(American) Thanksgiving is not a thing here; Black Friday shopping, however, seems to have caught on. We noticed that many of the shops we passed had signs in their windows referencing “Black Friday” or “Black Weekend” sales. We didn’t take advantage of the sales, but it was interesting to note.
We managed to get up early enough to head to the “American-style Buffet Breakfast” the hotel offers. They have basic pastries, cereals, yogurt, fruits, as well as sliced lunch meats and cheeses. Happily, in addition to what I think of as "American" OJ (that is, orange-colored - arancia bionda), they also had my favorite red orange juice (arancia rossa) that I only ever seem to get in Europe. I’ll take the European-style OJ over the bland orange stuff any time.
As we were walking across the park that is between our hotel and the entrance to the Metro, we heard the sounds of a jet (or jets?) in the sky above us and saw this:
We have no idea what this was all about; but the Italian flag colors striping the sky were pretty, anyway.
We headed to our first stop: the Mausoleum of Augustus. This was not open to the public when we were last here in 2018; the site is currently still under renovation, but you can now visit it with an official tour guide. It really was worth the visit; I was interested to learn about how the site has been used over the centuries (as a castle/fortification; for bullfighting; as a concert hall).
Afterwards, we went across the street to visit the Ara Pacis Augustae (The Altar of Augustan Peace), which was also very interesting:
Since I’m a huge I, Claudius fan (of both the book and the BBC miniseries from the 70’s) I always have to get a picture of Claudius wherever I find him…we’ve seen statues similar to this one in other museums.
In case you haven’t picked up on the (subtle) theme here, I/we have been choosing sites to visit that we think are off the usual tourist radar and thus won’t be too crowded. So our second adventure of the day was a visit to a very interesting but seemingly little-known (to tourists) museum: Centrale Montemartini, located in a former power plant! It was pretty amazing (and not at all crowded). We really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the ancient with the modern:
Old School PopeMobile. For some reason they included an exhibit about the first Pope (Pius IX) to have his own train cars
We managed to pack a lot of history into the day, without having to mix with any huge crowds (good because COVID), although there was another couple who shared our tour guide at Augustus’ Mausoleum…from Texas, USA. Note that the wife of this couple needed some lessons on how to wear a face mask…that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
For dinner we ended up at one of the bar/restaurants next to our hotel, and enjoyed a leisurely cocktail hour/dinner/digestifs while making friends with the waitstaff (I need to get a picture with those ladies before we leave; they’re just the sweetest!):
I’ll need another catch-up post to describe what we did today 11/27 (another sort-of off-the-beaten-path museum). For tomorrow, we have tickets for Castel Sant’Angelo, which we only saw from the outside in 2018. This one may be a little more crowded than what I’d personally like to experience, but Paolo has his heart set on it so I couldn’t say no…
