Day 2 in Rome -Torrential Rains

This will be a short post, as I am exhausted after braving a morning and evening of terrible weather.  Our 3 hour morning walking tour titled "Popes, Power, and Parties" was conducted during torrential rain.  I knew we were really in for it when I looked at weather.com the night before and it was flashing "Warning - Heavy Rains" across the page.  We were so wet by the end of the tour that you could wring our clothes out.  My recently "re-waterproofed" rain jacket turned out to be not at all waterproof and I didn't carry an umbrella as I was using two walking sticks during the tour.  That turned out to be a bust since the rubber pads on the bottom of the sticks slid off the cobblestones or got caught in between them.  The actual tour was quite interesting, but most of it was outside and offered only one opportunity to sit for about 5 minutes during the entire three hours.  We learned a lot about the Renaissance period and how art and religion were sources of power and politics.  Here are some shots of places we visited:

                                       Villa Farnesi 

                       Street scene

                St. Peter's Cathedral and Tiber River

                     Bridge over Tiber

           Ceiling painting by Rapael telling story of Cupid and Psyche in Villa Farnesina

  Trompe L'oeil wall painting that appears to be a window to the outside at Villa Farnesina