Centro Storico and beyond...

On Wednesday we headed out to see several big attractions in Rome, must of which are in the Centro Storico region where the streets are all cobbled and cute. The first thing we hit was the church where Bernini's "Ecstasy of St Theresa" sculpture is featured. That's the one that shows St. Theresa with the angel standing over her. St Theresa's recollection of the event said that the angel stuck the fiery spear deep into her bowls, giving her the lords good lovin'.I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. and her face is famous for, err, looking like she is getting some good lovin' from the lord. check it out:



After that we went to see the crypt of the capuchin monks, which is famous for having several rooms decorated entirely with bones and dessicated monks still in their robes. It was really amazing- Isaac and I were both expecting maybe 1 or 2 rooms, with bones lining the walls, but there were 5 or 6 rooms, with elaborate bone chandeliers, bone archways, and bone designs (such as a child's skeleton holding a scythe and scale, also made out of bones and attached to the ceiling). They didn't allow any photos or video, so here's a link.


Actually, it seems that several places that have a single "money maker" attraction don't allow photography, presumably so they can sell more postcards. Michelangelo's David in Florence was the same way. The next thing we saw was the Pantheon, (it's crazy to see so many legendary things so close to each other in a city). We took photos of the Pantheon, but they don't really do it justice. After that, we went to see the famous Trevi fountain, which is HUGE:



Then we walked a few blocks to see the 3 Bernini fountains in Piazza Navona. Unfortunately, the biggest one in the middle was being restored and completely covered except for small plexiglass windows to peek through. the other 2 were impressive though, and we were just happy that it wasn't raining! It was overcast much of the day but finally warmed up a little. Before dinner we stopped by the castle Sant'Angelo via the bridge of angels. The bridge has angel statues lining it



(Bernini again- our new favorite sculptor!) and it is really close to our B&B. Every morning we see tourists on top of the castle from our room, so it was neat to look through the camera's zoom lens and find our room from the castle. We also got a few nice aerial shots of the city despite the overcast conditions. And it was another free attraction, thanks to Cultural Heritage week in Rome. For dinner we went to a little trattoria called Dino and Tony, which is supposed to be pretty famous in the area. It was AMAZING. the portions are huge, and they kept saying "eat!' when we would set down our forks, so we left feeling slightly sick from too much food but it was really really good. Isaac and I split what turned out to be a huge appetizer plate with stuffed olives, pizza, salami and prosciutto, and some sort or ricotta and spinach thing. then I had 2 small bowls of chef's choice pasta (they brought me a mushroom one and a gorganzola one) and Isaac had Pasta carbonara (bacon, eggs, oil and some other goodies in a huge bowl). All the pasta was fresh, and we left feeling very lucky to be eating Italian food in Italy!