WEDNESDAY MARCH 8, 2017
After breakfast we went on a guided tour of the famous Coliseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. This was definitely the tour where I learned the most. The Coliseum was immensely enormous and was arguably my favorite part of the trip. I learned that the Coliseum was historically the center of entertainment for Romans; being used as a theatre for plays, naval ship battles and a viewing of torture for prisoners captured in wartime. The lower deck of the building is where Romans kept the prisoners and animals that were used in the shows. Our tour guide Romina informed us that Romans of all ages would come and watch prisoners be fired from cannons and gruesome fights till death in the middle of the arena. After the guided tour we had some free time and decided to do some site seeing that unfortunately turned out to be a bit of a let down.
First, we visited the Fontana di Trevi. The fountain itself was amazingly beautiful!! The detail of the sculpting of the fountain was so intricate, you could tell it must have taken the artist forever to complete their work. I was happy I got to do the tradition of throwing three coins into the fountain for good luck. Despite this, I felt as if I could not really enjoy the experience fully because the space was extremely overcrowded with tourist taking pictures everywhere.
Afterward, we past by the Pantheon, which was an immensely large building, but once again another overcrowded tourist attraction. I did enjoy the cute coffee shop next to it that our tour guide Enzo treated us to. Visiting the Spanish steps was again another overly crowded tourist attraction. We also got to visit an area named Piazza Navona; which apparently was originally preserved because it holds the ruins of where Julius Caesar used to live, but in more recent years it has been turned into a sanctuary for cats due to the high number of abandon cats in the area.
After all the cite seeing, we had lunch at a nice restaurant recommended by Enzo, named Nonna Betta. Another restaurant with great service and even better food. Here I enjoyed eating the best tasting meal of my entire experience in Rome. I ate a buttery potato and fish soup that was so full of savory flavor. After lunch, we had to walk back home because the tram (public transportation) employees were participating in a transportation strike. Apparently, tram employees were ceasing operations at certain times during the day in order to protest against private transportation companies, such as uber, taking away business in the transportation industry. While walking back to the bed and breakfast we also observed a peaceful picket line escorted by police in the middle of one of the main roads the town. Of course this strike caused a major traffic problem for those driving during this hour.
As the evening fell upon us, we attended a cooking lesson in Piazza San Giovanni di Dio, where we prepared our own meal and ate dinner. As a group we made boiled artichokes, cornmeal and tiramisu. Honestly, it is slightly unbelievable how Italians prepare their food using the least amount of ingredients as possible, but the meal still possesses so much flavor.