It was hard to get going this morning, a little depression was seeping in. Randy walked over to see our next hotel and get some breakfast somewhere for us. He came back with a great breakfast from our current hotels' breakfast room, which the staff fixed for us. That was nice of them and the friendly gesture cheered me up a bit.
We walked to the H501 hotel to see if we could leave our bags until check-in and learned we could check-in now. Great, one less thing to worry about. We walked back to the hotel, got our bags, put our backpacks on, and returned to the H501 to check in. This is an unusual "hotel". It appears that this large building is subdivided a lot, with at least 2 different business on each floor. Several of them are mini-hotels with 3 rooms to rent. Our room was a comfortable size but the air conditioning may not be enough and the couch is stained. Maybe I'm being picky; I'm just so unhappy to be in Italy right now.
The elevator in this building, like every elevator I've been in in Italy, is tiny. And this one has two sets of doors. Both the outer doors and the inner doors must be closed, and if someone forgets to close the outer doors, nobody can use it. But it's a very quiet elevator; almost too quite. It doesn't make noise when it's working, it doesn't ding when it passes a floor and it doesn't ding when you arrive at your floor. Sometimes we had to just try to open to door to know if it had stopped.
The elevator shaft is a cage, without solid walls. We got settled in, then decided to go out again. I kept my mask on and avoided crowds. Since we were still in Rome, I wanted to revisit the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which we saw 23 years ago. It has a beautiful Michelangelo sculpture called Christ the Redeemer, plus a surprisingly charming dead saint under glass. Santa Wittoria is propped up in her glass coffin, well dressed, with her skull covered by thin gauze. I really, really wanted to see her again.
It was a long walk but we didn't have anything else to do today so Randy humored me. Along the way we stopped to get cold fresh water from one of the fountains (I called them the spitting lions).
We were constantly zigzagging to stay out of the sun today. Randy's GPS guided us but when it said we had arrived, I didn't recognize where we were. We were by a rough old wall and structure but I was sure that wasn't the church.
Then in front of me I saw the Elephant and Obelisk! Another one of my favorites from my previous visit. I was so glad to see it here - clean, cared for and in good shape. So that must be the church behind it...but it was closed for lunch so we turned around and realized that the rough building we had passed was, in fact, the Pantheon!
I had no idea we had walked that far. And to our surprise, people were going in. So we asked and yes, it was open without reservations. Wow! With mask firmly in place and keeping aside from others, we entered. This is such a lovely building, Lit only from the ceiling hole. But that is more than enough, and it gives such great atmosphere to the inside.
The center section was corded off, to keep people moving around the outer edge where the tombs are. I wanted to see Raphael's tomb and there it was, close to the ground. The spotlight is a nice touch but it doesn't photograph well. Raphael died young and requested to be buried here. He was so well loved that his request was granted, making him the first person to be buried here. His actual tomb is topped with a sculpture of Mary and baby Jesus. Since I was avoiding people, I couldn't get a photo of the whole thing but that's OK.
They have changed some things since our 1999 visit. There is a large area set up for mass, I guess; this wasn't here before. And I think there are more tombs here, but maybe they are just cleaned up.Wonderful to be able to visit this again!
Afterwards we went back to the church that I came here to see....and found it is completely blocked off for restoration. That was a huge disappointment; I doubt I'll come to Rome again and I wanted to see that little saint!I peeked inside but she was not there; no doubt safety stored away until restoration is complete. Bummer. Time to walk all the way back. We noticed that in some places those volcanic cobblestone are quite loose. The sand around them has been washed or picked away.
Nearby was a big pile of them with bags of sand, ready for road repair.
As we passed the Basilica De Santa Maria Degli Angeli we decided to stop and look in. Very, very beautiful church.
It has one of those timelines, created in marble, on the floor. Since it's all in Italian, I can't read it.
I loved this sculpture. Don't know what it is, but I love it.
For dinner we went to San Marco. The bruschetta was good but very spicy! They do pasta well so we had rigatoni with cheese and pork cheek, and rigatoni with sausage and tomato. And that's one day finished.
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