When in Rome: Day 3

June 23rd

Missed our alarm this morning. We were really that tired from all our walking we have been doing. Luckily we were able to get ready in time to eat breakfast and get to our tour on time. Today we had our cooking class. It was one of the things I was most looking forward to. We met our group and started to walk to the fresh air food market. To get there our tour guide walked us through the Jewish Ghetto and gave us a little history about the area. Several hundreds of years ago the Pope build a wall around this area of the city and would not let the Jewish people leave, or maybe they just had to live there, I'm not really sure for sure. Anyway the lived like that for a long time. Then when WWII started and Hitler was persecuting the Jews the leader of Italy at that time was Mussolini, he and Hitler joined forces. Because of this all of the Roman Jews were deported to concentration camps. Hundreds of people were taken away and out of those hundreds only 7 returned alive to Italy. 

After this brief tour we stopped at what the chef said was one of the best bakeries to have a piece of real italian pizza. It was called red pizza and only had a little red sauce on a flat piece of crust. We also stopped at a meat shop to get some dried meat to put in between what they called white pizza which was really more like a good breadstick. After our little snack we went to the market to get the food. The market was sooo cool. All the fresh fruit, veggies, cheese and herbs you could imagine and it smelled oh soo good!

After collecting all of the things that we needed we went back to the apartment were we would be doing out cooking. It was so neat to be in a real italian apartment, to see the way it was set up and such. We were with a really fun group of people which made the cooking class even more fun and made the dinner conversation really interesting. First we chopped veggies, then we made the dough for the pasta, then we did some more chopping. When it was time to cute the pasta we made some ugly noodle whose name I can't remember but it tasted great and was the perfect noodle to hold the sauce that we made for it.  We also pressed the egg flour dough out with a pasta maker. It was so long all ten of us had to help hold it as we pressed it. With that dough we made lasagna noodles and ravioli. After the pasta was pressed we filled it with a delicious ricotta, parmesan and asparagus filling. After making the pasta we made a few more things in the kitchen before taking a break before lunch. When it was all done we had helped make three pasta dishes (red sauce pasta, lasagna and ravioli) then 3 more fried balls stuffed with risotto, motz and peas; zucchini and mint; eggplant and parmesan all of them were coated with homemade bread crumbs and fried in olive oil. For dessert we had tiramisu I don't usually care for this dish, but this was the best tiramisu I have ever had! It was all delicious and I was stuffed when I left. 

 (Our Chef)

After lunch it was 4:00 and very hot so we headed back to our hotel to cool off, relax and make a game plan for that night. When we were ready to head back out we went to see the inside of the Pantheon. It was amazing to see the great architecture from the 2nd century. Although it had a musky smell that was easy to get over when you saw the ceiling with the giant ocular at the top of the ceiling. Very neat. After spending a good amount of time looking around and listening to our Rick Steves guided audio tour we walked down Ancient Rome to see the Colosseum. I am just so impressed with these ancient structures and how well they were built to stand the test of time. We wanted to hang around there for a while so we could see the colosseum at night so we started to look for some food. 

During our search Mike decided to run to some restrooms he saw down the street. I was tired of walking so I told him I would wait for him down the street. As I stood there alone I began to get a little self conscious. I was a very obvious, young tourist and I was alone. Then I heard someone come up behind me. It was a young italian and he asked me what time it was in Italian. I showed him my watch and he thanked me and asked if I spoke italian. I told him no and he said his english was bad. But yet he knew how to ask me where I was from. I told him I was from New York and he got excited and started telling me about his Aunt (all in English, broken English but he obviously spoke it better than he had let on... I was suspicious.) He then told me how he taught at the university in Rome and a few other things I didn't understand. Then he asked me if I wanted him to show me the colosseum and tell me a little about it. HA!! I was right he was totally trying to pick me up, I thought he seemed a little Barney Steinson like with his "what time is it line." Then I told him I was waiting for my husband... you should have seen his face. It was pretty funny, he was like "you have a husband?" and I was like yep (thinking didn't I show you the watch which was on my left hand where you could clearly see my wedding ring?) Anyways with that he was basically like "alright never mind" but as he ran off he said "Cio Bellla" SCORE!! When I was a teenager I always dreamed of traveling to rome and having Italian boys say "Cio Bella!" to me! So I was happy to see an old goal be accomplished even though I am an old married women now :) After that whole thing I crossed the street and walked closer to the restroom were Mike was. I found a good place to sit around lots of other people and closer to Mike but then another guy cam up to me and asked if I was a tourist and starting saying something about an Italian boy on a Bike looking for tourists? Anyways that was about all I could handle and was happy to see my protector (Mike) walking towards me out of the corner of my eye. When he got back I told him he wasn't aloud to leave me alone again!

After all of that we grabbed a slice of pizza and a cup of fruit and had a picnic dinner in front of the colosseum as we waited for the sun to set and the lights to come on. It was really fun to watch people and enjoy the cool night time weather. Once the sun went down we took a lot of fun pictures of the area. 

After we were done we took a taxi (we were to tired to walk) to Giollitis for some more gelato. This time I got Pistachio, Carmel and Oreo Biscotti (my favorite.) We ate our cones as we strolled along the streets on our way to the Spanish steps. 

We got a little lost, but I was proud that I was able to figure out were we were on a map and navigate us to where we wanted to be. Sure that sounds easy, but it is not in this city! When we got to the spanish steps sat down and enjoyed some more people watching. The place was packed as everyone else seemed to have the same idea! The place was packed. One thing I haven't mentioned is the water here. There are fountains all over the city that have spikets for people to fill water bottles up from. When I first saw it I laughed thinking it was a joke as we would never drink from a fountain in the USA. But the water from these fountains is the best I have ever ha. Period! The water actually comes from an aqueduct that was build under the streets of rome hundreds of years ago. Not only is this water good, it is cold too! It doesn't get much better in 98 degree weather.  

 After our feet were rested enough we walked back to the trevi fount to see if we could heckle some sells people for this cool little toy Mike wanted to pick up for his nieces and nephews. The guy fist asked for four euros and Mike got him down to one Euro, he is a master! Then we headed back to the hotel and I got to skype with my mom and sisters before bed!