Roma- Piazza Navona, Pantheon, and Trevi

Murat and I had a great lunch of pizza at the Piazza Navona, and I got to finally have my bufala mozzarella that I had been dreaming about. We took a quick tour around the piazza where wonderfully talented painters were selling their watercolors, pastels, and canvases of la bella Roma.

We saw Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers and Borromini's Sant'Agnese in Agone.
We found the Pantheon next and I told Murat about it's history and architecture (the stuff I could remember from Art History). How it had started out as a place to worship all the gods (hence the name), but when Rome converted to Christianity all the idols were destroyed and it became a church.
The Pantheon is also the burial place of the painter Raphael. The saying carved on his tomb really expresses the esteem this painter was held in during his lifetime (and to this present day):
Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he died, feared herself to die.

Next stop was the Fontana di Trevi so we could throw our coins in an insure our return to Rome (hey, it has worked for me many times ;).
These are some up close shots of the fountain's sculptures.
Nearby the fountain I met a fairy. Usually you have all the guys dressed up like statues or mimes. She was really different and unique.

At this time it really started to rain (it had been sprinkling and misting on and off), and we were approached by one of the many men selling umbrellas. We got the guy to sell it for 2 Euros instead of 10 (we heard people celebrating an 8 Euro acquisition). Murat is a world class bargainer. Later we would buy two sunglasses for 10 Euros when the guy started at 25 a piece!
After this we headed back to our hostel to watch Italy's Euro Cup match. They won that one, but would lose the next match which was with Spain (the future Cup winners). We were so tired from all our walking that we slept early that night. We had another long and exciting day ahead of us =).