Rome Retreat

This is being posted on Halloween, because we just got off our 30-day silent retreat last night, but it was written ten days after retreat began, on our first "free day."
Today we had a free day from our 30 day retreat. I went shopping by the Vatican (peanut butter and rice milk!), and while on my way to the Church of the Gesù, I was asked for directions to the Pantheon. Turns out the gentleman with the map was from Chicago! I walked him over to the piazza (took a shortcut through Piazza Navone, what a lovely, lovely piazza that is) and got treated to a delicious gelato (pompelmo and fragole--grapefruit and strawberry--kind of like sorbet, and made with the real ingredients).
Visited Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the Gothic church near the Pantheon (with Bernini's elephant statue just outside). Prayed at the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena for nieces Caitlin and Kate.
Made it to the Gesù Church, too, where I found that the huge silver-plated statue of St. Ignatius was not in its usual place. I inquired in the sacristy. The same brother was there who had been minding the little book table and preparing the sacristy chapel for the noon mass six years ago! He told me that the statue was fine; it was the painting behind the statue that needed renovation, and it seemed to be taking forever. A rather nice painting that rolls up behind and then under the altar. Well, three hundred years of that kind of treatment can do some damage to a canvas. Walked back toward Castel Sant'Angelo, and got some lunch--pizza al taglio. (Prepared sheets of pizza, with your portion cut off--tagliato--with a pair of scissors!) Mine was thin sheets of potato over a layer of cheese, sprinkled with rosemary. Quite delicious. Leaned against the wall by the Tiber, looking at the Castello and the lovely blue sky.
It was just the right way to spend my little free day. Tonight, the solemn high silence begins again.