Second Day in Rome
Sleeping… and Shopping.
Delayed in the morning, we revised our plan to visit the Vatican to the Piazza del Popolo, and then the Trastevere district afterwards.
Actual biking in the park
Okay, not really- rented rizcos and walked around the park.
Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions
Visited a museum on the way out, which recreated some of da Vinci’s inventions, including some that were based of a few of his drawings.
Dinner
At Da Poeta, in the Trastevere district. Evan got a headache during dinner.
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Sleeping… and Shopping.
We were super-excited to start our next day in Vatican City… but last night, Evan thought we didn’t need to set an alarm, since we slept at 10pm. Silly. I woke up when the housekeeper was trying to get in at noon, and remembered I mumbled to Evan, “it’s past noon.†I don’t think he answered. When I woke up later when Evan went to the bathroom, I asked him what time it was and he said 2AM, and I thought that was strange. I pushed off all the noise and the supposed housekeeper as a weird dream. We were still bothered that there was noise outside of our room at 2 in the morning, so I went to the window and said, “it’s light out.â€
Evan came up with a back-up plan about an hour and a half later, which was to go to the Piazza del Popolo, an
d the surrounding premiere shopping district. Sadly enough, I wasn’t much in a shopping mood… especially when I decided I couldn’t afford most of it. It was the best window shopping ever (although window shopping sucks as a whole). There were tons of people there, also window shopping. I’d like to come back and actually buy some really nice clothes and art, when I start making money… I guess that’s the downside to going to Europe on a student budget.
Actual biking in the park
We then went to a nice park (check out the gallery!) and rented “rizcos,†sort of bicycles in parallel. There was a decent-sized group of punk-rocker Italian teenagers, and lots of adolescent couples making out throughout the whole park. Supposedly there was Wi-Fi, but we couldn’t pick up anything really.
Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions
On our way to dinner, we saw a museum that made wooden mock-ups of some of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions and sketches. It was awesome to see ball bearings made during the Renaissance era; his version of the bicycle, the wings that he made to glide, weaponry, mirror room for artists to see every angle of a subject, etc. There was a print of his sketch that appeared in Ever After. We weren’t able to take pictures, which was a bit sad… but we’ll see more of da Vinci’s genius later.
Dinner
It was time to head off to dinner, and since we missed breakfast and lunch, we were uber-hungry. We went to the Trastevere district, which is very popular. We had bruchetta and pizzas at Dar Poeta (I had a pizza with mushrooms, parsley, and cheese, and Evan had two types of cheese and bacon). Evan’s headache started to escalate a b
it during dinner, and we went home afterwards. We actually walked across a good chunk of Rome, through what I thought were shady alleys and streets… but we made it to our hotel. Evan went to sleep while I tried to organize pictures and upload them, somewhat unsuccessfully. Evan found unsecured WiFi connection a few paces from our hotel and I headed over to upload pictures. It was a bit difficult standing up and typing, and my battery was dying… so about an hour, after the battery was going to die completely, I gave up and went back to the hotel. So really really sorry about ditching; we’re trying to make up for it, I promise!