Our first stop is at Santa Maria in Trastevere to see the amazing mosaics.  Santa Maria is considered to be the first official Christian place of worship to be built in Rome and stands where Christians worshipped illegally in a home until the year 313.  According to legend, the church was founded by Pope Callixtus in the 3rd century when Christianity was still a very young religion.  The church we are touring today is a largely 12th century building with amazing mosaics inside.  The granite columns inside the nave were taken from the ruins of Roman buildings and the portico is decorated with ancient stone fragments from various earlier churches.  Many of these churches do not have the funding to keep the lights on all the time so you have to pay to turn the lights on to see the mosaics over the altar.  We paid so we could see the 12th century apse mosaic which shows the Coronation of the Virgin where she sits on the right hand of Christ surrounded by saints.  One should also not miss the incredibly beautiful 13th century floor which is a fine example of Cosmati mosaic work.   The Cosmati family specialised in piecing together different colours of stone which were typically scavenged from Roman ruins.  This is a gorgeous place and we are glad that we made the effort to visit it.

Afterwards we wandered around searching for a place to have lunch and also shopping at the street vendors and the little shops.  We decided to stop at Ristorante Tonnarello Salvati Errninio on the Via Della Paglia and sat outside under the tent.  Here we are sitting on these little metal chairs on a rough cobblestone piazza in Rome!  It is still so exciting to be here in Rome!!  Mike decided to have saltimbocca roma (veal with ham) and mashed potatoes, Tammy had tonnarello nonna with melanzane (noodles with eggplant), and I had tonnarello cozze (noodles with mussels and parmigiana cheese).  We both drank a glass of bianco casa (white wine) and Mike had a glass of rosso casa (a house Merlot).  We finished lunch about 2 p.m. but are not ready to head back to our hotel.

Now it is time for more wandering and looking at all of the buildings, shops, etc. in this fascinating area of the city.  We walked down the Alley of the Athletes, the Vitolo dell'Atleta.  This is a teensy little alleyway that is too narrow for cars where there is clothing hanging from clotheslines over the street!  It's just like in the movies!  Halfway down the street we came to the site of an ancient Jewish synagogue that is now a residence.  A large part of Rome's Jewish community lived in this area until the popes moved them in the 1500s into the ghetto on the other side of the Tiber River.

While we wandered we also stopped at several fancy shops selling shoes and purses--Be still my heart!!!!  I found some I would love to have--but the prices were way above my limit.  So sad! 

Then we decided we would like to see St. Cecilia's church.  When we got there the gates were closed and weren't going to be opened until 4 p.m.  That wasn't a very long time away so we decided to find a place to sit down and have something to drink.  Sadly nothing nearby was open so we just sat in the shade on the patio of a closed restaurant and talked.  At 4 p.m. we walked back to the church to see if it was open--Yay it was open so in we went.  Santa Cecilia in Trastevere was an aristocrat and the patron saint of music who was martyred here in A.D. 230.  The church was founded here about the 4th century on the site of her house which is below the church along with a Roman tannery.  We did not go down into that area as we had heard that it is just empty spaces that are less than interesting.  Santa Cecilia's body turned up in the Catacombs of San Callisto and were reburied here in the 9th century when the church was renovated.  In front of the altar is a beautiful statue of Santa Cecilia that was carved from the memory of the artist who was present when her miraculously preserved remains were briefly disinterred in 1599 (she disintegrated shortly after he saw her).

Next stop was to find a taxi stand which we finally did after walking a few blocks along the Tiber River.  Once we got back to our hotel we walked to Le 2 Colonne for a drink.  Tammy decided to have a Cubra Libre, Mike had a Perone beer, and I had the worst Daiquiri I have ever had.  We told them and they put in more juice but it was still disgusting.  Yuck!

We decided that for dinner tonight we would just eat in our hotel room.  So we bought sandwiches, chips and bananas and headed back to the hotel.  We decided to have an early dinner so we took our food and some wine up to the large room in the lounge area in the hotel and had our last dinner of this wonderful trip.