Blogs from Campania, Italy, Europe - page 106

Pompeii ... info to come!... read more

I'll get to explaining that title at the end. But first: I had the best pasta ever on Wednesday. If you are ever in Rome you simply must go to the Grotto di Teatro Pompey and have the fettucine gorganzola for your first dish. The truffles are also delicious, and not too expensive. For bread, water, pasta, chicken and potatoes, and a truffle it was only 18 Euro. It's just off of the Campo dei Fiori. Thursday we went to the Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum. It was a long day but really cool stuff. Beautiful clear sky for a change. Friday we met the bus at 7 am and drove to Pompeii. The trip down was beautiful. We passed the monastery where St. Benedict wrote his regulae. It was, extroardinarily, another beautiful clear day. ... read more

Pompeii.........What can I say. Beautiful. I was not really expecting the city to be as intact as it was, but it was pretty amazingly perserved. I know a lot of people are turned off by the "bodies", but their were actually very intriguing to me. I know that probably sounds pretty weird, but they obviously aren't the actually the real bodies of the people. They are plaster casts. It's actually a fairly amazing procedure on how they do it. I will explain to you in more detail if you really want to know. But the majority of the "bodies" were left in the original position that they were frozen in under 30 feet of ash. Some were a little more disturbing that others. The town itself was actually a lot bigger than I thought it was ... read more

The first week of classes was basically a week’s worth of walking and sightseeing (as I’m sure most weeks will be, now that class has really started…but at least I’m getting a little Mediterranean sun!). Monday was my first humanity’s class - Urbs Aterna: Rome in Literature. We discussed Livy’s “The Early History of Rome”. This summer, I was kinda bothered that I had to read so many books that didn’t really interest me, but now that I’m here, I feel like I have a lot of extra knowledge about the city that will come in handy, so it was definitely worth all the work. Tuesday, we had our first Art and Culture of Italy class. Emilio lectured for a little while, and then we were off to the Capitoline Museum. The Piazza there was designed ... read more

Well we arrived... ...How to start, well how about, Naples is a dump!!...it's true...we started off with 8 people at the taxi rank all giving their own view on the way to our appartment, which was funny, especially as i left martin to it!!... we're staying at the "hotel neapolis", which is very nice, & is going to be well above the rest of our accomation. Yesterday, out first day, we heading down to the post of molo angioino along with visiting many castle's and sites along the way...we followed this up in traditional style with a few beers back along the way. After a quick shower we headed out for a meal, Martin had a pizza and i orded spag-bol..shame it turned out to be mussels and pasta..which turned out to be very nice. Today, ... read more