Trajan's Forum and Ostia Antica

I've had a busy week. Last week I had my Italian midterm (which was rather difficult), a trip to Trajan's forum, a trip to Ostia Antica, and shopping! 

Trajan's forum was on Thursday. I was actually pretty surprised by this field trip. I got to Piazza Venezia almost every day yet I had never realized there was a GIANT column and an ancient  forum just to the left of it. (just out of the picture). I guess I had always been distracted by the "wedding cake" (or so the Americans call the giant building in the middle of the piazza... I think it's a museum...). Anyway, this forum is not open to the public so we felt very special when our professor just waltzed in, talked to some people working on the excavation, and they let us in! We got to wander around while all the tourists watched us and wondered how they could get down there too. One couple actually tried to follow my class into the forum because they didn't realize it wasn't a tourist attraction. 

The forum itself was cool. It was actually 5  (I think) forums all connected. They go right up to the big, famous forum. We got to get up close to all the marble and ancient buildings. It was very interesting. I didn't realize that not all marble is smooth and shiny. It certainly looks like it should be smooth but it's really very sandpapery. 

The next day, I went to Ostia Antica. It is very similar to Pompei in the sense that it is a fairly well preserved ancient Roman city. However, it was almost better in my opinion because it was so green! There were trees everywhere and grass was growing inside some of the houses. It really felt like I was part of the excavation instead of just wandering through a deserted city. Also it probably helped that we had our own tour guide that pointed things out to us that I wouldn't have seen by myself. For instance, Ostia was flooded repeatedly since it was on the ocean, so Hadrian decided to essentially rebuild the city about a meter above the last city. In some places you can see the drop between the new city and the old. You can also see where the city hasn't been excavated yet. The fields beside Ostia are a couple meters above the ancient ground level and in a few places you can see columns sticking up from underground. 

My professor is an expert in marble so we spent a lot of our time talking about marble--where it came from, how it was cut, what the slabs will be used for, what they did if a crack appeared, etc. Honestly, I think sometimes he makes stuff up. How can he know that this piece of marble came from Greece and this piece came from Egypt? They are both grey and they look exactly alike. I'm sure he's right. It's just kind of ridiculous that he can see such small differences in marble. All in all it was a pretty successful day. I would enjoy another trip there. 

Yesterday, my roommates and I took a "study break" and went shopping. Ken recommended a store named OVS so we went to check it out. It was very cool. I actually went back today and bought a coat because I couldn't stop thinking about it. Haha. My plan yesterday was to buy a coat but I wanted to see all my options before I made a decision. It was very fun although it took much longer than I had planned. We have our midterms this week for the rest of our classes so I was planning on going back early to study but I didn't get back until dinner time. Oh well, it was worth it. 

This week, as I said, I have midterms... therefore I have been taking many study breaks. Besides shopping I also made cookies for my roommates. They turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Much better than my last batch. Anyway, despite my study breaks I HAVE been studying, Dad. Unfortunately I think my exams will be pretty difficult which is a shame since it counts for half of my grade... I've been studying all weekend so I'll just hope for the best. I've done all that I can do. I just need to make it until Thursday!! I'm going to Milan on Thursday night, Lleida, Spain for Friday through Sunday, Dublin until Thursday, and then back to Milan (and maybe Turino or Switzerland) until Sunday. It will be a good 10 days of traveling! 

Here are my pictures of Trajan's Forum and Ostia Antica

Grape Harvest

My Italian class went to a vineyard to do a grape harvest. It was REALLY fun and probably an experience I couldn't have had with anyone else. The tour was completely in Italian and we got to pick grapes, eat grapes, smash grapes with out hands, and drink the juice. We were all given scissors and we were let loose in the vineyard to cut as many grapes as we could. I immediately got distracted by eating the sweet grapes. They were so good! I felt like a little kid going fruit picking and sneaking tastes behind my mom's back. It was very fun.

We picked SO MANY grapes. We carried them back to our "camp" where they had set up a place for us to smash our own grapes. We got to get down on our knees and squeeze the juice out of all the grapes with our hands. It felt very strange. One girls said, "It feels like I'm squishing eyeballs!" I don't know about that... but it was pretty funny.

We we were done squishing the grapes, we put them in a press to squeeze out any juice we left behind. We filled up cup after  cup after cup of sweet, fresh grape juice. I've never had anything like it. It was thick and extra sweet but so much better than anything I've had in the US. I vote we use this grape juice in church instead! Ha.

