Today we had sort of scheduled a trip to Hadrian’s villa. But due to the previous days having taken their toll on us we decided to stay in Rome and have an easier day of it. As we were on a roll, we decided to eat in house again. Today’s French toast was huge. So big, I could not eat it all. Zuzi went Muesli, fruit and yogurt.

We took the metro to Spagna and climbed up, and then back down the Spanish steps. Did to tourist thing of taking Zuzi’s brag photos in front of Dior, Prada, etc. The later soon after dropped the blinds. We then headed off to the Piazza de Popolo. Another nice big piazza that is supposed to be symmetrical and has 3 Santa Maria churches on it. Two of them, the twin churches and a big obelisk sticking out of the middle of the square. It said somewhere that there were only 2 in Rome, sure I have counted at least 6. Unless someone keeps moving them around? So then we tried to see one of the churches. The first one was closed, opened at 4. So into one of the twin churches that was open. As it was raining and the legs were weary, it was also a good place to rest. Until the priest turned out the lights and told us the church was closing for lunch. WTF?! House of god my arse. What if you were half way through your 17 Hail Mary’s from confession? Sorry, you cannot redeem yourself as it is time for my lunch. Way to convert them lads. So after being thrown out of the church (don’t think that has ever happened before, Pubs yes but not a church. I was not even drunk). We headed down the Via del Corso where Zuz popped into a few shops for some retail therapy.

Then we cam upon the open church of St Charles. Turned out this was not in either smart book and was actually and Basilica. You’ve seen one church…..but wait. You could go behind the alter and look at St Charles’s heart, in a nice heart shaped vessel. Of course that was this places relic. Definitely original.

Then we realised we needed to backtrack a bit to go and find Augustus mausoleum, which was fenced off and the other monument (Augustus monorail) that we wanted to see had a big modern building built over it and a charge of 6.50 to get in. Bugger that, the catacombs were less that that and 20 times better.

>But on the good side, this route brought us to the Ferrari Shop. Cha Ching!!! Zuz finally got me out of there with the damage being contained to buying only one shirt. There were models that were 60cm long that would look great at home, except for the 7500 Euro price tag. I could have gone crazy. Next we went hunting for one of the lonely planet pizzerias and success. The only problem was that they were closing, as it was 3 o’clock. Bugger! That was going to be our loo stop as well. So we hunted and ended up at Piazza Navona. We were shown the way to the nearest loo a few streets away then Zuz had pizza from a road side stall as I went for some energy pills, smarties.

We crossed a couple of the bridges over the river and had a look at the St Angelo castle. We also had fun watching the finance police chasing the Indian and Asian hawkers. They even came over to a bloke next to us who video taped it and asked them to erase it. We walked up the road to the Vatican on our way to a lonely planet place Zuz had wanted to try for dinner for a couple of days. We got there and found that they had closed, so we ended up at a pizza Rustica. It was kind of like the place we ate at yesterday. This time a younger charismatic dude behind the counter. I had the cannelloni, Zuz had a chicken dish and some potato pizza with a beer and some red wine to wash it down. We were full, but still went back for seconds anyway. Seafood and smoked cheese pizza. Somehow we ate it all, only because it was so nice. A small bit of souvenir shopping at the station on the way home and I managed to find some room for a piccolo copetta of ice cream. So, why not? The ice cream is evil here. It is so nice, it is futile to try and resist.