Villa Borghese

Friday morning we decided to go check out the Villa Borghese, a park just north of Rome. On our way to the metro station, we stopped at Pan de Zucchero, a tiny pasticceria. According to the guide book, the bobe calde (warm doughnut-like pastries) are legendary." We found it to by quite tasty indeed.

We continued on our way to the metro, and took it to Flaminio where it dumps out onto the Piazza de Popolo and there is a giant entrance into the city, the Porto de Popolo, and a big square with an obelisk in the center and a few churches. We were able to go inside the Santa Maria del Popolo which had a lot of creepy skeletons and tombs.

From the piazza, we walked into the Villa Borghese area. We first headed for the Museo e Galleria Borghese, but found out that it requires advance ticket purchase, and the next available tickets were for Sunday at 7pm. In need of lunch, we headed to the nearest cafe in the park which happened to be over just outside the zoo. Since it was so close, we decided to check out the zoo as well. It's not the biggest zoo, but they have a lot of animals, lots of primates, and big cats too. The Capuchins and Japanese Macaques put on quite a show, all running and jumping around.

After leaving the zoo, we decided to rent one of the four wheeled, two person bikes to stroll around the park. They are rickety quads with some kind of power assist that turns on and off at strange times. It has two steering wheels, but on the one on the left is hooked up to the steering, so the person on the right gets to play with the steering wheel like a child. We took our bike off road a few times, and through the mud, then ended up out of bounds somewhere past the zoo and rather than turn around, we got out and pushed it up at an angle around the barriers blocking cars and other large sized vehicles (including our double-bike). Back in the park, we continued on and found the lovely ionic temple dedicated to Aesculapius, with a small lake around it where you can rent row boats.

We returned the bike and then walked from the park down to the Piazza Navona where we found a few nice fountains, and some more cool churches including the Santa Maria dell'Anima, the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, and the Sant'Andrea della Valle.

On our way back to the room, we stopped for dinner at yet another pasta and pizza place. Good stuff!