Good morning Rome! After a great day of sleeping in Matt, Adam and I decided that it was finally time to get up and moving. Seeing as we were a little to late for breakfast at the hotel we decided to walk to a little café about three blocks from our hotel called Piazza del Popolo which is conveniently located right near central station in Roma Termini. The three of us shared a large pizza and drinks at the restaurant for 22 Euros, ($30 USD). This lunch was so nice for us because we got to sit outside and enjoy the local flavor and plan out our day. Matt wanted to go see the pantheon, Adam wanted to go see Roman churches, and I wanted to go watch the horses race at Tor di Valle Harness Raceway.
Since we were already close to the central subway station we went ahead and bought one week tickets for the subway to get us from place to place. At 16 Euros each ($22 USD/person) we spent a total of 48 Euros ($67 USD) on the subway tickets. At that point we hopped on the subway and headed toward the pantheon. I imagined he pantheon would be beautiful but I had no idea just how breath taking it would be. It was such a beautiful day out that there were so many people there to enjoy the beautiful scenery that the pantheon had to offer. I almost wished we had packed a lunch and eaten it outside of the pantheon, instead we walked around and looked at the beautiful architecture it had to offer, everything was so detail oriented and clearly thought out. My favorite part of it was the high ceilings, which are believed to have been built in a Rotunda style to symbolize the arches of heaven.
From there we walked to go see the Basilica of St. John Lateran. The Basilica of St. John Lateran is the official church of the Pope. Seeing as I am not catholic I had never really paid the Basilica any mind, I was overwhelmed by how big the church was! It resembled less my church back home and more the white house! Never did I imagine that we would be allowed to go into the church but we were, this was so exciting! We got to see the beautiful architecture which looked similar to that of the pantheon in the fact that they were both very dated and beautiful, the crawford ceilings in the church were my favorite. From here we also got to see the papal tombs inside the basilica, six previous popes have been laid to rest inside the basilica. Their tombs were very well crafted and detailed, even if one did not know who was buried inside them it would be easy to tell that they were well loved and respected.
Leaving the basilica we started talking about how interesting the historic Roman culture had been but we wanted to do something a little more fun. We asked a local person what they suggested and he said there was a horse race at the Tor di Valle in two hours. Seeing as we had only spent a total of 70 Euros for the whole day we thought this would be a great way to do a little gambling and have a little fun. We quickly headed to the subway and hopped on to go toward the horse race. When we arrived at the racetrack we were so excited! We were surprised at the amount of people ready to watch the horses race, since we had a little time to kill we figured we would get some drinks and snacks from the vendors inside the raceway and talk about which horses we wanted to bet on. (We spent 15 Euros ($20 USD) on snack foods and bottled water). We decided that we would each bet 50 Euros ($70 USD) on different horses. Adam bet on L'Imperatore Romano (The Roman Emperor), and Matt bet on Il Grande Romano (The Roman Great). Seeing as I am the only female on this trip, I thought it would be appropriate for me to bed on a female horse, Bellezza di Bella (Bella Beauty). Once the race started we all cheered as loud as we could for our respective horses and riders. Note that I said riders, as the horse race was not a typical American horse race, the horses ran and pulled the riders in carriage type seats. Betting on a female horse paid off for me! Even though it was a close race Bellezza de Bella ended up beating out the other horses by a nose! Seeing as I was apparently one of the only people in the entire race who bet on Bellezza di Bella I ended up winning 1075 Euros ($1500 USD)!
Excited from my win we all couldn’t wait to run back and tell Ben! On the way home we stopped for some gelato (10 Euros, $15 USD) and got a little lost. Wandering the streets of Rome with our gelato, and pondering why it was so delectable, turned out to be beautiful! We were lucky to have such a pretty night! Seeing as finding the subway turned into a small nightmare we asked some local people for directions, they were talking so fast and broken English we couldn’t really understand! This led us to just wander in the direction they pointed looking for the subway. Once we finally found it we hopped on and rode back to our side of Rome. Glad to be back in our hotel, we quickly changed into our pajamas and fell fast asleep.
Budget:
-245 euros spent
+ 1075 horse race winnings
= + 830 euros
post by Alison Harmon
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