Italy, part XIII - Rome (iii): Chiesa di Sant' Ignazio di Loyola, more Pantheon, more Roman Forum, and Palazzo/Piazza Venezia - add to that a dash of street violina and Roman panini (Pane e Salame)

Palazzo Venezia

Finally here with the Italian entries as I promised, but... eh, too much has happened between the intermittent 5 months or so (was it really only 5 months? It feels much longer...) for me to remember too much about my mood when I wrote these. Oh, there is one. It was when I walked out of the Pantheon and watched a street artist play his rendition of Clean Bandit's Rockabye, and then Despacito. I don't think I can describe my feelings wholly in words, nor would there be any words in the English lexicon adequate for me to illustrate them (maybe in German though), but watching him play these mainstream songs and listening to the crowd happily singing or just tapping along, was probably one of my happiest recollections from this trip. I recorded some of his rendition of Despacito, and whenever I felt I needed a pick me up, I would watch that video, over and over again.

Here's the one picture I have of the violinist, the rest of them were videos. I've never uploaded videos here before and I don't particularly intend on starting now.

Despacito, quiero respirar tu cuello despacito

I walked around a lot more - Rome's roads are quite easy to get lost in, but thanks to my phone's trusty GPS I found my way around without too much hassle - and found one of the restaurants that I had found using a combo of google maps and tripadvisor. It was called Pane e Salame and the paninis were apparently out of this world. Sure enough, when I entered there were several tables of east Asian tourists with their big cameras slung around their necks; telltale signs that this restaurant was definitely on the radar.

I thought it was okay ish but not raveworthy, but then again I've never been a huge fan of sandwiches. And yet that was all I had in Italy because apparently that was the only thing that the good restaurants served, else I've been given faulty information. I have no complaints though, the vibes in the restaurant were good and the waiters were super nice.

Here's the menu

And the rest of ancient Rome that you know ..

And what is Rome, Maximus?

Chiesa di Sant' Ignazio di Loyola

Roman Forum, with the Piazza Venezia in the background

Italy, part XII - Rome (ii): the Pantheon, more Roman Forum, and Palazzo/Piazza Venezia

The reason I'm so late with this damn entry is because Photoshop has seen fit to auto-upgrade the original, incredibly good version I had, replacing it with an unwieldy interface that has pretty much deleted every useful function it used to have, made the whole damn thing run much slower, and turned it into a bastard filter matrix for Instagram users. I've tried everything in my power to rectify this but no can do, so here I am.

Five mins later. I've given the new PS Express a real fighting chance, and after 5 or so photos I have to say it's really not doing it for me, so here are 5 pictures that have been badly edited, and the rest of them un-edited. Clearly the people at PS Express didn't get the memo 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

Complaints notwithstanding, I have to note that the Pantheon was easily one of my favourite buildings in Rome. There was something innately powerful about it, a magnitude of force that transcended holiness, is the best way I can put it. Everything about the Pantheon felt right.

More to come..

Palazzo Venezia

Piazza Venezia

The Pantheon