Our first day started bright and early at 8:30 a.m. for the Roma Antica Tour through Context Travel (this tour was a Christmas gift from my mom, and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip!). Our guide, Valeria, was an archaeologist who had studied at UC Berkeley and Oxford, and I learned more about Roman history than I could ever hope to retain. We began the tour by skipping the (incredibly long) line to the Colosseum, as Valeria explained that the holes in the walls we often saw in ancient Roman buildings were spots for metal clamps, as most of these ancient structures were overlaid with marble.
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