Our second full day in Rome was a bit shorter, slower paced, and (sadly) a whole lot cloudier. Not surprisingly, neither of us was thrilled about getting up for the earliest shuttle bus again, so we headed out on the 10:30 bus and didn't arrive in the city until well after 11. That left us rather rushed to make it on foot to our first church of the day before noon!
But we made it, even with getting a bit lost and stopping for a kebab and foccacia bread along the way. It was a long walk (about 20 minutes) through a pretty ugly part of the city to get there, but thankfully the church was well worth it. There were even a few other tourists drifting in from time to time, despite its remoteness from the rest of the city's attractions.
The Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura (St. Lawrence Outside the Walls) is one of the oldest churches in Rome. Lawrence was an archivist of the Roman church who was executed by roasting publicly on a gridiron. The legend goes that his persecutors hoped he would renounce Christianity publicly under such torture, but instead he called out, "Turn me over, I am done on this side!" He is the patron saint of librarians - and of chefs.
Emperor Constantine built a small shrine over Lawrence's grave in the 300s and a pope added a church to it in the 580s. Another pope built a larger church in front of the old one in the 1200s. There was a banner hanging from the facade celebrating the shrine's 1750th anniversary - now that's pretty old.
Fortunately the church caretaker was not strict about the 12:00 closing time, so we had plenty of time to look around. But eventually he locked up the front doors and let us out a side door, where we were greeted by the very friendly church cat:
Then we had a loooong walk back towards the train station and further south to the heart of the city. We had some extra time since most of the churches were closed, so we got to enjoy a leisurely lunch at a place called Ciuri Ciuri that we found right across the street from San Clemente. It is just a little takeaway place with only a couple tables, but the decor was stylish and the food was incredibly delicious!
...and this delicious thing, which is a rice and ham mixture inside a layer of mashed potato, covered in crumbs and baked. Yum! The photo doesn't do it justice.
From there we traced a similar route to the day before, but turned off after the Circus Maximus to cross the Tiber river into the Trastevere neighborhood. There are two churches of interest there - Santa Maria in Trastevere and Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. It was a nice area of the city with a different feel to it - more like a smaller Italian town than Rome.
Other highlights included a an 8th-century Byzantine icon and a contemporary painting of the Council of Trent in the 1500s.
Then we weaved our way through the old streets to the next church. Along the way we came across a L'Insalata Ricca restaurant, which was our very favorite place to eat when we had our hotel near the Vatican last time. It has a fantastic variety of salads and delicious bread. We knew it was a chain, but hadn't come across any this trip. How disappointing to only see it when we were full and short of time!
We got an early, decent dinner at Termini from a healthy-Asian-style place called W.O.K. ("World Oriented Kitchen"), popped in the station's huge international bookstore for a quick look, then caught our 6:30 bus home.