8/1/12

Day after Vatican - By Jess

Today was all about getting to see some of the last bits of Rome before we headed off to Paris. We went off to the Pantheon to see one of the oldest Ancient Roman temples in the world, and one of the best preserved. The distinguishing feature of the Pantheon is that it was constructed from concrete, which the Romans later forgot how to make. It's a very big structure and it's mind boggling how they were able to construct it so many thousands of years ago. When we arrived there was actually a church service on, so we took a few photos and went for a wander. I wanted to get a ride in one of the horse and carriages that were congregated around the front of the temple. However, when I asked how much it was, the driver said "200 Euro", so bugger that! We went for a wander around some back streets and then wandered back to the Pantheon so we could have a look inside. It's a very pretty church inside, but it only took a few minutes to do a circuit.

Following the Pantheon we decided that some serious shopping was in order. Before that we needed lunch, so we headed back to the spanish steps nad had lunch at a first floor restaraunt overlooking the famous landmark. I had gnocchi and Andrew had traditional Roma pasta and both were pretty nice. It was lovely being able to look out over the fountain and the steps and just relax for a bit. After lunch we headed back to one of the main shopping streets and began looking for shirts and dresses. We didn't have much luck when it came to the shirts but I finally found a clothing shop with some gorgeous tops on sale. I bought a new dress and two tops, and we continued our shopping expedition. By the end of our shopping we'd bought some new socks and undies, then we headed back to our hotel to do much needed washing. On the way we wandered into a little museum which ended up being the front part of the recently excavated Trajan's markets. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the ancient market site and getting some beautiful photos of Rome at sunset. Eventually we made our way back to the hotel and we grabbed our bags of dirty clothes and headed to the laundromat, stopping to get a takeaway pizza on the way. We spend about 1 and a 1/2 hours doing washing, eating pizza and watching Inbetweeners. It was prettly late by this time so we headed back to our hotel to get ready for our very early start tomorrow.