Views from our apartment in Rome - Sept 21

Fantastic views from our apartment. St Peter's dome is off in the distance, and there are two other smaller cathedrals close by.Several times during the day the bells from this church ring.

This is the top of the Pantheon across our neighbors deck.

We look down on this narrow pedestrian street, and romantic accordion music from a street restaurant wafts up at night. One of our favorite things to do is to just sit in the apartment and enjoy the views and sounds of Rome. We found the apartment on FRBO.com. The Area Sacra Roman ruins of four temples under excavation are just across the street. There's a stray cat foundation at the edge of the ruins, so they are covered with cats.

We take a very old elevator (like in Charade) to the sixth floor, then walk up one flight.

We had a little adventure on the way from the airport. We thought we'd try to fit in with the locals and ride the train and tram into the city instead of arranging a driver or getting a taxi from the airport. Which went fine until we got off the train at Trastevere station. As soon as we had gone up the stairs, a man approached us indicating we had some foreign substance on our packpack and pants. Then, another man offered some tissues, which I took and began wiping off our small backpack without removing it from Debbies back. In another minute, still another man indicated we had even more of the foreign substance on our pants, and offered to help with a bottle of water. He even had some on his pants, and was demonstrating how to get it off. The substance smelled like mustard and mayonnaise, so I wasn't too worried, but perplexed as to how it got all over us. Something clicked in my mind about then, they seemed a little too helpful, I raised my voice and said "NO!", and put my hands out to indicate that we weren't interested in any more help. I told Debbie I thought they were trying to rob us. It might have helped that there were two policemen not far away outside talking to a man about his motorscooter. We hung around the policemen for a while, just to make sure.

We didn't know this, but the woman who arranged our apartment rental via email had a baby the day before, over 10 lb difficult delivery, so she wasn't answering her cell phone. We found the 26 Arenula apartment building and kept attempting to call her, thinking that maybe the whole apartment rental, $200 deposit, and required 770 euros in my pocket, might be part of a scan as well. Half expecting to get mugged any time, we kept calling her. After a couple hours, we got her, and she explained about the baby, and that her husband would meet us in an hour. It all turned out fine, the apartment is on the top (seventh) floor, and has absolutely fantastic views out over the old center of Rome. We can see the tops of many cathedrals and monuments right from our windows, even the bathroom.