Afterwards we went to a small hillside town and went to the park of monsters. We had been reading about it in class (my teach is obsessed with all things "molto creepy". I'm sure I've mentioned that before). The park was very interesting... It was filled with statues of Roman gods and "monsters". I enjoyed it a lot.

Last week, my roommates and I also had a family dinner. In Siena, Ken and I made a pact to try and re-create the soup we had at the restaurant so I decided to make it for my roommates. I didn't really follow a recipe so I just chopped up whatever vegetables I had laying around and threw them in some broth. It was actually REALLY good. I was quite impressed with myself. Even my roommates were impressed. We ate it all week. They actually got excited to go home and eat more of it! I suppose I'm becoming a good cook.

Here are my pictures from the grape harvest

Siena

I took the train to Siena to meet up with Ken. Since I left extra early (I had nothing better to do) I decided to try a new way to get to Termini. It was pretty fun. I hopped on the first bus that came to my stop, which happened to be the 44. I got on and instead of going all the way to Piazza Venezia like I was planning, I got off on Viale Trastevere and took the tram until the end of the line. When I got off the tram, an express bus to Termini was waiting for me. I was pretty impressed with myself. I found a shortcut! It only took me half an hour to leave my apartment and get to Termini instead of the usual 45 minutes or an hour. I think I'll go that route again sometime. It's fun to play with public transportation especially since I don't have it in Wooster or Lynchburg. I'll enjoy it while I can.

I got to Termini about an hour early so I had to wait around until my train was listed. Once it was finally on the board, I had no idea where the track was. It wasn't a usual track number like 28 or 7 it was 2 Piazzale Est. I had no idea what that was. So I aimlessly wandered around until I finally found the train. A lady asked me (in Italian) if I knew where it was and I felt so proud of myself for being able to give her directions. By the time I got on the train, it was PACKED. Thankfully I got to sit in a little pull-down corner seat by the window. I was comfortable and glad I didn't have to stand the whole way.

I got to Siena before Ken so I started my book (The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, in case anyone is wondering. It's REALLY good after the first few chapters). Apparently Ken's bus ran into traffic so he was late. While I was waiting though, a girl came up to me and started ranting in rapid Italian about how frustrated she is and asked if I knew who she could talk to about some student travel something. I had no idea what student travel thing she was talking about so she just wandered away. I was impressed I could even figure out what she was talking about.

FINALLY Ken got there and we went on a search for our campsite. Of course we got lost because the directions I got online were confusing. We finally figured it out and checked it. It turns out that it wasn't really a campsite after all. It was more of a mobile home park. We got the key to our mobile home and went to check it out. IT WAS SO NICE! It was one little room with two beds but we had a fridge, our own bathroom, and air conditioning/heat. We were quite impressed.

After we got settled we walked into town, wandered around, and had dinner. We were planning on having a cheap dinner but of course that didn't happen. The menu looked so good and inexpensive that we got carried away ordering stuff. Ken ordered vegetable soup and I had beef spleen on toasted bread for an appetizer and then I ordered gnochi and Ken had some boar meat pasta. Then, we still weren't done with our over-priced wine so we decided to split a dessert. It was some kind of walnut/almond cake. It was delicious so the price of our meal was justified.

After dinner we walked around central Siena catching up until about midnight when we realized we were almost too tired to walk back to the campsite. We slept very well that night.

The next day we went back into town. Our first order of business, as usual, was to find a kebab place. I don't know why but Italy is filled with kebab places. After wandering and wandering we  finally decided to walk to a grocery store and just buy some bread and cheese for lunch. Of course, after walking all the way there we found a row of kebab places. We had a good lunch, bought some scarves, and went back to the Duomo to take a tour.

For 10 euros we bought a pass to 5 of the main attractions. We spent our afternoon going through the Duomo, a museum, the baptistery, the crypt, and another church.  It was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. Ken decided that after this semester he should change his major to Basilica studies since you can't go anywhere without entering a church. We'll definitely be experts by the time we return to the US.

Later in the afternoon we were quickly fading. We sat and ate gelato for a while in Il Campo and then we found a little bar where we had a beer while we rested for our return trip. It was quite relaxing.

We went back to the train station so Ken could buy his return bus ticket. Unfortunately it was sold out so he had to buy a 60 euro fast-train ticket back to Milan. He was not happy about this at all but it's better than being stranded in Siena, alone, with nowhere to stay. I think he learned the necessity of buying round trip tickets.

Since then I've been doing pretty well (despite the travel alert). I made an old nun happy today by giving her my seat on the bus. It just made my day. She was so cute and kept thanking me and thanking me. If I don't remember anything about my time in Rome, I'll definitely remember her.