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Published: September 24th 2014
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Saturday Today was the day trip to Ostia Antica. The bus ride there was only an hour long. We were given a tour of all the ruins by one of the professors, John Nicolson. Most of the buildings were just the hollowed out footprints of what they used to be. The bathhouses were preserved rather well, with the tile mosaics on the floors easily visible. Most depicted elements of water, such as Neptune, ships, or dolphins. The theater was also well preserved, and is actually still used today for productions during the summer. The Capitolum, a temple to Jupiter, was an impressive site to see as it stood higher than all the other buildings, which used to be 4 story high apartments. There was also a very well preserved tavern, that had the original marble counter and fireplace intact, along with some wall mosaics. I found a neat souvenir, a small metal anchor for the bricks, outside of the building "Horrea Epagathiana et Epaphroditiana", which was an old store. The museum at the site housed all the original statues that were found during excavation. They were rather neat, except the children sarcophagi were a little disturbing. At the gift shop,
I bought a little old Roman coin called a denario, which is pretty neat to have.
And then we headed to the San Callisto Catacombs, which were the first Christian catacombs in Rome built in the 3rd and 4th centuries. It was awesome to see, as we had a tour of the 2nd floor of them. They extend underground 4 floors and stretch out for a total of 30 miles. Sadly I could not take pictures of them, as they are considered sacred. The ceilings were very high, as they would dig lower as they needed more tombs for people. The walls were lined with the open tombs of the Christians, including babies, as the marble plate coverings were stolen centuries ago. It is estimated that over half a million people were buried down there. Although none are buried down there now, as their remains decomposed quickly when exposed to the open air. There were larger tombs for families were they would be buried on top of each other. It would be awesome to be able to explore those catacombs on my own. Finally we returned to campus.
After dinner, Jessica and I went to the Capitoline Museums, since it
was one of the museums that only cost a euro that day in honor of European Heritage Day. They housed many statues, sculptures, tapestries, and wall murals. The more famous items in their collection were the original foot of the Colossus of Constantine and the bronze sculpture of the She-Wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, which is a very common image in Rome. Also, the underground passageway connecting the two museum buildings leads to the Tabularium (the records office of ancient Rome) which gives an excellent view over the Roman Forum, although it was night time, so we didn't see too much. It was well worth it a euro to see al the interesting art and history the museum holds.
Sunday What an crazy adventure this day was. It was supposed to be a simple, relaxing day at a beautiful beach. Sean and Angelina started the day off full of negativity just because I wanted to leave by 9 am, they didn't see it as that necessary to pay to go to a nicer beach when there was a closer beach in Ostia that wasn't as nice, but wouldn't cost us any extra money. So
we make it to the main train station to catch our regional train to Fondi leaving at 10:36. We bought our tickets and waited at the platforms to see which platform our train would be leaving from. A few minutes after 10:36, the train information screen said that our train was delayed for another 10 minutes. Which then shortly became 20 minutes. And then it was cancelled. I found out that there was some sort of strike that prevented our train from departing. So I decided that we would just refund our tickets and take the other train to Ostia instead. I wait in line at customer service, in the information/complaints line, for a good 45 minutes. When I reach the front of the line, the lady informs me that I must wait in a different line. The number I pulled for that line was 308, when the only window that was serving that line was on number 175. They were still on that number after I returned from informing Sean and Angelina about the further delay. I even killed sometime in the book store at the station and they were still just at number 180. By this time, I
realized that there was another train heading to Fondi soon, departing after 2 hours after our first one. We got on that train and were in Fondi in a little over an hour. And now we were stuck at the Fondi train station. The bus that was going to take us to the Sperlonga beach wasn't coming again until 4:20, so we had two hours to kill. Even though it was only a 15 minute drive to the beach, according to Google maps, it would've taken 2 hours to walk there. There were others there from the same train trying to get to Sperlonga, and they began taking these non-legit taxis, just some guys offering people rides in their car. We reluctantly accepted to share a car ride with this couple, after the wife had talked the driver down to 5 euros per person.
But finally, we had made it to the beach. And what a sight it was! Sperlonga has its main city center up on a hill that sticks out into the sea, which is just beautiful with these apartment buildings smack in the middle of the mountains in the background and the Tyrrhenian Sea right in front.
The sea at this beach was truly amazing. It was so sparkling clear, I was shocked when I plunged in and tasted salt water on my lip, as I had forgotten that it was not pure fresh water as it had so appeared to be. After swimming with the small fishes for a bit, I explored the rocks that separated the beach form the higher up city center. I discovered that the portions near the water were covered in tiny black mussels. There was also a small little pool of cold water that was hidden in the rocks and trickled into the sea. And all around this pool of water were these very tiny crabs. I tried picking upa few with sea shells but they were very skittish. One that I was observing looked as though he was trying to put on a tough guy act, waving his claws at me. When I returned to the water to swim a bit more, the sun had partially disappeared behind the clouds, given the strangely calm waters a majestic, almost metallic-look. It was quite a beauty to behold. We had a while to wait for the bus so we explored the town
a bit. They had several tents set up with food and craft vendors, as it was the weekend of their annual "Flavors of the Sea" festival. Sean and I tried a bombe, which was a fried dough with lemon custard filling and covered in sugar. It was so delicious. And just as were boarded the bus to head for the train home, they started shooting off fireworks. How fitting for us to go out with a bang.
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