Day 6 - Layers of churches, Ancient Baths & Race Course

Jacob: Today we got to sleep in because we didn’t have early plans. It was sunnier than usual out today. We played in the apartment and ate upstairs on the terrace. (Molly: Lynn & I took a great run around the Colisseum this morning - super beautiful!)

Jacob: We have a church in our neighborhood called St. Clemente. We went there today and it was really cool! The church was actually 3 churches stacked on top of each other. We paid 5 euros and got to go way down underground to the bottom of the first church. There were caves and tunnels, and there was a tunnel that led to a spring at the bottom. I hid behind rocks and scared my little sister. (Molly: St. Clemente was the highlight of the trip for me so far. Not only is it a beautiful church, but archaelogial digs have uncovered layers of other churches and buildings going back thousands of years underneath the current church. The lowest layer discovered is a Roman building from the 1st century, on top of that is a pagan temple from the 2nd century, on top of that is a Christian church from the 4th century, and on top of that is the current church built hundreds of years ago on the current street level. There were pieces of marble statues, columns, frescoes...all buried each time a new church was built on top. We traveled down lower and lower exploring this archaelogical wonder. This is our neighborhood church!)

Jacob: We had to walk and walk to get to Circus Maximus. On the way we walked through a park and saw parrots in the trees! We also saw orange trees growing on the street and my cousin Mitch jumped up and picked oranges. My other cousin Ben bit into them and said they were worse than Crybabies!

Jacob: We walked all the way to the Baths of Caraccalla. I learned that 1,600 people could fit in one bath together! I guess it was like going to a swimming pool. Just ruins are left. We walked down the street and went to Circus Maximus. This is where the chariot races were held. Now it’s just a big oval, rocky field. We ran around the oval where the horses would have raced.

We took the Metro a couple of blocks back to the Colliseum where we live. On the walk home, we found a pizzeria behind our apartment and got pizza to bring back. The man gave us powder sugar cookies to eat while our pizza was cooking.

Tonight we tried to download and watch the movie Gladiator, but it stopped working before we could finish watching. I think tomorrow morning we can finish watching it. Charlotte went to bed early because her stomach was hurting. We think she ate too much cheese. We got to talk to our family at home on the computer. I’m so excited because tomorrow I’m going to Gladiator School!