Full day to start in Rome

A busy day; I'll try to be brief. Thursday, our first interest of the day was to get to the Centro Storico. At Piazza di Porta Maggiore, at a tabaccaio we got transit passes for the day for €4 each. Rather than the bus, we took the Roma-Giardinetti train, which is really a tram, in this section operating on the street (via Giolitti) but ending at the Ferrovie Laziali section of Termini station. We split a panino in the station bar rather than planning a full lunch, and boarded express bus 40, to Largo Argentina. We cheated a little more on a rich calzone at Il Delfino.

Great memories for Margaret to see Piazza Navona. People were gathered an apparent fashion model on a shoot.

We went through more familiar streets to Campo de' Fiori.

Sat down at a café on Piazza Farnese, and walked down via Monserrato, seeing our old school building: it has changed.

We turned around and went to the Campidoglio museum for the Lux in Arcana show, the Vatican's secret archives. We got tickets and had a bathroom need. Being directed to that, we followed signs upstairs to the show. It was a small show on preservation matters, such as dealing with document deterioration. This was what the whole widely promoted show was? I thought we had some time to visit the main museums. Then I saw that the main show was near the entrance; we'd just seen a final technical section. The main show had important documents like Galileo's recantation and on matters with the end of the Papal States.

At the Campidoglio:

We had our booked tour of Palazzo Valentini, where there are recent excavations of an ancient Roman house. There was confusion as we walked down glass steps on top of historic steps. Fascinating, although the TripAdvisor rating of it as the number 1 sight in Rome may reflect more ratings because it's new rather than objective fact. Margaret was feeling her old ankle injury flaring up.

The full day ended with a get-together at Piperno with Slow Travelers Sandra and Heidi. I'd known of Piperno as a well-regarded restaurant in the Jewish Ghetto; it was nice to have their specialties including carciofi alla giudia and gnocchi, as well as meeting with nice people.

We went to Largo Argentina to catch the two buses that we planned, but Margaret said to go ahead and get a taxi, so the transit pass was not put to good use. Still, it was nice to get promptly to our apartment at the end of this full day.