Roman Holiday...Day 5

Our Saturday in Italy involved no plans, which was nice.  We literally just walked around the city trying to catch a few places we hadn't been yet.

First we stopped for lunch at this little deli called "Ginger".  I'll admit, I picked it just because it looked so cool.  I just love how clean, white and crisp it looks.  I got a prosciutto sandwich with a strawberry smoothie. :-)

We then headed down to Piazza del Popolo

There was a museum exhibit there at the piazza on Leonardo Da Vinci.  We decided to check it out and it ended up being really neat.  It was in this little almost underground type building that was really cool.  I actually learned a lot about Leonardo that I didn't know before!  I always just knew him as an artist, but he was such a brilliant mind and came up with early concepts/inventions of so many things we use today....bicycle, pulley systems, ball bearings, scuba gear, machine guns, methods of flying....the list goes on and on.  They had several mock ups of his inventions/ideas that you could try out.

We then headed up the hill to Borghese Park.  We came to this park when we were here 12 years ago and I had pictures of us in this park that I wanted to post on here to compare, but I can't find them! Oh well....it would probably depress me looking at my skinny self back then! ha!

Here is a view from Borghese Park looking out over the city.

Dome of St. Peter's Cathedral in the background.

Borghese Park

We sat down on a bench in the park for a while so Josh could sketch.  It was a nice relaxing afternoon.

Beautiful orange trees like this line lots of streets.  So pretty.

On our way back, we came across this church designed by Michelangelo called Porta Pia.  Josh was so excited when we stumbled upon it on our walk.  He did a project in college on this when he was living in Rome and even built a model of it I think too.  It was pretty sentimental to him. :-)  In fact, I remember coming here with him 12 years ago when he was having to photograph it for his project. 

Porta Pia

love this shot.