25. Last Day in Rome

For one last time, we slept in with no wake-up call in the hotel. Then we enjoyed a wonderful buffet breakfast in a bright, garden-view first floor restaurant in the hotel. We then rode the hotel shuttle bus to the Vatican drop off point. Then we rode a city bus to the Plaza Venezia, the national monument with the Italian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was a bright, sunshiny morning, so our pictures are some of the best of any of our scenes in Rome. We walked through several Roman ruins on the way to San Pietro in Vincoli, or the Church of St. Peter in Chains. It is a church that claims to hold the actual chains that bound the First Century Disciple of Christ. The chains are displayed in a central place near the altar of the church, and the paintings all around the front of the church are huge and impressive frescoes, in a style reminiscent of Michaelangelo. The paintings are not his, but the notable larger-than-life sculpture of Moses is one of the more famous sculptures by Michangelo. While the Moses is positioned to one side of the front of the church, the line of visitors seems more crowded in the area of the sculpture than near the reliquary containing the chains located in the center of the church near the altar. The chains are believed to be from Peter’s imprisonment in Jerusalem, and were passed on to various notables until they came into the possession of Pope Leo I, in the mid-400s AD, finally coming to rest in the church that bears the name of St. Peter in Chains. We had lunch at a sidewalk café, before walking across the downtown area to the Fontana Trevi, or Trevi Fountain. It is amazing to me that there seem to be hundreds of visitors crowded into the viewing area around the fountain, day and night. So we braved the crowds once again, and had some great pictures near dusk, as the lighting shifted from daylight to dark. It is a beautiful fountain, and not surprisingly, is a major tourist attraction. We continued stopping into many shops and boutiques on our way to a subway station. We rode the subway back to the area near our hotel, then transferred to a bus that appeared to be going in the direction of the Crowne Plaza. I asked the bus driver if she went near the hotel, and she nodded yes. She kindly stopped us from getting off too soon, but indicated when we were at the closest bus stop to the hotel. It was only one block away. So we finished up our tour, weighed our suitcases and rearranged the contents to satisfy the weight requirements for the airline the next day. Then we crashed with a request for a 5 am wake-up call.