Hello to all of our friends and family back home! Yesterday, we took a bus tour around Rome with our fabulous tour guide, Gino Mazzone. We spent lunch in a small strip of Jewish cafés and restaurants. Here, a group of us quickly learned that 30 minutes isn’t enough time to grab a meal at an actual restaurant when Gino brought our whole group into the restaurant to share his advice and encourage us to finish up our still very full plates. A few of us passed around what we couldn’t finish to our observant classmates which helped speed up the process. Afterwards, we traveled to Capitol Hill and learned about Michelangelo’s influence in its design and execution. We continued on to take some pictures with a bird’s eye view of the Roman Forum and later saw the Trajan Column.

Today, we visited the most famous structure in Italy. Drumroll, please…. The Colosseum! It was breathtaking to walk through a structure that was built over 2,000 years ago. Gino pointed out how that the restored elements of the Colosseum were purposely made with different materials in order to preserve its authenticity. With the structural engineering concepts we have been learning, this was the perfect place to test out some of our new terminology. We had the chance to study the arches, vaults, and arcades that were integrated into the Colosseum. After grabbing a bite to eat, we visited the church of St. Clemente where we saw beautiful mosaics, ancient murals, and lots of straight arches (we were so impressed to see the variety of architecture they were able to achieve so long ago).

To finish off the day, we had the chance to surprise Chris for his birthday! We all enjoyed celebrating with some delicious cake and champagne after our long, busy day.

Ciao!