The Life and Travels of Sherckle: Rome

St. Peter's Square, Rome

You can never fault us for timing. We really know how to plan a trip and how to arrange an itinerary! One would always plan to sightsee in a popular European city where people would be gathering right? Think Pentecostal Sunday 2013. Rome. 200,000 people. Think chaos. Crowded bus stops. Bus stops moved to unknown locations.

Yes, we really know how to plan a visit! (Actually we should blame our religious guru, my BIL Joe, who goes to Mass more than the Pope himself....whom his grand kids say is going to become a priest in his old age....Joe shoulda known that we were crazy to be in this city during Pentecostal weekend.)

So here we are. In Rome. On Saturday. Of Pentecostal weekend. We wanted to visit the Jewish Ghetto, Trastevere, the Pantheon and a few other places. Getting from here to there would be a challenge. Lets just say we walked that day... Walked ALOT. We crossed the Tiber River...

We walked thru piazzas...

And thru alleyways...

We saw more fountains (don't ask what this one is...I don't remember.. LOL)

We saw more piazzas....

...and more churches...

And city ruins from long-ago lives....and town squares built around the discovered 107 BC temple ruins...

The Sacred Area of Largo Argentina

[This area was/is fascinating! See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/largo_di_torre_argentina for more information!]

The Layout of the Sacred Area of Largo Argentia

At this point we were already tired of walking.... We realized that crowds around the Vatican were going to be horrendous and scrutinized our map to see the best way to get back to our apartment without going thru St. Peter's Square....

We stopped in a small park to rest our feet....

Street-side trolley that didn't go near our apartment...

We crossed the Tiber...AGAIN...

We saw more town squares..

And more scenic, off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods....

Streets shown on our map ended abruptly...dead-ending into parks.... Which (with hindsight) we probably should have walked THRU!

We stopped and rested weary legs in this church where little ones were about to celebrate their first communion...

Once again admiring the beautiful ceilings.....

...and walked some more...thru this square no less that three times as we kept weaving around outer-lying

neighborhoods looking for that one street that would get us back to our apartment....

...now looking for one of these....seemingly no where to be found!...

After all, they were all near the Vatican for the Pope's mass!

Finally... One cabby came by, stopped and took pity on us....even tho they aren't allowed in Rome to pick up

random passengers on the street... Good thing he did! It was clearly another 15 minute ride back "home"!

Sitting in our favorite nearby restaurant an hour later we remembered why we were avoiding the Vatican...the crowds leaving that area were filtering out of St. Peter's Square and down the sidewalks of our street...