Sunny Saturday in Rome

Saturday, October 8

What to do on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning in Rome?  Well,  one of our favorite things--a market!

We needed to buy a few groceries so we could cook our evening meals in our apartment, so we decided to start our day at the Campo di Fiori Market.  It’s a daily market where the locals shop for fresh fruit and vegetables, and just about everything else!  The produce vendors are a daily fixture, but other booths change each day.  On this Saturday there were a few clothing vendors, a beautiful flower booth and a vendor selling lots of great kitchen items, none of which I had room for in our luggage, darn! 

There are also 3-4 booths that cater to tourists, selling dried pasta, balsamic vinegars, olive oil and the ever-tacky naked “David” fridge magnets, undershorts and aprons!  I confess I wanted an apron with naked David--but MY David was not amused!  He did mention something about posing for one, though........

After buying some fresh items and passing up that cute apron, we walked back to our apartment to drop off our purchases.  We had a quick bite of lunch--a shared pizza again!  (We both agree that after this trip, we won’t be eating pizza or pasta for a while!)


Our plan for the afternoon: Use our trusty Rome Tourist map and see the "high lights".

Along the way we each found our "dream" cars:

 Isn't this the cutest little Ferrari? It just had "Di" written all over it!

And we just happened upon yet another beautiful church, the Chiesa Santa Carlo Il Cantinari, built in 1638:

Although the exterior wasn't too impressive, the baroque interior was stunning:

At the top of our must-see list today was beautiful and iconic Trevi Fountain.  We had a lovely, intimate moment--right there with about 1000 other tourists!  And yes, we threw our coins into the fountain to ensure a return trip to this wonderful ancient city! 

Here we are, smooching at the fountain:

 Then laughing at ourselves for being silly:

We wormed our way out of that crowd and set off for the Spanish Steps.  I confess, I don’t understand what the big deal is, but the other few thousand people there must know something I don’t!

Then we meandered our way over to the Pantheon--this is really an interesting place, historically.  We wanted to go in for a look, but mass was starting, so we decided to go back another day.  Here’s a pic of the exterior:

Piazza Navonna was next on our list.  It’s a huge piazza with two wonderful fountains, and many artists selling watercolors and prints.  There are restaurants all around the piazza, and a lovely church that we toured.  Here are a couple of pics of the fountains.  

Before we left the Piazza, we decided it was gelato time--the flavor of the day: chocolate and nutella.  Pretty good stuff!

We took the long way back to our apartment (that’s a nice way of saying we got slightly lost!), and cooked a yummy dinner of fresh gnocchi, David's new favorite.  We added some fresh green beans with garlic and some crusty bread, and we were stuffed!  Oh, and don’t forget that delicious red wine!


We’d read that the Colosseum was very pretty at night, so we thought an after dinner stroll was in order.  It was a nice warm evening, and we walked the three short blocks to the colosseum and admired it all over again.  It IS very pretty with lights, but it doesn’t twinkle just for us like the Eiffel Tower does!  Here we are:

After taking a few pictures, we slowly walked back towards our apartment, taking a small side street that looked interesting.  We window shopped a few interesting artsy shops, and checked out some menus at restaurants.  


As we got closer to our apartment, we heard lots of noise--a big crowd had gathered on our street.  How lucky are we??  It’s a block party, Italian style!

And those Italians know how to party-----

There was a band of old Italian gentlemen, marching and playing their instruments:

There were young, handsome men in tights marching in a procession.  They were playing very loud drums and carrying flags which they tossed in the air.  They had quite a routine:

Just listen to those drums:

And a procession of couples dressed in very fancy medieval costumes:

There were also food vendors, and we bought a nice big glass of delicious sangria to sip on, mmmmmm good stuff!

A big stage had been set up at one end of the street, and soon the speeches started, none of which we understood!  We had no idea what the occasion was, but it was FUN!

After the speeches, the live music started.  It was a group of three very talented musicians--a guitar player, lead singer, and a really cute guy in leather pants and a cool snood!  The cute one could rally play the fiddle! They played and sang for over an hour, and it was great music.  The crowd was very enthusiastic, and seem to recognize many of the songs, singing along!  It was almost as much fun watching the crowd as the musicians!

Be sure to play the video below to listen to their music!

What a lovely surprise ending to another great day in Rome!