Day 4 - 10th January

Today we got up, showered and all that business, went for the complementary breakfast that the hotel provides then we for a walk back west where, the night before the markets had been.  Most of them were now gone.  Packed up as if they were christians being run out of town by the romans.  So anyhow we wandered around some more, several blocks here and several blocks there with Ethan trying to sit on the ground at every possible chance he could haha.  We seriously need to bring a fold out chair for him (Mental note to keep eye out for one).

We went into the Pantheon which was built about 25BC (Give or take a few years) and at the time it was a pagan temple, but now is one of the cornerstone temples for Christianity.  I wont go into the history of the place - you can just wiki it for the good stuff, but the pictures you see will not do it justice, it's a big marble-centric big ole room with sacred this and that's all over the place inside.  We spent quite some time in there and much to Ethan's dismay he was not allow to sit on the floor as it was 'forbidden' (So the signs said).  I chuckled to myself on that one.  hehe.

After that we wandered (actually I think I was following Jo's orders) in a different direction and we went over to the Trevi Fountain, which I am ashamed to say I had never heard of (but now have), and it too was not something you'd see every day (unless you had to go past it to get to work).  It was massive with flowing sculptures and water (and seagulls) everywhere.  I made a mental note at the time to google it and read about it.  I still haven't done that yet (too busy writing blogs).  There was this amazing shop behind the Trevi Fountain called Benetton where I spent a fe hundred Euro and am happy to say I am not wearing a blue jersey anymore.  In fact I am almost indistinguishable now as a tourist.  A bit more of a tan and I would have to do something very wrong to be noticied as a white boy from New Zealand. :)

After I got good looking, I mentally twisted Jo's arm to get us on a tour bus that went around Rome and it seems I was that good, that she had actually organised one several weeks beforehand.  So we found a place to jump on the bus and we did some sights around Rome with a little earpiece that told me all about the history of the locations that we were driving past at the time.  I have not pretty much forgotten everything I was told and will have to Google it in the future.

Later that night, I decided that since I had done such a good job of picking the first restaurant I would pick another.  Oh my god, we picked, like, the worst restaurant in Roma.  Holy crap, what a story for someone elses grandkids for me to tell.  In fact we jumped on TripAdvisor.com and we found that it ranked 3035th out of 3500 restaurants in Rome. HAHA!  It was all quite bad really.  I didn't think you could ruin Roast potatoes but I think they must have boiled them in Sunlight Soap or something... blech.  I only ate about 7 of them hehe.  The rest of our main was pretty forgettable as well.  Anyhow, I will now dwell on it.   For a real good laugh you should read the TripAdvisor comments about the restaurant. 

Here is the link -->>> L'Arcano (die die die)

Here endth our day, bit of a shame but we lived and learnt and I figure we might get a free bread or something about it if we tell another restaurant about it :-)