Day 3 (5-13-09) Tiber Island to Forum via Capitol

What do you get when you mix allergens, heat, and a slight humidity? The answer is an allergy attack. This was one of the most upsetting things that happened to me today. Because of my allergies I had a fogged head and runny nose all day that made the sites we were visiting less enjoyable but overall I did not let this ruin my day. Today was another excellent day. We started off with an art history tour of Rome. This tour started at Tiber Island and then ended at the Forum via the Capitol. This was a great tour lead by Professor Paul Gwynne. In this tour he showed us through the layers of art in Italy how Italy and Rome came to be how it is today. It was very interesting to see it explained in this way and because of this a great importance was given to each site we visited. One of the most beautiful sites that we visited was the Forum. This Forum, pictured above, was a large majestic site that was hard to believe that it was built a few thousand years ago.  After this we braked for lunch and then we had our Italian culture and language lesson. This culture and language lesson was okay but I will still have to wait and see if it will be a great help to me. By the time this ended it was time for dinner and a group of us decided to head down towards the Coliseum to get some pictures and to grab dinner. It was a beautiful site to grab photos and it was interesting to see how many people were visiting the Coliseum. After this we had dinner at a little restaurant behind the Coliseum. At the restaurant I had a great meal of gnocchi and a great view of the Coliseum. It was hard to believe that I was sitting next to one of the great wonders of the world with a group of great friends having a great meal. After this we headed down to the Trevi Fountain to see the fountain at night. It was a beautiful sight to see at night and we grabbed many photos of the group there which I will post later. I then concluded the night with an EXCELLENT cone of banana gelato at Trevi Fountain and from there we all headed back to the hotel where we all passed out once we returned. Now we have one more day of classes and then we have the weekend free!