre, starting with the annoyingly crowded
Trevi Fountain. If you’re not aware, the story is that you take a coin in your
right hand, back to the fountain, and throw the coin over your left shoulder
into the water, wishing for a safe return to Rome. If you’ve done this before
and you are back, your safe return has been granted, and so you now wish for
something else. But apart from the coin-tossing tradition, the carvings of the
fountain are quite spectacular. It’s hard to get a good photo of it, with the
crowds around, but you can, relatively easily, get close enough to appreciate
it.
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| This guy was standing in the Fountain the whole time we were there. He just stared out at the crowd as if to say "What the HELL are all you people doing at my house?! Get out of here, I say!!" |
We walked in the direction of the Pantheon, stopping off
for lunch, grabbing some choices from another set menu option. Shortly after we
sat outside, it started to trickle with rain, so we asked to move inside. We
had to wait a bit, but we got a table and refuelled to continue.
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| A delicious lunch, topped off with a wonderful tiramisu. |
The rain cleared up and we continued on to the Pantheon’s
plaza. A line to get in stretched quite a way, snaking around, but it moved
quite quickly. The Pantheon is the oldest stone structure in the world still
standing. Entrance is free, so there’s no reason to not visit! I had heard a
story that, during one of the wars, a bomb dropped through the hole in the roof
during a church service, but it didn’t detonate. I’m not sure if it’s a true
story, but pretty incredible if so!
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| The Pantheon. |
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| Beautiful interior of one of the best-preserved Ancient Roman buildings. |
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| Amazing attention to detail. |
From here, we headed south towards the river, passing by
Largo di Torre Argentina. Reportedly, ths is quite close to the location where Julius Caeser was killed. Et tu, Brute?!
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| Largo di Torre Argentina. |
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| Teatro Marcello. |
We followed the road by Teatro Marcello and
eventually arrived at the Bocca Della Verita: the Mouth of Truth. This large
stone disc has carved upon it an old man’s face, complete with nose and mouth
holes. The story goes that you place your hand into the mouth and tell a lie;
the mouth will know that you’re lying, and will not allow you to remove your
hand. But everyone just lines up and puts their hand in the mouth (or nostril)
for a photo before being ushered along. We were probably about 100 back in the
line when we joined, but were done within 30 minutes or so.
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| Do you dare tempt the Mouth of Truth? |
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| Who dares wins! |
After tempting fate, you can visit the church at which
the Mouth lives, also home to Hadrian’s Crypt. We didn’t do so, as it was
getting late and had been a long day already. We instead made tracks for home,
passing by what remains of the Circus Maximus, where chariot races would have
taken place 2000 years ago, and arrived at the Colosseum metro to take the easy
way home.
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| What's left of the Circus Maximus. |
The next morning, we got up and just took our time. We
needed to check out by 10:30am, but our AirBnB host told us there were no new
guests coming for our room, so we could leave our luggage. We opted to just
wander around our local area for a while, stopping for a coffee and a pastry before picking up our bags about 1pm.
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| A tasty mid-morning snack. |
We
headed for Roma Termini, expecting to take the train to Ciampino airport, but
were informed it was only bus – Google Maps had lied to me! Nevertheless, we
found the bus stops about halfway along on the south side of the station. We
picked up tickets at a kiosk inside for €6 each (although there is a different
company’s service that’s slightly cheaper, but I don’t know how frequent
their busses are). The ride to the airport was 45 minutes or so, and quite
efficient. And so, we checked in and readied ourselves for the next
destination...
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