Three Minutes to Spare

This morning we got up, ate breakfast, packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel. We left our bags with the desk and made our way over to the Pantheon. We had seen the Pantheon at night but not during the day when tourists are allowed inside. I’m probably just an idiot but I had no idea the center of the ceiling of its dome is open. It was rainy again today so you could literally see the misty rain coming in and the wet floor below. I enjoyed the Pantheon very much. In some strange way it felt the holiest to me of all the churches we have visited thus far.


Rain water on the floor of the Pantheon from the open ceiling. 


The open ceiling on a sunny day in Rome. 

One other thing I really enjoyed about the Pantheon was learning about Margherita of Savoy. She evidently was a staunch conservative, loved her pearls and has a pizza named after her. She's my kind of lady.


The tomb of Margherita of Savoy. 

After lunch we walked around some of the souvenir shops, went in the Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi which is a church on the corner of the Trevi fountain, and to the Capuchin Crypt. Ben had wanted to go to see this crypt because one of his friends recommended it. The place was crazy. The wiki site explains it like this:

The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. It contains the skeletal remains of 4,000 bodies believed to be Capuchin friars buried by their order. The Catholic order insists that the display is not meant to be macabre, but a silent reminder of the swift passage of life on Earth and our own mortality. Described by Frommer's as "one of the most horrifying images in all of Christendom", large numbers of the bones are nailed to the walls in intricate patterns, many are piled high among countless others, while others hang from the ceiling as light fixtures.



We had about three hours to kill after the crypt before our train left for Florence. We strolled through a few more churches and ate dinner near some very high end shopping. Christian Louboutin shoes anyone? The walk back to the hotel was delayed by a beautiful sky. We realized rather late that we had blown our time target by a mile. We hustled in a slight drizzle back to the hotel, grabbed our stuff, hopped in a taxi and said a quick prayer we would make our train. We boarded with three minutes to spare.





Our hotel in Florence, the Hotel Cerretani, was a short walk from the train station. We settled in our room and then made our way out for dinner. We ate outside at a fashionable place called Vincanto on the Plazza di Santa Maria Novella. I had my best meal yet on the trip which included a tre colore pizza and a coconut, chocolate and latte dessert.





We have lots of activities planned for tomorrow, including hiking to the top of the Duomo, so now I must sleep.

Until tomorrow,
Katy