Marthese turned 25 today! And she did announce at one point this was her ???best birthday ever.??? Yes!

We basically did a walking tour of our local area in Rome, taking in an insane number of sights, drinking lots of coffee, and getting acquainted with the city. Walking around Rome so far is so easy, and we feel a lot ???safer??? than we did in Naples.

A short stroll from our hotel to the Spanish Steps. Saw the ???Keats and Shelley House??? but didn’t go in (it wasn’t open yet), checked out the cool church up there. Waved at Lord Byron’s old apartment.

Then over to Piazza del Popolo, the old entrance to Rome. Hugely spacious, with fabulous fountains, 3 churches, and an enormous Egyptian obelisk (there are Egyptian obelisks over Rome! The plunder of the conquerors.)

Some more wanderings led us to Sant Eustacio il Caffe, according to some the best Coffee in Italy. Might have to concur, we went there twice today 🙂

My highlight was next, the Pantheon. 2000 years old and still going strong. Such an impressive piece of architecture. We went inside where Raphael’s tomb was on display!

Piazza Navona was fantastic and gorgeous. We enjoyed the sun, the church, the fountain, and bought the CD of the great live band that were playing (the aptly named Piazza Navona Band).

A short walk away was the Campo de Fiori with a bustling market and a statue of a heretic who had been burned by the Vatican! And by ???burned??? I mean burned to death, not harshly insulted. Well…

We then checked out a few other sites around parliament and bumped into a huge rally to ???Save Italian Races???, which we have to assume refers to Italian horse racing.

Another highlight of the day was meeting up with Beth, Marthese’s sister, who was in Rome for the day on her Contiki tour. We had a lovely lunch, then returned to Sant Eustacio for another coffee!

After saying bye to Beth (off to the Coliseum & Forum) and acknowledging that we’d had too much coffee and needed to keep walking, we headed up to the Capuchin Chapel and visited the crypt there. Incredible. Several rooms of art constructed with the bones of deceased Capuchin monks. Pretty amazing , read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_Crypt

Right now we’ve retired to the hotel for some rest, potentially an Irish comedy (it IS Marthese’s birthday after all) and then out for dinner which promises to involve Nutella Pizza (yep, Marthese’s birthday).

Phew.