Today we slept in a little, although the daily street-cleaner who drives by our apartment two to three times every morning at 7 AM didn't make that an easy feat. After our first scrambled egg breakfast in Italy (interesting observation: eggs here don't seem to be sold by the dozen, rather, they are sold by the "10"), we set out for the day.
Our first stop was the daily market in Testaccio, a neighborhood that is near the Pyramid we saw a few days ago. The market is smaller than most of the ones we saw in Florence, but had an interesting variety of things: fish, produce, baked goods, shoes, clothes, pots/pans, and meat. And the random guy who came up to us (twice) trying to sell us garlic. For some reason, he didn't seem to understand that shoving a bag of garlic in my face (or telling Mike that I'm beautiful) doesn't make us any more likely to buy it from him.
After the market we stopped at a pastry shop for some morning sweets. We got two cassatte, a Sicilian pastry - all you need to know is that it is made with copious amounts of sugar and that it is amazing. We also got a small pastry similar to an eclair, except filled with chocolate , and a small chocolate cup filled with cream and topped with a raspberry. Don't judge us when I tell you that we finished everything within 10 minutes. 
Running on a serious sugar high, we made our way back towards the Circus Maximus and attempted to find that keyhole that Mike mentioned a few days ago. Turns out there is a benefit to having more tourists around - given that its the weekend, there are more tourists out and about, and there was a line of them to see the keyhole. This made it much easier to find. We waited our turn - and it is actually a pretty amazing sight. Through a small keyhole we saw St. Peters dome perfectly outlined by a row of trees. Exactly how everyone describes it. Unfortunately it was really bright out, so our camera just white-washed the dome, so we'll have to go back yet again to actually get a good picture.
We made our way from the keyhole down to the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, a palace (where the original family still lives) that is basically a large gallery full of paintings and statues, some by very famous artists. The palace was unbelievably large, and was actually worthwhile because included with our tickets was an audioguide that explained some of the art, some history of the family, and some of the family scandals. One of the interesting things we learned was that the one of the family members who became the Pope (which in that time was also the "president" of Italy) hired his nephew to be the main Cardinal (essentially the Secretary of State). The word for nephew in Italian is "nipote", and from this event, we have the word "nepotism". After our tour, it was time for lunch. We walked back to the street where we first looked for soccer tickets and had more good sandwiches for lunch. But the real interest in coming back to this neighborhood was to get some of the amazing tartufo that we had the other day. This time we each got one and enjoyed 15 minutes of bliss.
We walked back home, did some grocery shopping and some straightening up around the apartment, and then met up with my aunt's cousin and her boyfriend, who live in Rome. They took us to a great typical Roman restaurant for dinner and we had a great time and ate like kings. Olives, fennel, fried rice balls, salame, and lentils for the appetizer. Two kinds of pasta for the first course. Meat, vegetables, cheese and potato chips for the second course. Fresh squeezed tangerine juice and cake for dessert. And wine. And then we went out for gelato and had the some of the biggest cones we've ever had. Can you say FULL??
We staggered home, finished up the blog and called it a day!
Gelato Gusti per di Giorno:
Mike - Cassata e Stracciatella
Aviva - Limoncello e Fragola
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