Bob's birthday!

Today we decided to take it a little easier because the rest of our week we'll have the Roma pass, which allows us to go multiple attractions over three days.

Because I always like to check out our upcoming concert venues, we took a leisurely stroll to the Museo di Granatieri, the site of this Friday's concert. The first time we attended a concert abroad was in the early '90s in Salzburg, and since then we've done it many times in many cities. Anyway, we easily found the place. We saw a young man come out of an outbuilding and got into a conversation about the concert. As we turned to leave, he told us that there was a museum on the grounds if we were interested. Taking him up on his offer, we toured a museum of the history of the army in Italy.

The museum took no sides -- it just presented highlights in Italian military history along with uniforms of each time period and dioramas of some of the famous battles.

Poignant statue at the entrance to the museum

Battle of Waterloo

Trenches

Modern sculpture with tank, cavalry, and catapult

As we left the museum, the man we'd talked to initially gave a us a gift bag! 

After a quick coffee and return to the hotel, we set out for the second best beer pub in the world, according to some beer website.  Back to Trastavere we went, this time using public transportation (it really helps if you ask the hotel guy what buses to take!).

Bottled beer menu

Italian wheat beer from Lombardy region

Italian brewery

I had an AMAZING Belgian style Italian-made chestnut beer -- so delicious.  We sat and chatted with the bartender about the place; he knew that the Philadelphia area had a lot of good microbreweries.  We then went back to the hotel via bus #64.  Bob took a siesta; I worked on the blog.  We then went to another recommended restaurant literally behind our hotel.  It was so popular that we had to be out of there by 9PM (it was 7:30ish) -- we were able to comply easily.

Grilled calamari!



Dinner!


After dinner, we went back to the hotel bar -- waiting for us was another complimentary bottle of prosecco, this time for Bob's birthday!  We also shared some panna cotta -- soooo good.

Bob celebrating his birthday compliments of the hotel!