Last day in Rome!

After returning to Rome from Bologna, we spent the entire day exploring some of the major Rome tourist attractions. Today we took it a bit easy for our last full day in Rome.

Walking around town

We didn’t have much of a plan today.  We’d seen most of what we wanted to see in Rome already. After sleeping in a little, we set out separately to explore, shop or sightsee. I took this as an opportunity to simply walk around. Without much of a destination, I went up and down different streets simply curious where it would take me.

Rome is an old city and there are very ornate buildings everywhere you go, whether or not they were tourist attractions or simply businesses, all the buildings had a historical feel.

I ended up encountering various statues, plazas, government buildings and monuments all over the place!

Er Buchetto

On my walkabout I stumbled upon this excellent hole in the wall sandwich stop called Er Buchetto. If you recall  our family discovered and fell in love with these pork sandwiches in Modena. To my pleasant surprise, as I walked by I saw this roasted pig sitting on a cutting board with a bag full of bread right beside it! I obviously had to indulge and let me tell you it was just as good as the one in  Modena!

Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and Martyrs

I did end up popping into one church that was built inside the ruins of a roman bath, The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and Martyrs. I didn’t know what to expect after having seen some pretty amazing churches already. Of note though was that there was a meridian line that was built inside this church. Its similar to a sundial where there is a whole in the roof of the church which allows the sun through. The sunlight then illuminates a spot on the line to allow for accurate date keeping. It was the first time I had seen this so I thought it was pretty cool!

La Matriciana

For our last dinner in Rome, we had walked by La Matriciana a few times during our stay in Rome and we had wanted to try it. Its right across the street from the opera house and had a somewhat “classic” feel to it. We ordered a few pasta dishes, some wine, a steak and some fruit for dessert. Its really hard to keep saying how tasty all the food we had was. You run out of words to describe it and so  I’ll just say that we weren’t disappointed with our last meal in Rome!

Homeward bound.

Sadly, this takes us to the end of our 2012 Europe trip. Before getting to the airport we quickly picked up some more Pork sandwiches for the road and had one last Gelato at the airport. We then boarded a plane to London, and then onward to Canada. However not before some frantic connection scares at London Heathrow airport, but that will be for another post 🙂