Rome - Day 10

Our last full day in Rome...not a good feeling!  But, we wanted to make the most of it.  We had reservations for the Borghese Gallery at 11:00 and knew that it would be difficult to find (per Rick Steves and Mindi), so we slept in a little and headed out of the apartment around 10:00.  We stopped at the Spagna subway station and walked FAST through a huge, but beautiful, park to find the gallery.  We walked for almost 30 minutes as quickly as possible before finally finding our destination.  We were about 3 minutes late, but had read that they will sell your tickets to someone else if you no show, so we 

were very nervous about this.  However, we made it early enough and wandered through this impressive gallery.  No pictures were allowed inside, so we only have one shot of the outside of the building, but I have links here for a view at our favorites such as Apollo e Daphne, Il Ratto Di Proserpina , and Danae.  The Borghese Gallery was once the home to a very wealthy family, so it has a very "aristocratic" feel to it.  Marble floors, elaborate moldings and door frames as well as a beautiful garden and courtyard.  The building itself is almost as interesting as some of the work inside.

After our tour, we were hungry and headed toward the Spagna station (near the Spanish Steps).  But, before we could get there...another torrential downpour erupted and, although we had our rain jackets and trust umbrella, we still had to seek shelter under the roof of a carousel in the park.  Luckily, we were only stuck there about 5 minutes and headed for some more pizza.  This time, I had what American's call "pepperoni pizza" (in Italy, if you order pepperoni, you get banana peppers) and Brett had sausage & mushroom (fungi).  We then casually walked through the street and searched for some souvenirs.  We both picked out a shirt and the rain started picking up again, so we headed back to the apartment for a break.

Brett realized that his shirt was too big, so we headed back to the Spagna station for a trade out.  Surprisingly, this went pretty smoothly considering the workers did not speak English!  We found a woman on the street selling her original watercolors with different city scenes.  We purchased a painting that looks down on St. Peter's Square and the city from the top of the dome, so that was neat.  We were nervous about getting our painting wet, so we went back to the apartment to drop it off and headed back to St. Peter's Basilica for one last look.  The first time we toured, we did not get to listen to our Rick Steve's audio-guide.  We were just too tired to walk around anymore, so we decided to do this on our final day in Rome.

Around 5:00, they were having mass inside St. Peter's, so much of the church was blocked off, but we listened to the audio-guide and watched some of the procession of the mass, which was pretty interesting.  Then, a security guide made us take our earphones out, so we decided to leave a little early.  We didn't intend on being disrespectful, but security was much more tight on this day.

So, what to do on our last evening in Rome???  Get gelato, of course :)  Before dinner, of course :)  So, Brett chose a mousse called Cream Panna Cotta and I chose Mousse Caffe.  I'm not really

sure what Brett's was supposed to taste like, but it tasted like HEAVEN to me!  I was a little jealous...my coffee flavored gelato really let me down.  I guess I'll stick to Cappuccino Chunky Chocolate at Braum's instead.  We headed back to the apartment and Brett started wrapping our picture in some cardboard for the long trip and I did some laundry and started packing.

After a couple of hours, we headed out for dinner.  What did we eat on our last night in Rome? CHINESE FOOD!!!  lol, we really wanted to stick around the neighborhood of the apartment and we were honestly a little tired of pizzas and calzones, so we found a great Chinese restaurant.  I found it funny that the waitress spoke only Chinese and Italian - it makes sense, but it was strange for us.  Luckily, the menu was in English as well, so we did a lot of pointing.  We had some yummy fried rice with chicken and shrimp and Brett ordered a sizzling plate of prawns that were delicious (after

we cut the heads off of them).  I enjoyed a cappuccino before we headed back to the apartment for our final night.  We were bummed, but excited to get back to the US and start sharing our stories with everyone.