Day 12: Rainy, relaxed day in Rome

We slept in a little again today. When we woke up, we could hear the pellets if water hitting the shutters on our window. All of the excitement and motivation to go explore the northern part of Rome, left us. We lazily made ourselves decent enough to go to breakfast and regrouped. We decided to just walk around for the day; let our feet decide what roads to turn down. Thankfully, the drizzle had stopped by the time we left our B&B for good.

We ducked in and out of clothing stores, but with the sun shining, we decided to hit the landmarks we had originally planned to see today. We'll go back by them all on Sunday for photos, since I didn't bring my big camera out today. We wandered to the Trevi Fountain, which is so much bigger than I expected, yet it's tucked between two narrow streets. 

We continued on to the Spanish Steps, which honestly look so much nicer in the movies. There were hoards of people sitting on them eating lunch with flocks if pigeons and other birds overhead swooping down to hopefully get a bite. The Spanish Steps sit in the middle of the very nice shopping district so we wandered the streets and sat in Piazza de Popular (where Rome's original north gate stands) for a little while. 

After a bite to eat we headed towards the Pantheon--you pretty much just follow the bottleneck of tourists once you're a few blocks away from any major site. The Pantheon was really neat! The diameter of the building didn't feel too big, but, when you looked up to the dome, you suddenly felt dwarfed by the monumental size of the structure. 

Rick Steve's claimed in his book that one of the best gelato places in Rome was just north of the Pantheon, so we had to check it out... He was right. Topped with homemade whipping cream, this gelato definitely won our hearts. 

We wandered a little more, but followed the Tiber River to The Vatican (we knew our way back from there) and headed back to our B&B. The rain had made for a very humid and hot afternoon, so we showered and went back out for dinner. We ate a cute place, where one of the waitresses, an older lady, was from California. She sat us at the table next to a couple from Ohio. The waitress had actually just moved to Italy in September from Slovakia, where she taught English to school children. The food and company was good after a long day!

We stopped by the supermarket to grab some snacks for tomorrow (we're going to Pompeii!) and had to grab more gelato from a place near our B&B. They have this one flavor (white chocolate with caramel and hazelnut) that Kristi and I are both obsessed with.

We called it an early night since we have to be up so early for our train to Pompeii!