So Many Churches, So Much Art on Ceilings

Our apartment guidebook has several walking tours so today we kinda followed one of them to see some of the great art you can see for free--your occasional Michaelangelo, Raphael, Benini, and Caravaggio, for example. While Lola's directional gene seemed to be dormant in Venice, it reappeared here in Rome, with the help of google maps. We started at Piazza Navona which is the closest Piazza to the apartment.

Lola and the Gargoyles

It's a cute piazza with lots of restaurants, gelato shops, and three fountains. It was too early for gelato so we went onto the churches. Some were closed but we saw 5 on the list and a couple that weren't included on the walking tour. The Church of St. Agostino has a famous  "scandalous" Caravaggio painting:

As you can clearly see, it is scandalous because the pilgrim's feet are dirty.

Since neither of us has degrees in art or architecture, we are surprised that of all the churches we have seen so far in Italy, we have seen stained glass windows only once. Also, although the domes of Rome are famous, we did not know many of them contain a smaller dome, like a skylight, within the large one. Also, from the many churches we saw today, we surmised that the Vatican must fund all the churches in Rome. They are clean, in very good shape, free, and there are no donation boxes like you see in the churches in Paris, for example.

We also saw the Pantheon as part of the walking tour. Again, surprised that it is free. No security--just walk in, roam around, walk out.

We had lunch at the Piazza Ignazio; beautiful day so we ate outside. We split a pizza and a salad which has to be annoying to the waiter but ours was charming. He even asked us whether we wanted some espresso or Jack Daniels after lunch. I am not a fan of pizza but the pizza here has very thin crusts so it's more like eating an open-faced sandwich than what I usually think of pizza.

One of the ceilings at one of the churches

We accidentally ran into the church of St. Andrea dell'Valle (something like that). We were surprised it wasn't on the walking tour list--it is huge and has the second largest dome in Rome, after the Pantheon.

After the long walk, we did a load of laundry. Well, first we had our first gelato. It was too cold in Venice but today was warm. It was delicious.

The washing machine booklet has directions in English which never seems to help. It started by saying to discriminate the types of laundry and got better from there.  The laundry took either 15 minutes or 3 hours--I don't know, I was taking a nap. Luckily, we have a towel warmer to put the clothes on so I believe they will be dry in under 48 hours.

We checked out some reviews of nearby restaurants and chose one called Taverna Lucifero. We accidentally went to the Cantina instead of the Taverna but it was a great experience. We were given glasses of prosecco when we arrived. We ordered a cheese plate with truffle honey for an appetizer. It was exquisite; who woulda thought. We're trying to cut down on all the time pasta so we had beef in ;a wine sauce with roasted potatoes. We were full after that but they gave us homemade limoncello and cookies. When they brought the check, they brought it on a plate filled with wrapped chocolates. I threw a couple in my purse for later.  We met a young couple from Denmark who were sitting next to us. They wanted to know what states we are from because they guessed Lola as East Coast, probably New York and me as East Coast but south, like Florida.  They said they learn English from 3rd grade on and also German, French, Spanish--whatever two they choose. Of course, they spoke to the waiter in English because no one speaks Danish. Even with all the language ability...to be able to guess American accents? I have never encountered that with 2nd language speakers--my ESL students often couldn't differentiate between American and British English.

It seems we are spending many more hours eating than we are touring but food, of course, is culture.