Life In Rome: Along the Appia Antica and The Abbey Theatre

Charles and Alessandra on Via Appia Antica

After our weekly Saturday morning trip to the Zagarolo Market we set off to Rome to meet with Charles' student, Alessandra. She's a history buff but none of her friends ever want to go to the historical sights, they'd rather see the latest flick at the theatre. So, being the history nerd that he is, Charles volunteered us to go the Catacombs and spend a day out doing a little exploring.

The Appia Antica

The Catacombs are an elaborate underground Christian cemetery that was built starting in the first half of the second century. There are over sixty catacombs in Rome, originally they were outside of the city walls as Roman law dictated, and four that are open to the public. We went to the largest one, Saint Callixtus.

http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/storia.html (copy and paste)

After our tour of the Catacombs, we went for a stroll along the Appia Antica, the first Roman road. This was the road that connected Roma to Napoli and even today you can see the ruts left in the boulders from all of the use. In fact, it was used until very recently. It was a little bit chilly at this point so Alessandra took us to a chocolate factory for some real hot chocolate. Real hot chocolate is a far cry from the Swiss Miss powder that we all grew up with and drink today (I still love it). It's slightly bitter like all good chocolate should be and nearly has the thickness of pudding. We'll be taking all of our visitors from now on.

http://www.said.it/ (copy and paste)

Once we parted ways with Alessandra we had plans to meet up with a few friends. Our friend Jules and our Scottish friend, Ally, whom we met a few months back and was in Rome visiting his family. Of course, the plan was to meet for "a pint" but that quickly fell by the wayside and we ended up hanging out all nights and getting into all kinds of trouble. We had a great time, as the pictures show proof of.