Our plan for Sunday was to sleep until we were ready to get up, and then to take the subway to St. John Lateran, which was pretty much straight south of our hotel. From there we planned to walk the three miles back to our hotel, stopping to see Santa Maria Maggoria and any number of other churches on the way--yes we are church nerds, and our daily routine at home was to walk three miles a day for exercise so we figured this would be about right for the morning.
The morning started as expected and we were able to get to St. John's without trouble.
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| Just some old walls along with way |
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| St. John is one of the Major Basilicas in Rome and is the Pope's church. |
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| St. John's narthex |
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| I guess they update from time to time; this doesn't look as old as the rest |
As we came out of St. John's and were looking at the narthax we met a seminarian from Croatia. From St. John I guess we went left when we should have gone right because we got lost. (NOTE TO SEFL: learn how to navigate on foot with Google Maps) Eventually we saw some ruins/a museum and headed over there, figuring where there were tourists we could get help. The lady at the ticket booth said they couldn't tell us how to get a cab--and then we saw one pull up. Turns out, of course, that we weren't that far from where we wanted to be.
The cab took us to Santa Maria Maggiore where we spent some time exploring before having lunch at a cafe on the piazza. The cafe was filled with people speaking Italian and the food was good. We had pizza and suppli--a fried rice ball that had cheese in the middle.
As we headed back to the hotel, we saw one church about a block away where Mass was being said in German.
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| The baths where we caught a cab |
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| The pictures don't do Santa Maria justice |
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| Just a little side altar |
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| The small church across the street |
Like a lot of other people I studied a little about art and architecture in history/humanities classes but visiting Rome/Italy really brought a lot of those terms and concepts to life. I always imagined all those big Roman churches to have beautiful stained glass windows somewhere--I mean isn't that what pretty churches have? Nope, not when they are Romanesque. These buildings are massive, and the windows are small and high up. Some of the glass is stained,but don't expect elaborate pictures in glass.
