No breakfast today. Our host of B&B Chain Gallienus never got back to us about breakfast. We got up late and rushed to get ready so that we could still make it to the Pantheon before it closed. We tested the guide’s facts about the room being perfectly sized to view the entire room with one’s peripheral vision. We also looked at the oculus, which was also sized perfectly to support the dome structure. It has no steel supports, like they would have if they built it today. We also saw the tombs of the first two kings of Italy as well as the original burial place of the artist Rafael. After the Pantheon, we stopped at the pizza place our tour guide recommended called Montecarlo. Linda had the Montecarlo pizza (okay) and Andy had the anchovies pizza (good). We had to return to our hostel to switch rooms, which we still didn’t understand why. The accommodation is nicer, a private apartment. But it smells because it’s below surface level. We took the metro to the Spanish Steps. We both saw a guy on the metro get pick pocketed. We were torn as to what we should do, but the pickpockets were right next to us and we didn’t want to have a confrontation since we could’ve ended up as a target ourselves. When we got to the steps, we found out that the fountain there also was in the process of being restored. We sat there for an hour or so and bought semi-cold beers from the illegal street vendors. We ended up going back to the ice cream place to order/try more flavors. On our way back, Linda saw another guy get pick-pocketed. In fact, one of the pock-pockets may have been sizing her up since a local asked her for change when he obviously knew how the system worked. We tried to eat at the place our hostel recommended, Trattoria Vecchia Roma, but it was closed so we tried the Trattoria at the corner near our hostel. They overcharged us one euro and charged us two euro for table service. We wanted to eat at the pasta place David recommended but we didn’t want to travel far. It was called La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali. We also bought a couple bottles of wine and a corkscrew to enjoy at night in our hostel. We also stopped at Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore. It was probably one of the nicer churches we’ve seen so far.
Going on and on