Joyce a Roma - giorno quattro

Final Day of our Journey Begins at Piazza del Popolo

In just a matter of a few days, we've pretty much seen all of the touristy attractions of Rome. Funny how time seems to fly right by when you're being baked alive =P. Woke up this morning after just 3 hours of sleep at 9:15am. For some strange reason, I didn't really have an appetite for breakfast today so I only had two plates of cantaloup and some OJ. After printing off our boarding passes at the hotel lobby, we headed out to leave our final footsteps of this trip on more places in Rome.

We took the Metro to check out Piazza del Popolo, which after 4 days in Rome looks pretty much like any other piazza. Since it was almost 11:00am, the heat was starting to get unbearable again. Tinlop and I took a few touristy photos and strolled along the streets and window shopped a bit. We got bored very soon so we decided to head towards our next destination.

Struggling Through the Villa Borghese and Galleria Borghese

Across the road from the Piazza del Popolo is one of the main entrances into the largest slab of green stuff in Rome: the Villa Borghese. If you have spare legs that you can change into, I would recommend you bring them with you as you would need them (or a few pairs for that matter) to walk through the entire vicinity. Alternatively, you can have your Roma pass and take one of the buses for free at your leisure! Guess what we did? No way in hell were we going to walk the entire 148 acres of this largest public park in Rome after days of walking and blister-forming. Since the grass were severely dehydrated like we were and the views were just a bit short of appealing, we decided to bus it to the Galleria Borghese, an art museum situated on the other side of the park. We arrived at the museum at about 12:30pm, wondering if we would get in since we didn't make reservations the day before. We were lucky not to need a reservation today and after whipping out our Roma Passes to save the admission of 10,5euro each, we secured a 2-hour visit for 1:00pm. The sculptures and artwork were really impressive but LOL, we were in and out of there in half an hour! I felt really sick from the heat and lack of food so I forced myself to take in a panini at the Galleria cafe.

By the way, did I mention yet that I was sweating like a pig again and that it was really hot out?

Final Night of People-Watching at Campo de Fiori

After we left the Galleria Borghese, we bused back to the hotel to shower, took a nap until 5:40ish and left again at 7:30pm to head to Termini station to source out our route out of the city for tomorrow morning. After figuring out where to take the train, we took a bus to yet another popular piazza for after-dark festivities - Campo de Fiori. Hardly surprised again, we found it to have yet another fountain in the middle of the piazza! Yes, it looked just like any other one we've visited but like the Piazza Navona, it was bustling with people enjoying dinner or just a drink with their friends. Tinlop and I grabbed a gelato each at a gelateria called Blue Ice and sat ourselves down to people-watch a bit before heading back to the hotel to pack up. Did I mention the gelato we had was awesome? I was greedy and had two flavours, pistachio and pineapple and Tinlop had tiramisu. OMG, it was sooooo good!!

Sucessfully Showered in the Dark

After we got back to the hotel, Tinlop decided to go down to the lobby to get some change for the train fare while I took a shower. As soon as he left the room, pulling the keycard out of the switch that kept the entire room's lights on, I was plunged into total darkness. Struggling to find my shampoo and such, I took my first ever in-the-dark shower. I decided to just take notes for the day's excitement rather to do a complete blog entry and went to bed. (Aug.27.09 12:33am)