Rome-Part 3 "The Night Life"

We haven't see much of Europe at night. The boys are usually exhausted so we head to bed early. Since this was our last weekend, we decided to check out Rome at Night. We followed Rick Steve's "Night Walk." (Have I mentioned that I love his books. I would recommend them to everyone who comes to Europe.) We started out in Campo de Foris. Rick recommended to try some pizza bread with cheese from a little restaurant in this square. Here we are eating our pizza bread. It was really good.

Next we headed to Piazza Navona. As you can see, this place was busy at night. People were playing music on the street, groups dancing, artists selling their pictures, and water fountains. The fountain above is the Four Rivers Fountain by Bernini. It was a cool fountain.

We grabbed a quick ice cream cone and then headed to the Pantheon. This temple was built in 120 AD. It was very beautiful at night. In the square by the Pantheon, Zack found a water fountain. We stopped to let him grab a drink. We love these fountains. They are our saving grace in the middle of the hot days in Italy. Zack has become a pro and drinking from them.

Our next stop was The Trevi Fountain. This was a huge fountain. It has 24 spouts of gushing water. It was so crowded that it was hard to get a good picture. We were warned about going in to the crowds in Rome. There is a lot of pick pocketing. So I stayed with the boys while Steve tried to get a good shot.

The last destination was the Spanish Steps.
These looked like the night hang out. We checked them out and then Steve battled the crowd to get some more pictures. While I was hanging out with the boys, a man came up with a big bouquet of roses and handed 3 to me. He said it was because I was so beautiful. I said thanks and he kept saying I was so beautiful. I think Steve saw this guy talking to me because he hurried back. He gave the guy a hard time for giving his wife roses. The guy just basically just said you are lucky. Then he offered to take our picture. He gave Steve the rest of the roses he had and took our picture. See my expression in the pic it is like "Dude, why are you backing up? You better not try to steal my camera." He took the picture then gave us back our camera. Whew! But then he asked Steve for money for the roses he gave me. I tried to give them back saying we didn't want to pay for them. But he wouldn't take them back. He kept asking for money. We tried to walk away, but he followed. So Steve gave him 2 euros, which he said it wasn't enough. But we walked away and he didn't follow. We knew he had something up his sleeve. The things people do for money...

This was the end of Rick Steve's walk. Now we had to figure out how to get back to our hotel. It took us about an hour to walk back and we didn't even get lost. Josh fell asleep on the way back and Zack loved the new "swords" he got.

We really enjoyed seeing this city at night. We wished that we had done this at more places (but the next day the boys reminded us why we didn't. They need their sleep.)