ROMA, GIORNA 2

Day two of our trip to room started on a very good note, with a free breakfast from the hotel that we stayed at. (Are you starting to see the theme of how happy food makes me?) We made sure to eat a lot and take some fruit with us so that we wouldn't have to buy lunch.

After breakfast we headed out to the Roman Forum, which is located at the center of the city and was the heart of the Roman empire during it's time. It's mainly ruins now, but we had a professor from our school, who is an expert on all things Roman, come and give us a tour around. If you're ever thinking of going to the Forum, I suggest that you either research it quite a bit before you go, go with someone who knows quite a bit about it, or go with a guide. Otherwise it will all just seem like piles of rocks and you'll miss the importance of the ruins.

This is an example of said "pile of rocks". Trying to figure this out would be like trying to finish a 100 piece puzzle with only 25 pieces.

When you first enter you will walk right past this jewel, which was being restored when we went, but it's super fascinating, at least to me. It was a temple at one point, with the open structure and the colonnade surrounding the perimeter, but when the Catholic church became a larger power in Rome a chapel was built within the confines of the temple as a sort of statement.

Old rocks excite me, like these ones, which used to be the dining hall (archaeologist think) of  Nero's enormous villa.

Speaking of old stones, these are the oldest in the Forum in the Hut Village, dating back to the 5th century BC. BC people. That's unimaginably old, and I could have just reached out and touched them. But I didn't. I like to keep what I call a "National Parks" mentality of "Leave only footprints, take only pictures".

Finally for the Forum (alliteration alert) we have one of two triumphal arches. It's hard to see in this picture, but if you look straight down the arch, you can see the Colosseum. And the Colosseum was our next stop.

We walked through the bustling crowds towards the Colosseum, and as soon as our professor Eugenio (whose head is shown here) stopped and we looked up, this was the overwhelming and powerful view we had.

After climbing the steps...correction, the Roman steps (they are incredibly high and I will have buns of steel just from the one visit), we are once again welcomed with a powerful and overwhelming view. A camera can't take in as wide of a frame as we were getting in person. It was  a lot to see, and I'm sure that feeling was just what the designers were going for. But I digress. 

Here is the classic close-up view of the ruins that would have been the staging areas for the animals and gladiators. Fun fact: It also housed the rooms that the trap doors, located all over the battle area floor, lead to. Another fun fact: the wooden floor that covered these rooms was covered itself in sand to absorb all of the blood and sweat from the "games". (I hope none of you are squeamish.)

   

And finally for the Colosseum, this was the gorgeous last view we had before exiting (finding the exit is a bit of a adventure by the way.)

After we were done at the Colosseum, our professor and chaperon gave us the choice of either going on our own because it was our free time, or hanging out with them in a less formal format and having them show us interesting places in Rome and just getting to know each other. So Rachel and I, and a few other girls, took them up on the offer. We learned from Beatrice where to get native Roman food called Tramenzzino, which we absolutely got later, and we headed off to the large national monument. After the monument, which I don't have fond memories of because a pigeon "relieved" its self on my head, we headed over to a square that I had studied in school, the Campidoglio. 

We hung out here and looked around the square for a bit before taking a more scenic route back towards the hotel, where Rachel and I split off in search of our Tramenzinzo. Once that was acquired we were in for the night, and our second day in Rome was essentially over.