We decided to walk to the Botanical Garden of Rome today. It was a reasonable distance, just 39 minutes to walk there. Interestingly, taking a bus was 35 minutes, and driving wasn’t much better, at nearly 30 minutes. We always prefer to walk if it’s reasonable, but this was a no-brainer.

We’ve been walking around Rome for the past week, surprised by how much of the city is taken up by archaeological excavations. It gives you a sense of the tradeoff between preserving the past and living the present. Our route took us past the Basilica San Nicola in Carcere, which shows how this hasn’t always been the case. It was built at the beginning of the sixth century on the ruins of three earlier temples. The ruins were incorporated into the basilica, presumably to reduce cost by reusing the existing structure. You can clearly see the temple in the basilica walls.

Next we crossed the Pons Fabricius, the oldest bridge still in use in Rome, dating to 62 B.C. Another example of preserving the past, but in this case, it’s still in daily use as a pedestrian bridge.

From there it was a short walk to the botanical garden. The focus is on the plants, but they also display some of the many ruins discovered on the site, which creates an interesting effect.

We learned that four fountains of unknown origin were discovered on the site. The first we spotted was the smallest fountain I’ve ever seen. To get a sense of scale, note the leaves and the individual water drops.

This next cactus was very unusual. It looked a little like a brain.

It wasn’t high season, but there were still some flowers on the trees.

We had a bit of an adventure earlier in the week trying to see the parakeets flitting around the trees. They were noisy, but very shy. We finally managed to get a good look at them the other day, after much effort. But in the botanical garden, they were not shy at all. Every time we turned around, we seemed to see one … of five.

This tree reminded me of something from a haunted forest.

Another view of the Monk Parakeet, eating berries on the trees. They were everywhere.

More flowers.

Eventually we found the second fountain in the botanical garden. This is more like what I expected of a fountain.

We spotted this bush covered with berries that look a lot like haskap berries we get at home. We were surprised they hadn’t been eaten by the birds, leading us to wonder if they were poisonous. A bit of research revealed they are Myrtle berries, which aren’t related to haskap. They are also edible, though they are very tart. Maybe that’s why the birds haven’t eaten them.

Later we came across this in the bamboo section. I agree with the sentiment, but for the record, we did not carve this.

As I mentioned earlier, it was almost as if the parakeets were taunting us, making it easy to spot them after being so elusive earlier in the week. This was a Rose-ringed Parakeet, eating persimmon fruit.

One bad thing about the botanical garden was that it was on the side of a hill, which meant we had to climb a lot. We’ve had more than enough hills this week, so we would have preferred it to be flat. On the plus side, it offered views of Rome with hills in the background.

Here is Jan trying to get a better picture of the Rose-ringed parakeet feeding.

And here is the partially eaten persimmon.

And just to drive the point home, another shot of a Monk Parakeet in plain view.

T botanical garden was relatively sparse at this time of year, but it was still an oasis of calm forest quiet. It was a pleasant outing with renewing forest smells all around. When we finished, we headed back to the apartment for a brief rest before another visit to the vegan restaurant, Rifugio Romano, for dinner. Last time I tried the “3-D printed steak” so this time I wanted to try the “3-D printed salmon”.

The texture was good, if not perfect. The taste wasn’t identical to what you would expect from salmon, so it might not do well in a blind taste test. But if you set aside those expectations and rate it on its own merits, it was very good, the pepper corns adding just the right amount of zip. And the potatoes were divine. I highly recommend it if you are in the area.