August 7th
Today we slept in and started our walking tour around 10:30am. Most every day we started our day around 7:30am so this was a treat. We had a flexible agenda and started the morning at the Spanish Steps for knock off handbags (for Suzi). No Luck though. Took the back streets and found the post office and stumbled upon some great stores. Suzi was very excited about this 🙂 We headed to Piazza Navona for the best panini, beer, and entertainment. This was the second time we ate at this small cafe outside and it was great the 2nd time too. Checked out two beautiful basilica’s, some obliesks and moved to Trastevere. A big hike, Trastevere is known as “the true and oldest Italiano ghetto”. We visited St. Maria of Trastevere and gave our feet a rest around 1pm at a great pub. Here we met 2 ladies from Scotland with whom we had a great conversation. We needed to get back to the Ferrari store, which we managed to miss several times. Matt really wanted a souvenir from this store; he ended up with a Ferrari red t-shirt. Matt had a Ferrari poster over his bed for almost his entire childhood. We concluded our fifteen mile hike at our hotel and took a small siesta and much needed shower. Did I mention that the weather is hot, hot, hot. We had dinner around the Fountain di Trevi at L’Archetto. We had a great Caprese starter, Pizza funghi (mushrooms), and spaghetti bolognese. There were several English speaking couples and the restaurant, which had been recommended to them as well. The tables were set up in an alley, which cars periodically went by. Very interesting. We had a great bottle of wine (Barbaresco). We had a fun conversation with a couple next to us which were from the country in England. Neat people, great food, wine made for a great night. We survived Rome and many had problems with the Gypsy’s. Thankfully we did not, having been very used to panhandlers in S.F. We caught the last metro, so we never used a taxi, only relying on our feet and the metro. On to Venice…