Today started as a day to not really much of anything day. I walked so much yesterday that I was still stiff and really wasn’t up for another 15 mile walk. To be honest, I don’t know how far I actually walked yesterday, but I think it was around 10 to 15 miles.
There weren’t any sites that I planned to see since I think I covered most of them at least once already, and with the Vatican out of the way today was more or less a free day to explore. So at about 8 this morning I was out the door. The first stop had to get a coffee. Since I’ve been here I haven’t had a coffee in the morning, in fact I don’t think I’ve had a coffee at all. It’s not like I haven’t wanted one, it’s just that the coffee here is really strong, too strong for an instant coffee kind of guy like me. Nevertheless my first mission was to score a coffee and find someplace just to sit and watch people. I’m embarrassed to admit where I found a coffee, but I did and found a nice place on the steps of a Medieval looking church. It was the perfect way to officially start the morning.
One place that I saw on the map that I wanted to see was the Pantheon. I don’t know why I put it so low on my “must see” list considering it was in my art history book in undergrad, so that was going to be my starting point, or first stop. So I’m following the map on my way to the Pantheon, when I turn a corner and there is a mass of people all taking pictures of this really impressive building with a fountain. It was really impressive too. The first thing I do is take a panorama of the square and walk over to a corner to take a one-shot and that’s when my camera turned off. Ugg! The batter was dead. So I head back to the hotel to get my spare battery, and while I’m at it I decided to see how far it was to the square from my hotel. Turns out it was 1.6 miles, almost 2 miles that I walked to, then back to the hotel, and then to the square a total of about 5 miles and it was only about 930 in the morning, my day hadn’t even gotten started. That’s really all I wanted to talk about, three photos and my battery dies…. ☺
From there I walked everywhere in the area taking photos and generally follow the streams of other tourists. They led me to areas that I’m glad I got the chance to see, and if not for them I wouldn’t have. So today was a good day for seeing things, completely the opposite of what I was expecting.
I finally made it home, err, hotel at about 3, and although I turned my gps off, I figure today was about the same as yesterday, about 15 miles. I spent the rest of the day nursing my tired legs, doing laundry, and watching a movie. Yeah, I know, lots of fun huh? Tomorrow morning at about 930 I leave for Naples for two nights.
