March 3--2nd day in Rome

Actually, I'll start with dinner last night. We found a restaurant called Pomodorino about one minute from our restaurant http://www.ilpomodorino.org

It wasn't open until 7 so we spent the half hour beforehand at a bar down the street. Most "bars' in Italy also are coffee shops and sell food and pastry also. I asked for 'due spumanti'--served in a champagne class and the barista also gave us two tramezzini---white bread sandwich, cut on the diagonal, filled with egg, tomato and mayonaise. He tried to give us another one, but then we wouldn't have eaten dinner!

Il Pomodorino was excellent food at reasonable prices! I had slices of veal cooked with artichoke, served with mashed potatoes and salad; Greg had polenta with sausage and tomato sauce--they have an on-site butcher who cuts the meat at the time it's ordered. Our waiter, Antonello, was quite charming and we had a conversation about Carolina basketball. . .in Italian! I had to explain that President Obama was a fan (un tifoso--from the word for typhoid!) of North Carolina basketball, not Carolina del Sud. . .

Today, we thought we were going to go the Trastevere neighborhood, but it was kind of drizzly, so we decided to go the Caravaggio exhibit instead. It shouldn't have been that long of a walk, but it was. . .and then it was a 45 minute wait to get in, but it was a nice day (of course, it stopped looking threatening once we changed plans!). The exhibition was incredible , the biggest display of Caravaggio that anyone will see in one place.

My favorites were the Card Sharps: (notice the expression of the guy in the center)
and the Judith and Holofernes


Notice the expression of the servant on the right.

After that, we had some tired piedis (feet) and got ourselves to the nearest non-touristy restaurant---I had spaghetti with artichokes (notice a theme---all the fruit and vegetable markets have them and they look incredible--smallish, with really tight leaves); Greg had a kind of carbonara but it had some funny name. There were several Italian businessmen eating there so we think we got a winner. . Generally we have pretty good restaurant instincts. Again, pretty reasonable, but our dollar is buying a bit more than in past years--still not great.

After that, we walked about five minutes over to the Pantheon (featured most recently in Angels and Demons)

You can read more about the Pantheon here:

We took a bus back, because our piedis were tired by that time. Dinner will be light tonight--most likely, a sandwich at the 'bar' around the corner. We discovered this bar during our last visit, five years ago--a very friendly place. This morning, the barista (I don't know what they're really called in Italy) put some chocolate on top of our cappucino for a treat.