Friday in Rome

Here is the email I sent my family Friday night after we got back to the hotel.

"Today was good. We did a whole lot of walking again but did take the above ground train a little bit. Which was a nice change. We ate gelato three times again so that was great! I had mint and chocolate then cherry and mix berry I can't remember what the other flavor was I had...but I am sure it was good. It was a little cold so three gelatos was a bit much but you only come here once right

...today we saw lots of fountains and churches. There were some amazing paintings and sculptures in some of them too and the cleanings and architecture are not to be looked over either. Some churches have pews and some do not. There are often spots to light candles and kneel and pray...some times the candles are fake. We saw the Pantheon today. It is really old (around 126 AD) and is as tall as it is wide and is an almost a closed dome. I guess it took around another 2000 years before anyone could replicate it. It is amazing to think that I have seen lots of stuff that was here right after Christ was in the first century AD. 

We went to a church that Michelangelo designed I am guessing in the 1400s or 1500s not sure of his dates. It was beautiful. We had some good food today too. I had chicken in a Marsala sauce and then later a ham and cheese calzone, my favorite. I really liked the bruschetta and also a salad with tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella and olive oil that was amazing!"

We spent a lot of time walking on Friday. This was a good way to see the city and so you can notice all the small churches and fountains and such. Will had planned out our rout the night before so we followed that to be sure to see all the interesting things. As you can se we saw lots of fountains and churches with amazing art work inside. We also finally found the modern art museum, MAXXI before heading back to our hotel for the night.  

 The Pantheon is below and then there is a view of the ceiling looking up from inside followed by the front of the building.

We had lunch here and really enjoyed the small Trattoria and the food.

After we ate lunch we went to an open air market which was kind of like Hay Market in Boston. 

More fountains and churches including a few amazing paintings by Caravaggio and sculptures by other artists.

We finally made it to the MAXXI modern art museum and we managed to get one photo of the building before going in. There was a lot of architecture models on display as well as an industrial design competition and some videos as well.