| 17-Mar-2024 |  Well, didn’t expect to wake up to the Rome Marathon. Walked through Piazza del Popolo this morning and barricades were set up to make a turn-around in the piazza … something’s afoot (!!). St. Patrick’s Day fun run – we saw folks in “fun run” t-shirts?? Anyway, got on the metro and headed south. Slowly pieced together information and came up with marathon. Sure enough, exited our stop just in time to see the front-running Kenya team blazing by. Whoa!

The flea of fleas was ON at Porte Portese, our destination. Where does all this stuff come from? Used clothes for BLOCKS – mixed in with a few more interesting offerings like 1970’s telephones, mid-century (1900’s) metal kitchen ware, all the “leather” goods known to man … you know, a Flea.

After re-fortifying with coffee and pastry, we headed back the east side of the Tiber. Took a turn through the Jewish quarter before heading to Open Baladin for lunch.

 

 

Featuring local craft brews as well as “guest” taps – 32 in all – delicious beer and burgers were had.

 

Followed by tiramisu from Two Sizes, a little hole-in-the-wall joint I learned about through last year’s food tour event.

 

 

After an afternoon crash at the apartment, we headed out early for our dinner date to catch some works of Caravaggio “in the wild”  along the way. The Basilica of Sant’ Agostino was closed to visitors, so we continued on to the Church of San Luigi del Francesi, home to THREE Caravaggio works. (For the record, I’m at maximum tolerance for religious paintings, and WAY over-tolerance for churches – but when in Rome … ).

As for the “small world” theme of today’s post, we learned yesterday that some friends from Seattle are also in Rome – what? I guess we know enough people, and enough travellers, that this shouldn’t be mind-boggling, but it is. And miraculously (is there a theme here, too?), we were able to meet up for dinner. Jeff and I hiked out to the foodie Trastevere neighborhood to meet up with Meg and John for dinner at Ombré Rosso.