My mom and I arrived in Rome around noon on a Sunday, the first day of a 10 day odyssey around Italy. I had first booked a hotel near the train station because I figured it would be convenient, but a friend of mine who has been many times talked me out of it. Thank you, Theresa.
We stayed at the HiSuite Rome, about halfway between the Pantheon and the Vatican, right near the Piazza Navona. It could not have been a better location. The whole area is a tangle of cobbled streets with sidewalk cafes and gelato shops everywhere you look. This is the view from my window.
Because of course on the first day in Europe you have to stay awake to get on track with the time zones, we took a brief rest and then went out to wander around. I was really surprised at how immediately and thoroughly I loved the city. For whatever reason, I've never cared much about going to Italy, but it didn't take long in Rome for me to wonder why in the world not. It has all of the main things I love: great food, deep and obvious history, and serious beauty.
For the first food, we got pizza. Good choice.
The yellow/pink/orange color scheme in Rome (and throughout Italy, really) gives it such a unique, immediately recognizable feel. Just perfect.
When we emerged out of an alley onto this ancient-looking building, I knew it had to be the back of the Pantheon.
The crowds made that pretty obvious as we rounded the corner.
The Pantheon has to be... I was going to say my favorite thing in Italy but honestly, it might be the best thing I've ever seen, period. It is so old and so perfect. Pictures of this place don't really capture the ancientness that is so obvious when you stand there and look at it. Ruins make it hard to understand that the people who lived in these cities two thousand years ago were real people, just like us, living in cities just like ours. The Pantheon makes that undeniably real.
There were unfortunately one billion people in the square. We kept walking.
One of my favorite things about Italian cities was wandering into random churches and being blown away.
I mean....
I have been in lots of old churches, but Italy's are the most impressive. The level of ornate detail is unlike anything I've seen elsewhere.
There were nuns and priests and monks all over the place.
Lots of Egyptian obelisks scattered around too.
The column of Marcus Aurelius:
And the Trevi Fountain, which is beautiful, of course:
but man, the crowds. Craziness. This thing isn't even that old!
On the way back to the hotel, we spotted some ancient ruins across the street and went over to check it out. Nobody was paying attention to this place at all. I googled it to discover it is the Largo di Torre Argentina and it is a CAT SANCTUARY. We perked right up and started looking for the cats.
There were a lot of them! The more we looked, the more we spotted. There are about 150 cats living there - the city spays, neuters, vaccinates and feeds all of them.
I could not get over the fact that this site of ancient ruins was sitting at the corner of a busy intersection and was FILLED WITH CATS and that nobody walking by seemed to care.
Then I googled some more and discovered it is also the site where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death. What.
Mercifully, it was finally late enough that we were allowed to go home and go to sleep.
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