When I woke up this morning, I did not intend to have anything go as planned, much less actually see anything interesting today. I was TOTALLY wrong...

I actually woke up pretty late again. I think the 2 or so weeks of intense touring is finally starting to slow us down, so it was refreshing to take our time and understand that we might not see everything we wanted or planned to do today. Abhinav and I decided that it was best to just wander the streets of Rome, at our leisure, and take what it gives us in stride. I'm so glad we did this!

After taking nice showers, we decided to make our way towards the Pantheon. We took the metro as usual, but we realized that it was Sunday as soon as we went underground. There was barely a single soul in the metro station. Sunday mornings are exceptionally lazy in Roma :) We got out at the Termini station and got lost looking for bus #40 or bus #64 to take us to the Pantheon. Eventually, we got our bearings and managed to get onto to the express bus #40 that dropped us about 5 minutes away from the Pantheon. We got lost on our way a little once again, but it didn't bother me much, surprisingly. The weather was gorgeous and I was just happy to be out and about in Italy.

We were very hungry by this time, so Abhinav and I made up our minds that we would try Miscellanea, a restaurant that faced the back of the Pantheon and catered mainly to foreign-exchange students. Interestingly enough, there aren't a lot of students at this place since it comes highly recommended, especially by our Rick Steves' Italy guidebook. We wanted to eat inside and got a very nice Indian waiter, who directed us to a private corner table, away from most of the crowds. We immediately ordered two Italian espressos, which is going to become a staple of our diets since they are delizioso! I went with a roast turkey panini while Abhinav ordered a lasagna. We also had to order bruschetta al pomodoro as well :) Food is most definitely becoming the main highlight of our trip.

We met Rick Steves at Miscellanea in Rome!

The food was pretty good, nothing to write home about, but the amazing part was how our Rick Steves guidebook singlehandedly allowed us to have one of the coolest experiences in Italy. We didn't know this, but if you have this particular guidebook out on your table, you get a free glass of "sexy wine,"(see image above) which is made from a tasty strawberry-flavored grape and made exclusively by the owners of the restaurant. While we were enjoying our meal, the owner of Miscellena decided to pay our table a visit because we had the guidebook out on our table. He walked over, pointed to the guidebook, pointed to a man sitting a table away from us, and said "Rick Steves." We looked over, checked the picture on the back cover of the guidebook and, sure enough, it was him! We were star-struck as Mikki (the owner, very friendly guy) personally took us over to Rick's table and introduced us as one of his readers. I'm sure he gets this all the time, but he was still very patient with us when we asked for his autograph and a picture with him. He introduced us to his TV crew and told us he was shooting an episode for his show in Rome! It was really nice of him to acknowledge and take the time to get to know his readers. Abhinav even made it his facebook status :) I think he might tweet @ricksteves later too. We headed back to our table after taking our picture with Rick Steves, paid for our delicious meal, and then left, slightly bewildered by the fact that we just met the author of our guidebook, lol.

Chaos at the gelateria. Can you spot Abhinav?

We decided that we had to finish off our meal with Italian gelato so we consulted our trusty (now autographed) guidebook and chose Gelateria Caffé Pasticceria Giolitti to go to since it was close to the Pantheon. It was a madhouse in there. The crowd was more intense than the Colosseum for us, because the Roma Pass didn't work inside this little gelateria :( Here's a picture of the mayhem and Abhinav squeezed into a corner trying to get our order of two small cones. In the picture, you can see the ridiculous number of cones they have stacked on top of each other. I thought the cones were delicious, but Abhinav disagreed.

We ordered two piccolo (small) cones, which were HUGE. We each got two flavors on our cones. I got tiramisu and chocolate fondue while Abhinav got chocolate and mango. All of the flavors were delicious and it really was worth the chaos to taste the gelato that they made at Gelateria Caffé Pasticceria Giolitti. For the first time ever, Abhinav finished his ice cream before I even got half way through mine. That is definitely a testament to the deliciousness of this gelato. We sat underneath the portico of the Pantheon (which is casually called "Rome's umbrella") so that I could finish off my gelato. Once we got inside we actually realized we weren't allowed to do that. So, for future reference, don't eat underneath Rome's umbrella when you're in Rome.

Another thing to mention that we've been meaning to include in this blog: Italy has white pieces of stuff that float around in the air. I know that's a pretty terrible description, but I can't really think of anything else to really describe it. I think I might have gotten some of this in my eye outside of the Pantheon and it was not fun. But, the gelato made me feel better :)

The dome at the Pantheon

I think I've talked enough about the amazingness of the gelato. Now, on to the main topic of consideration: the Pantheon. This structure is gorgeous because it's not a "ruin." It's the best preserved interior of any of the ancient Roman buildings, so you can actually see and get an idea of what people felt when they walked through the doors to enter the building. If you want proof of its authenticity, you can actually see how the rest of the more modern buildings surrounding the Pantheon are elevated in comparison to the structure, which makes the ancient dome appear sunken into the ground. In actuality, the surrounding buildings are built on about 2 millennia of rubble.

Another reason why the Pantheon is interesting to see is its architecture, especially the massive dome that it has as its ceiling. For a very long time, no one really knew how the Romans built the ceiling. It was the biggest dome until the Renaissance. The Sistine Chapel is actually a little narrower than the dome at the Pantheon. During the Renaissance, they cut out a small block of the dome (you can see where they took out a portion of it when you visit) to figure out how it was constructed. That's a cool tid-bit of information that we got from our guidebook.

Raphael's tomb

The Pantheon is also the resting place of Raphael and the first two Italian Kings. I tried my best to take a good picture of Abhinav with Raphael's sarcophagus, but it was to no avail, unfortunately. This was the best that I could do, though. We didn't fare much better in any of the other structures in the monument also. There were numerous sculptures and Christian paintings, since the Pantheon was actually converted into a church (it's the reason it was left alone and wasn't pillaged).

After learning an excessive amount of history regarding the Pantheon, Abhinav and I (well, mostly me) were tired. So, we used our Roma Pass, didn't pay a dime, to get on the metro to head back to the hostel and rest up. It was a nice little one hour break before we decided where to go visit next. It was a toss up between the Capitoline Museums or the National Museum of Rome. Here's where our cheapness really shines through: we decided to go to the National Museum of Rome because it was the more expensive out of the two and we would get free admission using our Roma Pass. This way, we would really be getting the most out of the pass. So, after a short power nap, we headed off to the National Museum of Rome. Since it was a 10-minute walk from our hostel, we didn't have to take the metro and it was super convenient.

The dinning room!

The museum had a wealth of information on the statues and frescos of the wealthy citizens of Ancient Rome. We saw a copy of the famous discus thrower and took a picture next to it (see above). The coolest part of the museum for me was the recreation of a house of a wealthy Roman citizen with the original fresco walls and mosaic floors laid out where they would have been during those times. You could walk through the house and get a good idea of what it may have looked like back in the day.

Another ridiculously cool thing in this museum (Abhinav's favorite part), was a world famous coin collection of Italy's coinage. It was very informative and they had cool little movable magnifying glasses to observe the ancient coins in detail. Unfortunately, most of them didn't work very well, but the concept is pretty cool.

After perusing the enormous coin collection, we made our way back to the hostel in under 10 minutes tops. So, that was our awesome day in Rome. Tomorrow, we're going to see Vatican City super early in the morning so we need to get our rest. We'll keep you posted on our adventures tomorrow after our day touring the Vatican!

Abhinav liked the awesome coin collection at the National Museum of Rome! Can you see the movable magnifying glasses in the coin display cases?