Outside our apartment on the way to the Metro stop, we pass by a long string of advertising signs. The signs are different every time we pass by. It seems that one candidate will cover a long stretch of the signs with a series of identical paper posters, only to have them shredded or covered over with another candidate's signs before the day is over. The signs we see in the mornings as we are going out for the day are different than the ones we see in the evening...

Trying to see as many places as we can while we are here, we made stops at the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza del Popolo, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Capitoline Museum, the Victor Emmanuel monument, and Trajan's Column, but we started the morning with a tour of the Borghese Gallery. Following advice from the guidebooks we read, we went upstairs to the Pinacoteca first while most of the visitors were on the first floor. After touring there, we went down to th...

We returned to Rome on an afternoon train from Pisa. We did find our seats in first class this time, only to find someone else sitting in one of them. She got up willingly and moved on when she could tell we were looking at the seats. On this train, our seats were in a compartment for six. Two of the others in there were young women who never stopped talking for the entire 3 hour trip back to Rome. Usually the chatter of other people on a plane or train is just b...

In the evening we took the after-hours tour of the Vatican Museums. With a group of fourteen people, we were allowed to walk through the museum, including the Sistine Chapel, when no other groups were in it. This tour was arranged in advance online through the tour company Italy With Us. A couple of days before the tour, Helen, of Italy With Us, offered to make dinner reservations for us before the tour. We did that and enjoyed a very nice and quick dinner with a...

Our first full day in Rome, and we planned more than we could actually do. Of course. Since we got a late start, breakfast was the bread and cheese leftovers from the night before--still very yummy. We took the Metro for the first time out to the Colosseum, first, and then to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. We also made it to San Pietro in Vincoli, since it is just a few blocks north of the Colosseum. We bought the weekly Metro pass so we will not have to b...