Crypts, Capuchins, and Cappuccinos

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Our first appointment of the day was the Capuchin Crypts where we were supposed to meet Raquelita—or at least, that’s what Eric thought. Eric navigated us and we walked to the Capuchin Crypts. We were actually supposed to meet at the Piazza Populo so we could take the Metro over. While we waited at the crypts, we got some cappuccinos and croissants, which were good to have anyway.

Another perfect blue-sky autumn day in Rome.
As we were walking, we thought we heard a horse. Guess some people keep them as pets in the city.

The church of the crypts has an attached museum, with an audio guide going over the history of the Capuchin Friars (one of the main three branches of Friars, the organization started by St Francis of Assisi). We enjoyed the tour which culminated in the crypts—which needs some explanation.

Raquelita was an amazing tour guide!

Apparently, thousands of friars were buried in the crypts originally. Somebody thought: “what can we do with all these bones?” and decided to make art out of them. So there’s this whole crypt of skulls and bones “sculptures” of old friars—it even has the arm of St Francis of Assisi. Honestly, it’s pretty metal.

Sitting under the bone artwork made hundreds of years ago, really makes you contemplate life.

We made it out! All that contemplating life made Eric hungry, so he tried to grab a snack to go.

After that interesting morning, we started to walk to lunch. We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day.

On the way, we stopped at the Santa Maria of Saints and Martyrs church, which was very old and pretty important. That’s the church where they do the transfer of power of the mayor of Rome. It also has a sun instrument made by Galileo to tell the day of the year based on where the sun crosses. It was pretty cool to see (and reminded us of the instruments from Jaipur).

You can tell the season and based of the sun positioning here.

Notice the symbol for leo in the top right corner.

We finally made it to lunch, where we met up with Aunt Nancy, Sean, and Felipo. We got a bunch of delicious appetizers, and then Eric ordered two meals (penne allá vodka and diavola pizza) to the exasperation of everyone, especially the waiter. He pulled through and finished it, and didn’t even feel over-full (we had been walking a lot).

Editing this blog after the fact makes us hungry.

Since we missed the Pantheon, which is a must-see, we went over there and got tickets (it was free last time Eric was here). The architecture inside is amazing, considering how old it is. It’s massive and very cool!

Of course we got some gelato, this time at a place with over 150 flavors. We tried to make the Italian flag, but the workers didn’t understand what we were trying to do and just sort of smushed them together. Oh well.

From there, Sarah was looking to replace her shoes, so we all went to a shop to see if she liked anything. Unfortunately, nothing caught her eye so it was a relatively quick trip.

We had been wanting to walk up the Palazzo Venezia, which was supposed to have pretty good views of the city (Side note: this is a very young building in Rome—only 100 years old). So we walked all the way up the steps. We wanted to take the elevator to the very top, but it cost 15 euro and we sort of lost steam. We decided to get some bellinis and chill, so we just enjoyed the views from the middle, which were still beautiful.

The views from the middle of Palazzo Venezia did not disappoint!
We loved how the ruins of the colosseum were just in the middle of this thriving city.

We had to pack before dinner, but we had a really hard time getting a cab. Eventually, one stopped for us and we made it back to Sean’s apartment where we took quick naps and packed our stuff. Luckily, we were able to get a taxi back to the center of the city for dinner (it was definitely not guaranteed) so we made it to dinner on time.

It ended up being a pretty big group at dinner, but we weren’t extremely hungry (Sarah’s note: I wonder why Eric wasn’t hungry….). We ended up splitting a pizza and didn’t even finish it. By then, we were exhausted from almost 100k steps in 5 days, so we pretty much just left after that to go back and get some sleep. So much for a big last night in Rome!

No wonder we called it an early night! And to think we were in Egypt on Monday.
One last photo of the city on our walk home.

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