Day 15 - Free Day in Rome

March 25, 2019

With all the touring we'd done in the last few days, we took the day off to do our own thing. I decided to go back into Borghese Park to look for more birds. Edith stayed in the room initially and then went out for some window shopping.

I took this shot of a metro train because of the artistic paint job, but was a little bit late with the IPhone to catch it all.

It seems that double parking is allowed in this part of town. I assume that those who are blocked are okay with not using their car all day.

Upon reaching the park I started looking or birds. The first I saw was this Yellow-footed Gull, which was quite common in Italy.

The noisy Rose-ringed Parakeets were easy to find in the park.

Here's a statue of Johann Wolfgang Goethe in Villa Borghese Park. While researching this statue i discovered that it includes a head of Mephistopheles, which was stolen in 2010. It was recovered in a couple of months and restored.

I was quite close to the Villa Borghese by this time.

This is part of the Temple of Annia Faustina and Ceres, built in the 1800's. There's not much more information on it other than the name and date.

I don't know if there are any real Owls roosting in the park, but there's at least one cardboard Owl.

Here's a real bird with an interesting name. It is a Great Tit. I'd seen this species in France in 2009. They are similar to our Chickadees, but more colourful.

And a Female Blackbird up close.

Back at the small lake the Muscovy Duck was posing. As mentioned in an earlier post, they are native to Mexico and South America.

It was late enough in the morning that there were people in the rental boats rowing around the lake.

I met with Edith at the Piazza del Popolo and we decided to tour the local DaVinci Museum. This seems to be a franchise in Italy as we'd seen a similar museum in Florence. I believe the exhibits are all recreations of original relics.

This is an early prototype of a bicycle.

Here's Edith testing one of the artifacts:

This is a model of a self-propelled car:

This is a shot of the museum itself.  It's quite compact, but effective at displaying the creations of Leonardo Da Vinci.

This is a prototype for Ball Bearings.

And an early catapult...

This was a prototype for a machine gun:

To me this looks like a space capsule, but it's Da Vinci's concept for an army tank.

This is either something from a horror movie, or an early concept for Scuba gear.

And here's a tribute to the great man:

This movie was taken out on the Piazza del Popolo and it ended the day's activities.