Italy (3) - Borghese Gallery and More

Day 4
Borghese Gallery requires reservation to get in which we didn't have. I did look online before the trip that there were plenty of reservation left for the first (9:00 am - 11:00 am) and last (7:00 pm - 9:00 pm) time slot of the day. So our plan was to get there by 9:00 am, see if we could get in.

We took the #910 bus from the train station. It has a stop right by the gallery. The problem was to figure out when we should press the button to request the stop. I tried to ask several passengers on the bus, where we should get off for Borghese in English, either they didn't understand me, or they didn't want to help, in the end we had to make a guess ourselves. It was a good one, and we got there just after 9:00 am. There were signs on the door that said SOLD OUT, but we went in anyway and asked if we could go in. They said sure and sold us 2 tickets which we used the Roma Pass to pay for. Even though it's off-season, we probably cut this one a little too close. I should have called their reservation line as soon as we arrived in Rome.

You can't take pictures or bring any bag into the gallery. So we could only look at all the amazing paintings, sculptures and ceiling murals.
1. Borghese Gallery. They only allow 360 persons in every 2 hours.


Aftre Borghese, we walked through the nice park adjacent to the gallery towards Piazza del Popolo. There was an overlook of the city where Dave stopped to take some pictures. All of a sudden his 4-years old Nikon D70 displayed "this card cannot be used". Then it displayed "Camera or card contains no images". This had never happened before. Dave was really upset and thought he lost all the pictures he had taken on the trip. Took him a few hours to forget about it. Thank goodness, after we got home, all the pictures on this card were recovered except the last one.

2. Trees in the park.


From Piazza del Popolo, we walked to Spanish Steps, and had lunch at an outdoor cafe 3 blocks away from Spanish Steps. Dave had pizza, I had spaghetti carbonara. The food was good but sitting outside was a mistake because food got cold really quick.

3. A cool bike we saw along the way.


4. Spanish Steps.


5. The outdoor cafe we ate at.


After lunch, we hopped on metro and went to Basilica of St. John Lateran. According to Wikipedia: "The Basilica of St. John Lateran is the cathedral of the Church of Rome, Italy, and the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, who is the Pope. ...... it is the oldest and ranks first among the four major basilicas of Rome, and holds the title of mother church of the whole inhabited world among Catholics. ...... As the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, containing the papal throne, it ranks above all other churches in the Roman Catholic Church, even above St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican."

It's a big church and very impressive inside. They kept it a little dark though so people had to put euros in a machine to buy about three minutes of light.

6. Basilica of St. John Lateran.


7. Inside Basilica of St. John Lateran.


Across the street from the church is the building that has the Holy Stairs, believed to be the actual steps that Jesus climbed the day He was sentenced to death. It's mandatory that you climb the stairs on your knees.

8. People climbing the Holy Stairs.


After Basilica of St. John Lateran, we wanted to go to Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Paolo fuori le Mura) where Apostle Paul was buried. But instead we went to Santi Giovanni e Paolo by mistake, thinking that's St. Paul's church. If I had brought Rick Steves' book with me, I would have known better. It did surprise me that such an important church wasn't on the tourist maps.

(To be continued)