Nutella to Potatoes

mercoledi 1 giugno 2016

At first glance, today actually seemed like a relatively relaxed day compared to many of our other days here. Although we didn't go on any major adventures after class, Kelsey still managed to keep the day quite interesting as usual!

To begin, I must admit that I may have made a slight mistake a couple of days ago - I introduced Kelsey to Nutella. She is now quite excited about it (as am I) and we have been consuming a fair amount lately, both via toast and straight from the jar. So, we started out with our very tasty breakfast of Nutella toast and some yogurt and began our day!

After breakfast, we walked to the Capitoline hill for our archaeology course. Because we left with plenty of time to navigate Rome in the crazy rush hour traffic, we actually ended up arriving to our meeting place quite early so we were able to stop by Santa Maria in Aracoeli again and pray a rosary there before class. It was very nice and quiet in the church at that time of morning, plus we could hear the Franciscan friars who run the church praying morning prayer in their private chapel nearby!

 Santa Maria in Aracoeli in case you need a refresher as to which church it is

(they can be a bit tricky to keep track of)

For our morning class, we visited the sites of three ancient markets: a fish market, a vegetable market, and a meat market. There was not too much remaining of the markets themselves, but we were able to see several temples that the Romans had built. We also walked by the Mouth of Truth, a tourist attraction that our professor certainly did not seem impressed by.

Temple of Portunus and Temple of Hercules, both in the Forum Boarium (meat market)

Bocca della Verita (Mouth of Truth) and Arch of Janus

After class, we stopped by a few nearby churches, then came back for lunch and homework at our apartment before returning to school for our afternoon class.

Chiesa San Giorgio in Velabro

Santa Maria in Portico

I may have gotten a bit tired while doing some reading for class...

After our afternoon class, we went to visit Santa Maria in Trastevere, only to find that they were in the middle of mass. Not wanting to interrupt mass, we wandered around the area until we came to another church, Chiesa dei Santi Quaranta Martiri e S. Pasquale Baylon, just in time for mass! We went to mass there, then walked back to our apartment and stopped by a shop to buy a bus pass for the month of June.

Where we went to mass!

Kelsey, photographer extraordinaire, was quite pleased by the cuteness of this photo

When we got back to our neighborhood, we stopped by our usual grocery store to pick up a few more things that we needed and returned back to our apartment for the evening. We made ourselves a very tasty dinner of chicken drumsticks and baked potatoes (Kelsey's favorite thing. Ever. Okay, maybe she likes Jesus better, along with Mary and Franciscan sisters, but you get the point - baked potatoes are very high on the list of things Kelsey likes.)

Kelsey's comment after lighting towel on fire in oven: "Well, I'm not doing too bad if we've been here a week and I've only lit one thing on fire." I guess this is what happens when we don't have an oven mitt available in our apartment.

Course 1 - Chicken

Excitement level: High

Course 2 - Potatoes (once they were finally done baking)

Excitement level: Ranges from meh to OHMYGOSHPOTATOES!!!!

With smiling faces and happy tummies, we went to bed.

Have a lovely day!

Allison and Kelsey