Busy tour through Rome

Today was insanely busy. There was so much crammed into one day. Today was also the Feast of St.s Peter and Paul. Just about all the mom and pop stores were closed, but there were a lot more businesses open than I thought there would be. I had mele e porchette for the first time. It was very yummy.

After orientation, we hopped on the 46 bus to get from the Vatican to the Rome city center. Apparently, it's a hotspot for pickpockets, but at this point, I feel like it's no longer something to worry about. I have some advice for people wanting to go to Rome: just stay away from the Internet.  There's so many horror stories about pickpockets, but, honestly, just have a neckpouch, stay alert, and know where your phone and money is and you're fine. I realize I was way more paranoid than I should have been. XD

We took the bus to San Clemente basilica.  The reason why this place is so amazing is because it has just about every Roman era all sewn together, frome 2 bc to the Byzantine era (with the golden mosaics) to the Florentine Rennaisance period. We went down into the underbelly of the church where it showed the old Roman ruins from before Christianity. There was also an altar to Mithras, an old sun god that was worshiped privately. This was a religon that came from the east. The altar was Persian because the clothes on the figure on the relief sculpture were Persian.

Here's a link to a picture of it (I didn't take this photo. We weren't really allowed to take pictures)

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/images/cimrm339_altar.jpg

There was also evidence that it might have been an arisocratic house, probably Clement's because of the pattern that wealthy people turned their homes into churches so that Christians could worship in secret during Roman persecutions. The early Christians must've appreciate the coolness of the underground during the hot days.

After that, we met with a tour guide who gave us a tour of the Old Rome. We walked by the gardens where Romulus and Remus supposidly founded Rome, the Collusuem, the old Roman Forum, and the Palatine Hill. The tour guide showed us artist renditions of what they might have looked like before in their original glory.

There were so many other things saw too, like Bernini's Fontana Dei Quattro Fiumi, the fountain of Neptune, and the Altalre nella Nationale. I fell in love in love with that last building, but apparently, the local Romans hate it for multiple reasons one of which I remember was that the marble hsed to buld it was from Milan, and not Rome.