The next morning, we packed up our stuff and headed from our second Rome hotel (the Hotel Polo – bah! No good!) to our third, a short distance away. (The Best Western – much better!) As we mentioned previously, we were bound and determined to see the Meridian Line at Santa Maria degli Angeli, and we knew that it was going to go off at 1:03 that day. We dropped off our bags at the hotel, and hightailed it down to the church, using a cab for the first time in Rome since we had been there.
We had missed this Meridian line three before, once by only a few minutes. Today, we saw it. And it was worth it. It was a lovely sunny day, and the church had beautiful light streaming in. An organ recital was just finishing. A fantastic experience all the way around. We made sure to email Sam, our friend from our first day in Rome, with the pictures.
From the church we made our way via city tour bus to the Campo di Fiori, an old marketplace dating back to the Romans and still in use today, although there was no market that day. We also passed by the Area Sacra, another huge ruin of what they think are three temples, before heading to a shopping district we had discovered during our first few days in Rome. Unfortunately, everything was closed, but it was fun to window-shop.
We had a quick Panini and waited forever for our bus to come again. We finally got back to our hotel (far away on the other side of the Villa Borghese), where we changed for dinner and caught a cab back to the center of town, the Piazza Barbarini. I had been planning to surprise Eric with dinner with our friends Dustin and Megan from Austin, who were also in Italy, but we had a mix-up in scheduling and unfortunately they did not get our message in time, so they did not meet us. We made the best of it, going back to the Da Olympio Restaurant which was close by and had been such a success our second night in Rome, and sat next to a couple (obviously recently engaged and already stressed out about planning the wedding) and a group of tourists from Whittier (really, the SoCal contingent is out and about on the Continent in September!) who were groaning with pleasure over the pasta, just as we had the first night.
One crazy but exhilarating cab ride later, we were back at our hotel ready to update our blog and make travel arrangements for the rest of our trip. We had reserved three days to either revisit a location if we wanted more time there, or to go somewhere new. By now, we had spent almost a week in Rome, which was fabulous, but we had seen more than we thought we would get to. We liked Florence and Capri both equally, but for different reasons. Frankly, we were too monument/museumed out to go back to Florence, and Capri was too far away from Milan, where we were flying out of on the 23rd. A few days of rest and relaxation were definitely called for. We had had a wonderful time, but our feet are (literally) swollen and our eyes are tired from taking in so many sights. We opted instead for two days at Lake Como, followed by one day in Milan before flying out the 24th to Paris.
