Saturday was an absolutely beautiful P-day, about 80 degrees as the high temperature and sunny until mid-afternoon. Spring is definitely here and summer will be here soon. In the morning, we left at 9:45am with the Balzottis to do some sightseeing downtown. We got off the subway at Circus Maximus and walked over to Trastevere ("beyond the Tiber"), on the other side of the river. On the way we stopped to see la bocca della verità (the mouth of truth), a very famous tourist spot. The line wasn't long, which is unusual, so we got to take a photo in front of it.
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| The river Tiber |
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| Us in front of Circus Maximus |
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| Bocca della Verità : our hands did not get bitten off (this time) |
We had downloaded the free Rick Steves app on our phones, plus his audio guide for several sites in Rome, including Trastevere. The audio guide was quite helpful, almost as good as a paid guide, but a lot cheaper (free)! Along the way we went into three different beautiful churches, two of which had live wedding masses going on (Santa Cecilia and Santa Maria), so we were not able to get close to the altar. Here are some more photos from the churches:
As we were exiting the Santa Maria in Trastevere church after completing the audio guide, a woman behind us asked if this was our P-day, thus immediately identifying herself as a Mormon! She said she was from Utah, so we asked where, and the answer was Heber. I then asked, "Do you know an Emily Ricks?", the Sorella (from Heber) whom we dropped at the airport last week to transfer to Cagliari. The woman said, "that is my daughter." Small world! She had waited to come to Rome until her daughter was gone, so that she wouldn't run into her. It is strongly not allowed for parents to come see their young missionaries, as it would be extremely distracting. So we took a photo, which I sent to Sorella Ricks.
By then it was getting a bit late for us, because we still needed to finish our talks, so we left the Balzottis to do more exploring and grabbed a tram. That took us to Piazza Venezia downtown, and from there we grabbed express bus #80 which goes right past our apartment complex on the way to the Porta di Roma mall. It took us a while to find the correct place to pick up the bus in the very large Piazza, but overall it all went very smoothly. The whole trip home took about an hour; for some reason the bus skipped our stop so we had to walk a few extra blocks home. It was quite warm by then -- about 2:30pm -- and we were tired and thirsty and hungry. The whole outing took longer than we had planned, but we were very delighted to have seen some cool stuff. Everywhere you turn, Rome has so many great things to see.
These are crypt covers from some catacombs, now set into the wall of the Santa Maria di Trastevere Church.
I liked this cool old wall from Palatine Hill, above the Circus Maximus track (where they used to have chariot races in Roman times).
There are water fountains which run all the time, found all over Rome. Just plug the hole at the bottom of the spigot and it becomes a drinking fountain with water coming out the top. Deb Balzotti demonstrated for me.
Clever name for a restaurant.
We then spent the afternoon and evening mostly working on our talks for Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. My talk is formatted in two columns in Word, with each paragraph occupying two cells in the table, English on the left and Italian on the right. Dee writes: I showed Doug how to do this! I plan to give a printed copy to the young missionaries doing the translation in church, which will hopefully be a help to them, assuming I stick to my script reasonably well. I called my mom and my sister Marilyn, and Dee and I walked down together to Conad and the Chinese store at 6pm to get a few things. Having not slept well the night before, I went to bed pretty early.
I stayed up late working on my talk, but it was totally worth it to have spent the time seeing the sights on a beautiful day. Being assigned a topic makes for some really wonderful study. I was assigned repentance, and read some powerful scriptures and conference talks. I also set up all the dual-column two-language pages, which takes a long time. If anybody has a better way, please let us know! One of the talks I used had not been translated by the Church, so it took a little longer. Even though I'm grateful for the spirit I felt and the things I learned, I'll be so glad when the talk is over! I don't get nervous speaking in public anymore, which is also a blessing.
