The Pantheon and Our new Friends.......

OKAY!! Another busy way of navigating ourselves around Rome! First stop was the Pantheon, then to Plaza Navona, Sant' Agnese in Agone, a Borromini creation, and on to the Campo di fiori. The Pantheon, which is where Raphael is buried, was first a temple and now a church. The walls below the dome are 19’ thick. ANOTHER TRULY INCREDIBLE BUILDING here in Rome! We walked over to the Piazza Navona, which Eyewitness says is the “loveliest square” (HOW can they say?) in Rome. (I’m loving them ALL!) We headed over to the Campo di fiori for lunch, where we found a restaurant that had at LEAST fifteen salad choices-each one better than the next!
At 4PM, we were due to meet Giulia, a woman I had connected with on www.couchsurfing.org. This took us to the Metro and a part of the city we had not yet seen. She and her son Giovanni met us at the metro stop in Eur, which is a part of Rome which is fairly new and all developed as Mussolini had ordered it. So we drove around and saw some of this area, and then we stopped for drinks at a delightful outside ice cream/gelato café, called Giolitti. (Giovanni, an only child, is probably 40ish,and doesn’t work; we couldn’t learn what he might have done for work. Giulia retired in May from what sounded like a fairly high level job in the government.) There was a small man-made “lake” right there where there is only boating, no swimming. We stopped at another amazing church, called St. Paul’s Basicilica (One of the seven basicilas open during the Jubillee.) They offered to give us a ride back to our apartment, but there was a misunderstanding, as to where we really lived. So it got a little stressful as mother and son were going backand forth. WHO KNEW? At they were both most gracious and fine, but….
Giovanni , who was driving, really didn’t know where to take us, so Giulia ended up navigating….Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I had NO idea what they were saying…it didn’t sound too sweet
We needed to get home to meet Ben(remember him from the gelato place? Thx, MC!) for dinner at the Sicilian restaurant place just up the street at eight. We all got ready in a quick fifteen minutes and were off for a tasty dinner. He is a most interesting guy….He asked us if we wanted to go to Ostia, which is THE beach scene nearest to Rome. Who knows what it will be like, but we’ll be meeting him at 10AM on Friday to take the train there. Tomorrow we are off to our all day trip to the Amalfi Coast, so I’m off. Ciao!:)) PS. Rome is really growing on me; it is a truly amazing city!!!