The contemporary art museum in Rome, MAXXI, has been on my list for a long time. We managed to get out fairly early for the nice long walk to Piazza del Popolo and out the gates, and down via Flaminia. We passed this interesting children’s museum along the way:

The MAXXI (the XXI stand for 21st century) building itself is stunning, designed by Zaha Hadid one of the world’s most successful and innovative women architects. One of the main exhibitions was about women architects of our time. I enjoyed this display called “Bad Press–Dissident Ironing” which was accompanied by a video of a woman ironing. There were about a dozen dissident white shirts.

Outside was a small building showing a movie about Venice in very contemporary terms, showing a beautiful woman coming out of the water with images of Venice flowing over and around her.

We stopped, about half way back at a pizzeria where there seemed to be a lot of business. Il Buchetto was perfect for us. I really enjoyed the thin, crispy Roman pizza. Mine had fresh mushrooms and sausage; Ken had prosciutto on his:

Walking back towards town we had to pass through the Porta del Popolo, built by Pope Sixtus IV in 1475–very impressive and a far cry from the architecture we saw at the MAXXI.:

All day we had our umbrellas opening and stashing away, but luckily it mostly just sprinkled. We walked home with a tiny detour to walk the length of pretty via Margutta and then stopped at the Coop in our neighborhood for dinner supplies.

After and extended rest time and dinner we decided to go out in search of dessert and of course, we didn’t get 10 feet from our building when it started raining hard. We went into the little shop just downstairs from us instead. The chocolate covered hazelnuts we got there did the trick.

We finished watching “Drive My Car” which we had started the night before. Both of us enjoyed it, but we’re not really sure why. In a word, mesmerizing.