After we spent most of the morning and a little bit if the afternoon looking at the major sites we wanted to see we decided to find the location of the mouth of truth then find a place to stop for lunch. We found a nice place for lunch but it was a bit of a distance from the mouth of truth but that was ok. Once in the restaurant we got menus and even though it was in Italian and English the translation seemed off, but as I often do when I am vacation in foreign countries I saw someone Eating something that looked good and only when the waitress asked what I wanted and turned out to be really good.
When we were finished with lunch we went back into the mouth of truth, which is the entrance to the church of Santa Maria located in Cosmedin. The Horse's Mouth is a large round marble sculpture of a face about 6 feet in diameter, which was at once a sewer manhole and a Roman. This little-known side, became popular after the film Holiday in RomeGregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn was released in 1953 and remains a tourist favorite today. This site wasn't too crowded with only 60 people in front of us but with everyone having a picture of themselves taken with the face it took about 45 minutes before we got our turn in front of it.
The next site we were going to see was the temple of Hercules which was right across the street and is a controversial site even to this day. Because of the layout of the temple it has been mislabeled for years as the temple of vesta. The temple of vesta has been agreed upon by most in the archeological community as having been in the roman forum and is in ruins now. Not that it means anything but I call it the temple of Hercules and I think it is correct.
I did my own research by typing in temple of Hercules, when I looked at all the pictures associated with the temple of Hercules they were all be the same. However when I do a search on the temple of vesta most of the pictures will be of the ruins in the roman forum but there are still pictures of the temple of Hercules there saying it is the temple of vesta. We had planned on seeing the forum boarium building which would have made it 9 sites we were going to see in one day and was only a few hundred feet away, but some friends who had come back from Rome only weeks before we were to leave said there was major construction going on there and the building was covered. We walked past the building anyway since it was on our way to the next place.
Tiber Island was the last place we wanted to see, but we have an unexpected place on the road, which is part of a Roman bridge which was built 2000 years ago you could see. While the view of the bridge being built looked like everything was built in 1900. Tiber Island is a famous island in the middle of the river Tiber. I had a very nice small island with a restaurant, a shop and I think a hotel on it. From one end of the island, I was able toother side of the ancient roman bridge we saw on our way to the island. I was a little surprised about the size of the river thinking this famous river I want to see wasn't a massive river like I had seen in the US but not all famous rivers can be as big as the Mississippi, the Ohio or the Delaware rivers. We spent about an hour on the island some of which was just relaxing because this was the last place we were going to see today.
After we were finished on the island we made our way back to where we got off the bus in the first place so we ended up going in a giant circle. By now it was 6:30 and when we got back to our hotel we were a little tired so we took a nap before going to dinner. We saw a lot of sites today and while in the hotel room I was thinking how nice it would have been had someone told me how to plan my vacation days rather than having to figure out everything for myself and at that moment is when I decided to put up a web site to advise people how to arranged their sightseeing day.
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