Rome, Italy — Palazzo Barberini

Rome is a city of neighbourhoods, and our plan over the two weeks was to explore them bit by bit. Today was to Tridente, Trevi and the Quirinale.

First we stopped into the little church attached to our hotel. It's only open for two weeks over Christmas and the hotel desk staff suggested we check out the crib (or crypt, we weren't sure). Every church and lots of other places all have nativity scenes so we were pretty sure it they meant the crib.

The local priest welcomed us and gave us some pamphlets about the church. A younger kid gave us a little baby Jesus in a manger. They showed us their nativity scene (so it was 'crib') and offered that we could walk through, usually reserved for kids only. We left a small donation for the church.

Then onto Palazzo Barberini. The neighbourhoods we were going to today contain some of the more popular selfie sites in Rome - the Trevi fountain, and the Spanish steps. The streets were busy with selfie-stick brandishing tourists.

Palazzo Barberini is off the main tourist track, likely as a result of the €10 entry fee. It was commissioned by the Barberini family to celebrate their rise to papal power. Both Bernini and Borromini worked on the palazzo - I really liked the staircase by Borromini. The ceilings were amazing, as well as all the art. It took us a while to find the entrance - the Lonely Planet and google maps just show it in the middle of a block, but don't indicate the front. We got it on the third side we tried.

It was time for lunch so we tried a random place across from Palazzo Barberini. Heather had the gnocchi with sea bass, and I had a pasta with clams and guanciale. We realized after that these were both considered pasta dishes and weren't intended to contain much protein. So at least we knew for the future to split a pasta and then split a meat. I guess we sort of knew that already but forgot.

After lunch we walked up to Piazza del Popolo. The streets were very busy with tourists. Along the way we walked by Chiesa Della Trinità dei Monti, which is atop the Spanish steps. We walked down and then had to push our way through the crowded streets to get on our way.

Piazza del Popolo is huge. We were there primarily to see the Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, and in particular the Carvaggios in the Cerasi Chapel. So were hundreds of other people. I have some nice pictures of the backs of people's heads.

So we walked back towards our hotel, and passed by the Trevi Fountain. This was ridiculously busy - it was almost impossible to enter the piazza. We didn't get anywhere near coin-tossing range. I did get a nice picture, after cropping out the other people.

Overall for today we most enjoyed the Palazzo Barberini. There's a huge drop-off in numbers from the popular to not-as-popular, which we've also noticed elsewhere in the world. Although we still wanted to see the Trevi fountain and the Spanish Steps, we just didn't end up spending too much time there.

We had dinner at Pane Vino e San Daniele, named after the famous parma ham. Obviously, they specialized in parma ham. It's in the same little piazza with the turtle fountain, a five minute walk from our hotel. We had the parma ham for the appetizer (very good), then had risotto with artichokes and truffles, and braised beef cheek for the main. Overall the food was good, nothing spectacular.