We saved this fourth day for a couple museums, logistics(Florence plans, laundry), and rest. After a lazy breakfast, we spent late morning finalizing our travel arrangements for the morrow. By the early afternoon when we were satisfied with our plans, we were hungry again, so we set out for some more delicious pizza from Alice on our way to what seemed on paper to be the city's best museum: the Museo e Galleria Borghese. It supposedly held wondrous works by Bernini, Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, and more.
As exhausted and sore as we were from the three previous days' walking, we decided to cab it up to the museum. However, when we arrived we were told no tickets were to be bought without a prior reservation. I had not read that anywhere, nor been told such by our reliable concierge Franco, so we were extremely disappointed. Adding insult to injury was the fact that NO ONE was in line; we saw no tourist hordes, no annoying guides with earpieces and raised umbrellas, no screeching schoolchildren. In other words, it would have been a wonderful visit for once!
ABOVE: Ignominy and Defeat
Turning around defeated, we walked south along the edge of the Borghese Garden grounds, down to the church of Trinità dei Monti at the top of the Spanish Steps.
Above: The Archangel's Flaming Sword
We poked inside to see the chapels and monuments, then retreated down the Steps to the Keats-Shelley Museum.
This one was open! After paying our admission, we climbed into the tiny four-room apartment that had been preserved to commemorate British Romantic poets John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary (of Frankenstein repute), and Lord Byron.
ABOVE: I would love a library like this.
We did not learn until our entry into the museum that John Keats died in the back bedroom, a regrettable victim of tuberculosis. The sitting room and library were adorned floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes by Keats and his fellow Romantics, as well as display cases with preserved letters and manuscript drafts.
The Keats death mask was the most somber relic in the museum, because he looked so young and fragile (he died at 25). One display case also exhibited a lock of Keats' hair--tokens, we learned, which were often exchanged in life as a gift among friends and relatives, and coveted after death if the departed were famous.
ABOVE: The Keats Death Mask
If any of our many [read: two] readers aren't familiar with Keats' work, please do yourself a favor and Google his poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." No, really, do it now. I'll wait.
Ready? Well, after another day of unintentional walking, we navigated back through downtown Rome to get Annie one last lemon gelato at Giolitti...which proved far more difficult to accomplish due to heightened security around Parliament. It stood directly in our path to Giolitti, but no other gelateria would suffice, so we walked what felt like an extra mile to score a cone.
Mission accomplished, we returned home to rest a bit before grabbing dinner and doing laundry. We figured the laundromat would be open 24 hours, so we grabbed dinner first, down the street at a place called Olimpia.
When we made our way to the laundromat around 9:30, however, we learned it was closing at 10 so we were out of luck. Can't win 'em all, I guess.
We returned to the room with our second defeat of the day, and plotted to get up earlier to do the laundry before we departed fair Rome for good.
Rome June 30 Album:
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| Rome: June 30, 2011 |
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Rome, Italy
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