When in Rome! Day 4

It was a nice sunny morning as we got our start today! We went to the Pantheon first. Wow!! What an amazing feat of architecture! The hole at the top is actually that! A hole! When it rains, the rain comes inside but it drains off quickly as the floor is convex and the water drains off! It is also a sun dial and at noon day, the sunny spot shines on the door. The last sunlight of the day shines on Raphael's tomb-- no one knows if this was done on purpose, but it may be too much of a coincidence for me! We rented headsets and did the tour and it told of the history and how Hadrian built (or rebuilt) it. It has survived all this time due to it becoming an actual church, which saved a lot of the metals (brass, etc.) that they used during the wars, etc. They didn't loot it because it was a sacred place. Just down from the Pantheon was a church that had a beautiful organist playing and it resonated throughout the entire building-- it was pretty cool! We saw 3 famous Caravaggio painting depicting St. Matthew... Bill took a picture of one of them. Then we went back toward the Pantheon and just up from it was another church which had Jesus holding the cross by Michelangelo--entitled simply "The Christ". It's crazy that you can just walk into a church here and they have a Michelangelo sculpture on display!!  There wasn't even really a lot of people around it either. Everywhere here has so many people-- it was nice to enter a building and not have the crowds! We passed a lot of Roman ruins along the walk to the Colosseum--it looked like several different buildings in a really large area. It's crazy to think how long those ruins have been around and that they are even still standing, much less in as good of condition as the Pantheon! 2,000 years, give or take, for these buildings! Crazy!!  After a nice rest in the hotel this afternoon, we took the Edward Jones shuttle to find a restaurant for dinner.  We didn't have reservations or any recommendations, and it was the best dinner yet here in Rome!  We had bruschetta-- a few different kinds on the plate, caprese salad that was SO fresh with mozarella di bufala-- that's the key, and the filet mignon with arugula and parmesan crumbles on top-- it was SO good!  We've learned to share everything because the food is so filling and comes in pretty large portions.  We ordered the cheesecake for dessert.  The owner says it's the best cheesecake in Rome but it was more like a pudding over a graham cracker crust with chocolate drizzled on top.  It was good, but not a cheesecake!  Haha!  He was super nice though.  He's from LA (his mother is American) but lives here now.  Nice guy!  We got his business cards to recommend it to other EJ people over the next few weeks.