Bill and I had some fruit and said good morning to everyone before heading out for our last day. Lou and Barry we’re headed to the Vatican for a mass and Norm and Marlene were planning on riding the hop on hop off bus and doing some shopping.

We had planned on walking through the gardens up to the lighthouse above our place, but we found out that we could not access the lighthouse through the botanical gardens off our street.

So we carried on toward some churches near our area. The first one was Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere. Around the dome shaped main alter there were lots of beautiful golden mosaics and the floors were also covered in colourful mosaics. There was one mosaic with colourful angel wings that I really liked.

The next stop on our private tour was the Basilica Sotterranea di san Crisogono in Trastevere. It had beautiful geometric mosaic floors, the coffin and relics of Anna Maria Taigi, and a chapel with frescos of sexy Jesus and other sexy men. I am starting to sense a theme in Rome!

We had a great tour of the Basilica Saint Andrea (Andrew) della Valle. A young lady assisted us with free audio guides, with a request for a donation, which did a great job of ushering is around the church and pointing out the highlights including frescos behind the altar including the life and death of St Andrew (on the Greek “X shaped” cross). They also had two large mirrors in the centre of the church which provided a great view of the decorations and paintings in the ceiling.

We crossed the street to Buddy’s to get a hearty breakfast including a detox smoothie and a açai muesli bowl.

Bill and I had some fruit and said good morning to everyone before heading out for our last day. Lou and Barry we’re headed to the Vatican for a mass and Norm and Marlene were planning on riding the hop on hop off bus and doing some shopping.

We had planned on walking through the gardens up to the lighthouse above our place, but we found out that we could not access the lighthouse through the botanical gardens off our street.

So we carried on toward some churches near our area. The first one was Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere. Around the dome shaped main alter there were lots of beautiful golden mosaics and the floors were also covered in colourful mosaics. There was one mosaic with colourful angel wings that I really liked.

The next stop on our private tour was the Basilica Sotterranea di san Crisogono in Trastevere. It had beautiful geometric mosaic floors, the coffin and relics of Anna Maria Taigi, and a chapel with frescos of sexy Jesus and other sexy men. I am starting to sense a theme in Rome!

We had a great tour of the Basilica Saint Andrea (Andrew) della Valle. A young lady assisted us with free audio guides, with a request for a donation, which did a great job of ushering is around the church and pointing out the highlights including frescos behind the altar including the life and death of St Andrew (on the Greek “X shaped” cross). They also had two large mirrors in the centre of the church which provided a great view of the decorations and paintings in the ceiling.

We crossed the street to Buddy’s to get a hearty breakfast including a detox smoothie and a açai muesli bowl.

From there we explored more churches - starting with the Pantheon. We were able to wait in line, then entered and took a stroll around the interior. It is much more crowed than it was 15 years ago (as is everything), but it was great to be able to be here again.

It has been hazy today and now dark clouds have slowly been rolling in. The is the “worst” weather we have had all trip.

We went to a small chapel or crematorium - it said Archiconf Piptatis Caer Ceratorvm on the outside...

Then we made it to a really beautiful Church of Gesu, just in time. We had to do a quick tour before someone kicked us all out. It also had a mirror in the middle to see the great frescos on the ceiling. It had beautiful pillars, frescos, and carvings throughout the entire church. There was also a very pretty pulpit near the back of the church.

Nearby there was a huge monument constructed to commemorate the foundation of Italy. It was a huge white building with lots of statues with Italian symbolism.

Our next stop was another Mary church - Santa Maria in Via. It was small and quiet, but beautifully decorated with some glass chandeliers, and a couple of unique paintings/sculptures of Jesus.

We had a short break at a bar near the Bernini Square because I was dead on my feet. The menus did not look great, so we just had a drink before moving on. We checked out the Barberini Museum because of the various paintings with bare breasts (good choice Bill). It was a bit of an unusual collection, but there were so great pieces and it was a nice way to spend our afternoon in order to break up all of the churches. I did enjoy seeing some of the art (breast feeding Mary, another sexy Jesus, a man and his cat, a couple of beautiful frescos, the veiled statue) and the audio guide always makes the experience more enjoyable. We would have likely spent more time there, but I was finally getting hungry and we needed to have a snack if I was going to be able to make the walk back to our area for dinner.

There was a butcher shop near the museum, Bottega Trevi, that sold us a meat and cheese platter to go. It took them a long time to prepare, but was really good and helped me to keep moving.

During the day we made a few stops so that I could buy a souvenir for Lauren and some rings, a necklace and bracelets for myself.

We accidentally found the place where Caesar was murdered and is now the stray cat park on our way back and managed to be at our meeting point 1/2 hour early, so we waited at cafe outside Santa Maria in Trastevere, for everyone else to show up.

Norm and Marlene arrived first, but had seen Lou and Barry participating in the mass that was taking place at the church. It turned out to be a wedding that they crashed, so that they could have communion since they missed out at the Vatican this week.

We had dinner outside at a nearby restaurant, Nannarella, where there were local old guys playing cards and a 3 piece jazz band was playing some music. Bill had meatballs and spaghetti, I had osso bucco meatballs and we all shared one final order of bruschetta (it was great - the tomatoes were so fresh).

After dinner we dropped everyone off at the room and walked up to the parks behind our place. It was a bit of a climb up, but was totally worth it for the view of Rome. And, by doing so, we ended up setting an all new trip step record - 34,194 (over 24km)! We had decided to have a nightcap at a quieter square, but the service was slow and I was falling asleep, so we decided to head back to the room, do a bit more packing and crash

Breathtaking Views and Breaking Records