Day 4 (6/8/11):

This morning we woke up and went for a run around our neighborhood. It was nice, and I wish I brought a camera! How fun to go for a run around the Colosseum and other monuments like it.

After, we had a nice breakfast of cereal and yogurt that we had bought at the foodstore. The yogurt was like greek yogurt, and went well with the berry cereal we got.

Afterwards, we headed towards the Galleria Barberini since it sounded like an interesting place to visit. The door to get in was a little difficult to find since you can see the museum from the main street, but the actual entrance is around the block. Plus, we're only 4 days into our trip so our Italian is still pretty elementary :o) Eventually, we found our way inside, and even got a 50% discount on the entrance fee with our new student IDs!

There were several religious paintings inside, mostly of Mary and baby Jesus. We also saw a lott of paintings that had Saint Jerome and his lion in them! We hadn't heard much about Saint Jerome before, so we made a mental note to google him later and get more information. (turns out, he helped take a thorn out of a lion's paw and they became friends. That's why you'll often see a lion in the paintings Jerome is in!) Che interessante!

The main attraction in this museum was the massive mural on the ceiling in the last room. WOW! There was so much going on in the painting, we literally lay on the couches underneath for at least 30 minutes reading about each section and talking about what was going on. It was very interesting, and I recommend going to that museum just to see this one painting!

Outside the museum, we realized how close we were to the Trevi Fountain, so we walked there to throw our coins in. The fountain is just SO cool! It's beautiful, and looks so huge in person. I could probably sit there for a long time just staring at it. We each threw in a coin to ensure our return to Rome :o)

Forr lunch, we stopped at a restaurant near school called Mimi & Coco (with accents on the last vowel of each word). We saw people eating some delicious looking salads and decided we would be a bit healthy that afternoon :o) Both our salads were mixed greens with tuna, olives, and tomatoes. Mine also had some boiled egg and anchovies in it. They were really good! After our meal, we even got a complimentary glass of limoncello! Cin cin!! :o)

Class went well this afternoon. We are still doing things that Jackie and I had learned in class back home, but it's a good review and we are going at a great pace. I do need to speak more Italian throughout the day, though, to get more practice in.

After class we had planned to join the school on a free walking tour of Art History in Rome. We should have realized this, but the tour giude spoke only in Italian and we had a hard time understanding. Plus, there were a lot of people on the tour and we couldn't hear her most of the time! We decided to leave the tour pretty early on and walked back to the apartment to cook some dinner before doing some stuff on the computer later. On the way, we took pictures of the ruins from the view of the top of the stairs at Piazza Venezia, as well as the Colosseum at dusk. There's so much to see here!! Tonight, we made a nice pesto pasta with shrimp and broccoli that we bought from the foodstore! It was a nice little dinner in our teeny apartment kitchen :o)