We had a nice itinerary planned for this day but as we sat over breakfast, doing a review of the day's plans, we realized that most of the sites and museums we'd wanted to visit were closed on Mondays. Silly me. I was worried that Palm Sunday was going to disrupt things and got blindsided by this.
The weather, which up until this day had been blessedly warm and sunny, was also much more mixed today. Cloudy and cooler, although not actually rainy.
We revised our plans and started out. We had a nice walk, then ran into our next bit of bad news. The first church we'd planned on visiting - Santa Maria della Concezione - turned out to be closed for renovations. We sat on the steps on the via Veneto, and yet again revised our plans. Both of us were cranky and snappy by this point, but made an effort to refocus and keep moving. Rome wasn't going to wait.
More walking took us over to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. I admired the mosaics and Scott was pleased to discover the wealth of Old Testament and even outright Jewish iconography here. You don't generally expect to find a menorah in a stained glass window of a Catholic church.
Disappointment and frustration continued to be the theme of the day, though, as we realized that our favorite guidebook, the Rick Steves book, had vanished somewhere in or around the basilica. One of us put it down at some point and lost track of it. We retraced our steps but the book was long gone. Highly displeased, we continued on to the church of San Giovanni in Laterano.
At this point I'd really had my fill of churches and Scott had developed a blister on his foot that was becoming painful. We did run across a part of an old Roman aqueduct (I think it was the Aqua Felicia) as we wandered around outside San Giovanni, which was kind of neat. But we were both cold, hungry, and not very thrilled with our day, so we jumped in a taxi and headed back to the hotel. 3+ miles of walking and not a lot to show for it was enough.
Back at the hotel, Fodor's listed nearby Bar Frattina as one of the city's best. We found it overpriced and the food rather mediocre, but it was close and the service was quick, so we really didn't care too much at that point. We split a pizza and a pasta and felt much better.
Refreshed, we window shopped our way over to the Piazza del Populo. It's significantly larger than Piazza di Spagna - or for than matter than most of the other piazzas in the city - but oddly it is not anywhere near as crowded. I would have expected at least some of the sunglass and handbag sellers pushing their wares to tourists there but no. Although there was a 'jazz' band comprised of 2 accordions, bass, guitar, and saxophone with a hat out for donations. I laughed to hear them - they were playing "Hava Negillah". Not exactly what you'd expect to hear in Rome.
The sun had come out by this point, so we enjoyed the scene as we waited for Santa Maria del Populo to re-open after its midday break. As I said earlier, I was pretty churched out at this point, but this church has two Caravaggios in a side chapel that were worth the stop. The "Conversion of St Paul" in particular was amazing. I just wish they were better placed for viewing. There's only one spot jammed into a corner that provides the best view of each painting. And of course there's a crowd of tourists vying for that one good spot.
Our last stop of the day was a place nearby that our City Secrets guidebook spoke highly of - the mausoleum of Augustus. It too was a bust, sadly. A large pile of bricks, almost no signage, broken bottles and other garbage scattered around. And the Mussolini-era buildings surrounding the tomb gave the whole plaza an oppressive feel. A real example - albeit a negative one - of how architecture can affect one's emotional state.
After a brief rest & change of clothes, we headed off to meet up with the family and celebrate the first night of Passover at my sister's house. She has a lovely 2 bedroom aparement with a great view of the river, and an upstairs terrace with even better views. It was an odd affair in some respects. We sat scattered around the living room at small folding tables, since my sister doesn't have one table big enough to hold the whole crowd (no surprise since she'd only moved in a short time ago). There was no matzoh ball soup or gefillte fish - we had Roman style cuisine instead. The food was excellent, though, and a good time was had by all, with the possible exception of my cousin Vera, who got a full glass of red wine spilled all over her nice new skirt, purchased on the Corso that afternoon.
Leaving my sister's house was sad for me because I don't know how long it will be before I see her again. It could be a year or more. I regret now that I did not plan to spend more time with her while we were here. Carolyn looks great though, and seems to be very happy in Rome. She usually is.