Day Four Roma

Today our plan was to catch one of the many hop-on hop-off tours and take a ride. Well things didn't go exactly according to plan, but we still had fun.

We began our day by walking to Piazza Barberini to catch the tour bus.  On the way we again went by Santa Maria della Vittoria, where the The Ecstasy of St Theresa statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is housed.  It is right across the street from Santa Susanna, but we totally missed that on Sunday. We were going to go in, but I was in a tank top and didn't have anything to cover my shoulders with me. Oh well we will be back in that area again as it is only about a mile from our hotel.  We made it Barberini and hopped the bus.

We were doing great on the bus...until we came upon a demonstration that stopped traffic dead in it's tracks. The metro had shut down due to a strike. Thank goodness we didn't get the three day metro pass!  So our entire bus clears out, except DH & I.And some nice British ladies. We were told that it would be about two hours before the bus would move again. The young lady that works for the tour company advised us to visit a nearby church as it would be cooler than sitting on the bus. We had just made it up the first group of stairils to the church, when she came running to find us. The bus was cleared to go again.  It was really nice of her to let us know. When we got back on the bus we were able to get the best seats on the bus. Right at the front of the upper deck.  We kept these seats until we were forced to switch buses at St Peters Square.

At this point we knew that we would have to wait at least 15 minutes for the next bus to arrive, so we decided to eat at the Cafe San Pietro. Epic fail! Oh we got lunch alright, for 52 Euros. To top it all off, it wasn't even that good!  Well we knew we needed to walk it off, so we decided we would go ahead and tour Basilica di San Pietro.   Even though we are going to be there tomorrow morning anyway.

We began to walk into the square and I was overwhelmed. I was walking into the square that Bernini designed! What an odd feeling, admiration for the work of a great artist, and a little buzz from being so close to the Holy Father.

As we walked to the square we were of course hounded by the street vendors that are almost everywhere in Roma. Do you need a map? Do you need a scarf? Do you need a guide book? Do you need an umbrella? Do you need? Do you need?  They can be very