Monday
Today we started our day at the Colosseum! We decided to do a tour of the ancient things because neither of us are well versed in this type of architecture and history, so we thought it would be the best thing. Our tour guide was a woman from Italy and she was very knowledgable and funny. The nice thing about going on a guided tour is that you skip all of the lines and you see everything you want to see without getting lost or confused. The guidance works like this: everyone has a audio player and a headset in one ear, and then the group is on one channel so we all hear the same thing. All tour groups in Rome (and probably elsewhere) are the same. I think this is better than one person yelling at 30 people, things can get complicated.
So our tour consisted of the Colosseum, which looked like this in the morning:
Then we went to the Palatine Hill (where you can see the forum, and there are also some ruins up there, which looked like this:
And then we walked through the Forum, but by then we were so exhausted that the taking in of information was hard (also I've been having problems with my right leg), so those pictures looked like this:
As you can see, a lot of pictures, but not a lot of explanation. Rome was extremely hot and difficult because of that. But we had a great time.
After our tour we went to the old Jewish Ghetto, which is still full of Jewish shops and Kosher restaurants. We were instructed to go there by a few people, most importantly my Aunt Tania who said we would have whole fried artichokes there that would be incredible. She, as always, was right. As was everyone else who recommended it so thank you!
Whole fried artichoke? Yes! YOU CAN EAT THE WHOLE THING!
We also had falafel and humus and some fried mozzarella things that weren't what we ordered but we ate them and enjoyed them.
After lunch we walked back to our hotel for a breather (I had been working on my paper still).
Then we went to dinner at the restaurant with 114 pasta sauce choices. Yes they were all different (some only slightly different, but it still counts in my book). I had bolognese and mom had shrimp with tomatoes and spinach or rocket, she enjoyed it. We also had a salad that would not stay on our forks, or get to our mouths, so we had a laugh about the slippery salad and I think the people next to us thought we were crazy.
Then we went to the Trevi fountain (because we were told to go at night) and it was really beautiful at night. I believe I had tears in my eyes. We threw pennies over our shoulders as we both want to return to Rome, and that was our night.
Note: Ginger and Cinnamon Gelato = amazing.
