Hitting the Road in Rome

We left Farfa's house around 10:30 and headed south through very busy streets.  At times we were able to ride in the traffic lane, but often we had to walk the bikes through groups of people on the sidewalks...and we were prone to say, "Buon Giorno!"  The garbage is overflowing in most of the streets and it has been warm in Rome, so the ride had that Waste Connection Central Transfer sort of smell.
I had written out a cue sheet for our 7 km ride to Alessandro's Air B&B, and you might be surprised to learn that it took us almost an hour and a half to get here.  But...we were walking the bikes most of the time, and stopped to check the maps a few times, so there you go. 

Alassando's apartment is in the Quadaro region and has three bedrooms that share a kitchen and a bath...and each of us pay $40/ nt.  He made us a cup of coffee, gave us keys and said goodbye.  We may see the girls who are staying in the other two rooms tonight.
We stopped at a local cafe and had a sandwich before heading over to the Villa Borghese where we had reservations to go through the art museum tomorrow at 5...we wanted to go today, but tickets were sold out.  We decided to take a chance and see if we could go in on a cancellation.  Our idea worked...we got there at 2:40 and had our tickets at 3:00.
We both loved the museum.  Such a striking contrast to the hot, loud crowds of yesterday.  Such amazing art.  My favorite was this marble statue of David with his armor on the ground beside him and his sling in his hand.

Patty has this theory...she calls it the Oreo effect...you have something good happen and then something bad happens before something good happens again.  I'm not convinced that's how it works, but we were having such a great day we decided to take a risk and buy train tickets to Avezzano for Saturday.  This means Patty's friends won't have to drive all the way to Rome to pick us up, but we will have to get back to the Serinnisimo station by 10:20 or so on Saturday morning.

We were hungry...so very hungry and walked around the area where Alassandro's apartment is for a good 30 minutes before landing at a nondescript little pizzeria.  We wanted pasta, and wine, and good bread, and we managed all three.  There are two apps we are using on this trip that have been especially helpful...Word Lens, and Google Translate.