Monday through Wednesday, June 2-4

Only just catching up after a very busy week. I've just returned from a 2-night class trip to Florence and will be making a post about said trip tomorrow. The rest of this post will focus simply on my relatively low-key activities prior to our Florentine trip. The beginning of the week was pretty rainy, although that failed to dampen my enthusiasm. On Monday, we focused on Renaissance Rome, which really doesn't amount to that much outside of the Vatican, which has the majority of Renaissance art in Rome. We saw a couple of beautiful Gothic cathedrals with lovely Caravaggio paintings (i.e., The Calling of St. Matthew, Crucifixion of St. Peter). We also visited some nice Renaissance palaces and villas, but they were all closed since it was a national holiday. We finished up with a visit to the San Pietro in Montoro. Our interest was not in the cathedral itself, but in the courtyard next to it, which contains the Tempietto, one of the most famous masterpieces of high Renaissance architecture (see photo below, pulled from Internet as usual).



Tuesday focused on classical Rome, with visits to the forums of Trajan and Hadrian, the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the Pantheon and the Temple of Hadrian. It rained the entire time and, of course, the rain ceased as soon as class was finished. On Wednesday, we took a day trip to Ostia Antica, an entire ancient ruined port town of Rome. This place was really fantastic, and really gave you a sense of what a classical Roman city would look like. It's often referred to as a poor man's Pompeii, which I think is because it's accessible by a mere short train trip from Rome. A photo that gives you some idea of what Ostica Antica looked like--just a sprawling mass of ruined apartments, temples, and assorted other ancient structures. We were actually able to climb up onto some of the ancient apartment complexes up to the third story, and this gave us a really fantastic view of our surroundings.



One of the places of interest we came across (other than a theater, marketplace, baths, etc.) was an ancient Roman latrine. I knew immediately what this room was, so I turned to our professor and articulated a very highly intelligent, critical statement on the purpose of the latrine:

"Poop!"

While saying this, I also made the corresponding ASL hand sign. He almost collapsed (either from amusement or dismay), and then had me repeat it for the class. They all chorused "Ohhhhhhh!" and were most intrigued by the ancient latrine, demonstrating this by posing for pictures, squatting over the holes and the like.

After we were done with our tour of Ostia Antica, we went to the cafeteria for lunch before heading back to the train. This cafeteria turned out to be the most expensive meal for any one of us since we'd arrived to Italy--we all pretty much got ripped off. I paid 15.5 euros, or $26.04, for a bowl of pasta with red sauce, a Fanta (orange soda) and a plate of cut up hot dogs and potatoes. Once we'd put the food on our tray, we had to pay for it so there wasn't really any way to back out of the cost of the meal. Everyone was pretty annoyed about our overly costly lunch, and the food I ate actually gave me severe acid reflux several hours later.

There were several signs outside the cafeteria in the Ostia Antica complex, one of which was: "Do not pet the dogs!" The complex has several large dogs that sort of lounge around with a deceptively placid manner. The signs are definitely meant to be obeyed, and this became evident when a German tourist bent over and tried to put his hand on the head of a large, reclining yellow labrador. The dog immediately looked up, started snarling and snapped at the German tourist, who was so taken aback that he started fussing at the dog. Mica and I gave each other an "Oh, lord" look, and then we both tapped the man on the shoulder and pointed out the sign to the man, who got a look of comprehension.

After our dreadful lunch, we hurried back to the train station, but most of the class lagged behind except for several girls and myself. The girls and I ran onto the train, and as I stood on the threshold of the door, waiting for the rest of the class to join, the teacher made a gesture for me to come back onto the platform. Just as he did this, the doors on the train slammed shut, and the train started moving. I tried to open the doors (this failed) and thought, "Oh, $%&£!!" (I thought a very naughty word). It turns out that the teacher and my roommates, etc., thought I was alone, which is why they tried to call me off the train. But the three other girls who came onto the train with me and I managed to make our way back to Termini station without any problems, and the rest of the class showed up shortly afterwards on the next train in.

Tomorrow, I'll be posting about our class trip to Florence and the fabulous examples of art and architecture we saw, a particularly exhausting climb to the top of the Duomo, and a much friendlier encounter with an Italian salesman than I ever would have liked.