Rome Day 3/4

Today was history day. My dear mother found a guy through a friend who gives tours around acient Rome and that could give us insight on the city and this guy knew his stuff. He was born on India, then went to Berkley, then studied in Germany France and now lives in Italy. Try to name that accent, but the guy know six languages. Pretty impressive. Anyway we started the day by taking a City of Rome bus to the captital building and saw the square designed by Michaelangelo. Then saw the whole city of ancient Rome: the senate, the temples, arches, churches, basically to him everything was a must see, and after getting to the next stop after a long trek the man turned out to be right. He explained everything. The year it was built who built it, whether it was a pope or an emperor, and then what ever building was on top of it, or below. Because we came to find out that every time someone wanted something new done the built on top of the old. Proof being that modern Rome is 60 feet above the city of the past, whether it was the section that was from the Renaissance, first millenium, or sometimes pre-Christ which at one point was a building built around 700 B.C. A great example of this building on top of the previous is the Church of San Clemente. The mondwrn day church literally has two completely preserved churches right under it. So our guide took us down to the one built in ancient times: 30 years before Christ. Which has running water (still flowing) like the rest of the city. Then we climbed up the flight of stairs to the church built three hundred years later, and finally the ground level church which is only 400-500 years old, practically brand new compared to the 2000 year old one we were in. After that we had pizza an then went to the collessum which was incredible. You know just 60,000 people. The thing that amazed me most though was the great deatil of everything. They literally covered every single building in marble, but all we see today are the brick foundations. So as I looked at the collessum today, we looked in a book at a drawing of what it used to be and it looked pretty baller. Sparkling white. Everything. Today we also visted Vivtor Emanual’s monument (to himself (of course)) and that was the best view of Rome we could have. We saw a 360 of the city. So that was the history trip. After the girls wanted to shop (except Courtney, stangely) so After having a capuccino with our guide at 5 pm we decied to go have another at “one of the two best coffee houses in the city” according to the tour guide. This marked a milestone on the trip because as dad was ordering three Capuccino Maxe’s, he did it in pure Italian. It was pretty dare solid too. He didn’t sound like an Iglesias American pronouncing the L’s in quesidilla. After having the double, marking the 4th shot of expresso for the day (two in that particular cappuccino) we forgot about our past caffine and decided to compare to the other “best coffee house in Rome” so we marched a couple blocks, and after a secondary stroll through the pantheon, we had another double cappuccino at the “Cup of Gold” (Tazza del Orro) And at that point we were bouncing of the walls. So today was fun. Also yesterday we did the Spanish steps, piazza del popala, trevi fountain, and the Castel de Angelo and I don’t feel like writing about though first because they are self explanatory and two iPhone typing after a while is tedious. So all is well. Loving the coffee, the food, the company, and the city.