roma

13/12
Our last weekend in Italy :( me and Caitlin head to Rome for one last time (at least for now). We had tickets to the Galleria Borghese, an art gallery on the extensive Villa Borghese grounds with lots of famous works by Caravaggio (one of my favorite artists). Our train was really late getting in and we showed up late for our appointed entrance time, but they luckily still let us in. The rooms in the Galleria were really ornate even though the building itself wasn’t too big. We were too tired to walk through the grounds, so we took a bus through and ended up at the Piazza del Popolo, where we wanted to go into a church, that was unfortunately closed since it was pausa time. Instead of waiting around 3 hours to go in, we just decided to walk down the Corso and then head towards the Piazza Navona to go to the other church we wanted to see, San Luigi dei Francesi. There were Christmas markets in the Piazza Navona and a French bookstore right near the cathedral, which was so completely covered in scaffolding that we missed it the first time we walked by. Inside, though, was amazing, and The Calling of St. Matthew, one of my favorite paintings by Caravaggio, was right on the wall. It was so much bigger and more impressive in person (as with most art). After that we decided to head home, but ended up walking onto the Ponte Umberto to get a good view of the Vatican (we knew it would be since we saw it in a Lavazza advertisement) and noticed the crazy high water level of the Tiber River. Walking further down the river we saw boats crashed into the sides of bridges since they couldn’t fit under them with the water so high. I guess all the rain we had been having made an impact! We walked back in the rain through the Vatican and to the San Pietro train station where a train to Viterbo came momentarily. Then it was back to Viterbo for fancy dinner at the Cucina Cinese!