Buon Giorno del Ringraziamento dall’Italia

Happy Thanksgiving from Italy!  After a long afternoon/evening of train travel followed by several drinks at the bar next door to our hotel, we slept in this morning and thus missed breakfast at the hotel.  Fortunately, there is a coffee bar just a couple of doors down, so we sat outside people watching while sipping espressos until lunchtime.  We decided to eat (outside) at Ristorante Il Lampadario (The Chandelier in English) right around the corner - and realized, mid-meal, that we’d had dinner there on our previous trip to Rome in 2018.  

We treated ourselves to a nice leisurely pizza lunch, then took the Metro (there’s an A Line stop right by our hotel) over to Barberini to visit the Museum and Crypt of the Capuchins as well as the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini.  

Passed this on the way to the museum

The church & museum/crypts

They do not allow photography inside either the museum/crypt or in the church, but if you check out the links above, or do a Google search, you will get a good idea of what we saw.  You might expect it to be somewhat creepy; but we found the arrangements of the bones in their crypts to be strangely beautiful.  At the very least, it’s certainly an interesting reminder of one’s own mortality.  Also, the museum of the history of the Capuchin order was pretty informative as well.

We came back to the hotel for a little rest before heading out for a (somewhat early by Italian standards) dinner at nearby Ristorante La Sorgente, which is an Asian restaurant, because that’s how we roll on Thanksgiving.  Actually, we chose a nearby place because of the rain (it rained off and on all day, of course), but as we were under cover, we were still able to eat outside (the temps here really haven’t been too bad; they did turn on an outdoor heater for us though).  I thought the misspellings in the menu, in Italian and English, were amusing - for example, you could order “dumblings.”  Paolo did in fact get some dumblings; they were quite tasty.

Also amusing were the fortune cookies, which were a German brand, though the fortunes were printed in Italian and Spanish.

More rain expected for tomorrow.  We’re thinking of possibly visiting Centrale Montemartini, which could be a very interesting museum.  We’ll see how the day goes!