- Go to a market; which we did this morning after taking the subway to get there (might as well get the most of our Roma Pass as it ends today!). Jeff hadn't been to an outdoor market like this one before, so it was a new experience for him and not one I think he is quite ready to repeat - there is only so much pushing and squeezing between people while saying 'no' to pushy vendors one can take at one time! We both still got stuff though and haggled down the price to boot. Nothing threatens a vendor like someone willing to walk away empty handed!
We then headed off in the direction of the colosseum to a place called Rewind Rome, a virtual reality museum tour of Ancient Rome. We got there around 1:30pm and bought tickets for the 2pm tour. We luckily found a grocery store near us where we picked up pikes (aka pringles) and some pastry pizza things to tide us over until after the tour.
We arrived five minutes early and appeared to be the only two people doing the tour, which seemed great to us! Unfortunately though, as many things in Italia go, it started late and people were squeezed in to ensure a full tour, which left Jeff and I waiting for 20+ minutes or so before we started - irritating!
Anyway, we did a quiz at the beginning about Ancient Rome and I guessed at nearly all of the answers, needless to say, I failed miserably, but Jeff passed his!
We were taken into a room where we stood on a see-through floor that had 'ancient' ruins beneath it as part of an 'archeological dig' and we listened to an audio guide talk to us about it. It was cute and pretty funny. The whole floor moved up and down and at one point we were made to believe we were under the floor of the colosseum where the gladiators would wait to fight.
We then were taken to a theater room where we watched a short 3-D animated movie about Ancient Rome; it was cute but Jeff and I would have preferred more information than bad jokes. We got to play dress up at the end, Jeff didn't want to but was happy to take pictures of me dressed as a female fan (standing beside a distraught looking Russel Crowe from the movie Gladiator - I should watch it again to appreciate what I've now seen here in Rome).
The whole thing took about half an hour and Jeff's still not sure if it was worth it, but it was different than anything we'd done before and that's good enough for me!
We headed off to find a gelato shop mentioned in our Rough Guides: Europe on a Budget book that said to have delicious flavours. We found it, stood in line, paid more than usual for less than usual and were blown away by the flavours! I tried the pear (as recommended by our book) and banana and both were amazing (Jeff has pistachio and ended up kicking himself for not getting the banana he wanted). It was fresh and juicy and absolutely full of flavour, nothing like what we have at home unless there is a secret authentic Italian gelato shop I don't know about... We know there is a gelato place but I'm not sure if it can live up to our high expectations! We'll have to see when we get home. We savoured the flavours until we finished and said we'd be sure to find the other recommended place tomorrow.
We hopped on the subway and a couple of stops later we were at the station and heading to the grocery store (again - we were out of crackers for our cheese!). We enjoyed our snack, talked to my family via skype and then spent a few hours listening to music and singing along kareoke style until we were sure we were annoying anyone who could hear us - thankfully no one was in the apartment.
At 8pm we squeezed into the restaurant next door that was very busy and had some authentic Italian cuisine. I had the canneloni with minced meat that was so delicious and Jeff had spaghetti with a meat sauce - he said mine was better (but it could have been because they covered his in parmesan cheese and he's definitely not a fan).
We're now full and getting ready to bed. It's hard to believe that tomorrow is the last day of our trip. It's been one heck of an adventure and we are both sad to see it end. The world is such a huge place and there is so much to see of it, we've only had a little taste. I know that we'll be back at it again though!
No huge plans for tomorrow... Pizza and gelato and whatever we happen to come across - we may wander over to an older part of the city (I don't even know what that means when this whole place is 2000+ years old!).
For now though, buona sera (good evening),
Ciao,
Amanda
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