I got up early, as usual, and went down to where we had eaten the night before, to get some cash from an ATM and catch the opening of the San Cosimato market. Again, they were setting up laconically, and I had to interrupt people to make purchases. I bought apricots for N and the kids, rughetta (rocket), and small tomatoes. At a nearby norcineria I purchased some housemade prosciutto, and asked the counterman to cut it by hand; also some mozzarella di bufala, and some pecorino stagionato. Up the street a little way was a bakery, and I bought a couple of loaves of bread; then to an open alimentari for a small bottle of artisanal olive oil and some wine vinegar. On the way back home, on impulse, I had a coffee at the Caffe Settimano just below the arch; it was my first purchased espresso of the trip, and it was pretty bad.
After breakfast (N said the apricots were amazing), we headed across the Ponte Mazzini and made our way to the north, through Via della Pace again, to the Palazzo Altemps and its collection of classical sculpture. This, as it turned out, was somewhat annoying, because Cardinal Ludovisi, who collected these works, hired contemporary sculptors to "restore" them (meaning fill in the broken heads, arms, and legs, often in heavy-handed ways). One of the people he hired was Bernini, so it wasn't as if they lacked talent, but the result is not as effective to my mind as if they'd left them alone. Even the monumental Suicide of Galatian -- supposedly commissioned by Julius Caesar to celebrate his Gallic victory -- just seemed overly melodramatic. The building was interesting, with many Renaissance carved ceilings and frescoes.
We continued north to the Tiber and along the inner side of the highway to try to see the Ara Pacis, the reconstructed altar celebrating Augustan victories, but it was closed for construction of a new museum designed by Richard Meier. "Next time," said N. Up the busy Via Tomacelli and then over on the "fashionable" Via Condotti, with a noticeable increase in the number of pretentious shops with young, trendy staff serving well-dressed (and presumably well-monied) middle-aged people. There was a considerable glare blocking our view of the Spanish Steps, and when we got closer, I realized it was the light of a film crew, apparently doing a commercial which involved having a person in a gorilla suit being carried up the middle of the street. Once we got past that ruckus, we were at the Spanish Steps.
It was hot enough that there were quite few people on the steps, which were in full sun. Z wanted to climb them, but couldn't convince any of the rest of us, and since we were interested in neither the Caffe Greco or McDonald's, we moved on to the east, past the heavily-scaffolded monument in the centre of the Piazza di Spagna, and along the Via Due Macelli to Via del Triton.
I had thought we'd eat lunch in the vicinity of the Ara Pacis, but we were ahead of schedule; it was not quite noon, the one restaurant we knew about in the area didn't open until 12:45, and no one was really hungry anyway. We asked the kids if they could deal with another museum if we had a snack; they agreed, and we went down to the Gelateria di San Crispino. We had to wait a few minutes for it to open, but the gelato was really good; quite intense, and since no one else was crazy enough to eat gelato at noon, we could even sit down at one of the two small tables in back.
Up a long block of Via del Triton to the Palazzo Barberini, just past the Metro station. Here we discovered we could buy our Galleria Borghese tickets, saving us the trouble of having to call and book. The gallery's collection, however, was quite disappointing: the first-floor salon with the wild Baroque ceiling by Pietro da Cortona was closed for renovation, the Caravaggio paintings were all at an exhibition in Palazzo Venezia, Raphael's "La Fornarina" was somewhere unknown, and there were a lot of minor works by minor Italian artists. There were a few highpoints: Guido Reni's "Beatrice Cenci", a weird allegory by Il Sodoma, one of Hans Holbein's portraits of Henry VIII, some dramatic eighteenth-century religious works, and some anamorphic paintings which amused the kids (who got to move around a cylindrical mirror on a reproduction to try to see the images).
The building itself was not that interesting, either; we had to wait until 1:30 to see the private apartments, which were done up and furnished in eighteenth-century style, and were inferior to ones we'd seen in Paris.
Instead of going back to the restaurant we'd located (which appeared to serve very ordinary Emilian-Romagnan food), we decided to go for a more interesting place near the Campo dei Fiori. But we waited a long time for our bus, trapped under a narrow awning of a shoe store between the direct sun and the heat of a fully-lit display window. I finally figured out that another line, a small electric bus that could navigate the streets of the centre, would also get us there, but by time one arrived and took us on a circuitous route to the restaurant, it was twenty minutes to three. The restaurant closed at three, but there were no free tables.
Fortunately, I had done shopping that morning for a dinner in, which could be converted to an emergency lunch. So we walked home, and I made quick preparations. The kids loved everything, even the mozzarella di bufala, which normally A is not crazy about. I drank the last of the cooking wine, which I had kept in the fridge, preserving it somewhat.
After a nice rest and the ebbing away of some of the day's frustrations, we returned to the restaurant we had failed to eat lunch at, Grappolo d'Oro in the Piazza della Cancelleria. This was considerably more inventive a meal than we'd had to date: the kids and I each had large squares of pasta made jet-black by squid ink with just a hint of tomato sauce and a puree of canellini beans; N had ravioli with zucchini inside and a clam sauce outside. The kids split a fritto misto which really was misto, with a few squid rings and several different varieties of small (about ten centimetres long) fish; I had a grilled fish; N had sole in eggplant sauce; and we shared some grilled vegetables. It was all quite good and went a long way towards redeeming the day.
Desserts, alas, seemed to be the usual tiramisu, fruit crostata, fresh fruit, or gelato, so we decided to go for takeout gelato. We headed for the Piazza Navona area, only to find another branch of the gelato place N's father had recommended just a few yards away. The area, between Campo dei Fiori and Piazza Farnese, was quite busy with people, and we squeezed into a corner near a stall selling CDs to eat our fruit gelati.