I am finally in Rome and the Villa Vignacce program has begun. Before I can tell you about that I need to finish telling you about Glasgow.
Where my last post left off it was my second day in Glasgow and I was waiting to meet up with Gavin to explore for the day.
We headed out around lunch time for the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It's not particularly close to our hostel but the walk was nice.
When we reached the museum we split up and agreed to meet after a couple of hours.
The Kelvingrove is a very interesting museum with a diverse collection.
There is a full-size Spitfire plane suspended from the roof above an exhibit of stuffed animals from all over the world - slightly bizzare.
In one room there are hundreds of different sized heads suspended from the ceiling all with differing facial expressions. I was quite intrigued by this exhibit and was very curious to its purpose. I finally found a small plaque connected with the heads and all it said was that it had been created by someone in events management and that's it.
There was a room dedicated to the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Charles Rennie Mackintosh was an artist, designer and architect. He is probably best known for designing incredibly straight-backed chairs that look decidedly uncomfortable. Mackintosh is well known for designing the Willow Tea Rooms - which were popular in early 1900s Glasgow. In the Kelvingrove museum there are examples of the many designs that Mackintosh designed for the Willow Tea Rooms (the decor changed quite regularly). His design aesthetic appears to be influenced quite a lot by his wife, and many of his designs incorporate whimsical, flowing patterns paired with rigid furniture with simple, clean lines.
One painting that you have to see when visiting the Kelvingrove is Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross. The perspective is from above, looking down at St John on the cross floating above the earth. It's really trippy, not that that is surprising!
There are quite a few exhibits detailing the history of Scotland - one of which looks at the recent history of Mental Health in Scotland and the problems still faced by many women in abusive relationships. It is quite interesting.
One exhibit that I thought was quite brilliant was a display of swords. It wasn't done in a conventional way, instead there were lifesized figures created out of many metres of wire grasping swords in different positions. It was quite innovative and much more interesting than just seeing a standard display of swords.
All-in-all it was a very interesting museum in a gorgeous building and one that I would recommend people see if they were in Glasgow.
After the Kelvingrove, the plan was to head to the Fossil Grove, but it turned out that it's only open Thursday-Sunday so instead we headed back into Glasgow to go to the Willow Tea Rooms. You can't visit Glasgow without stopping at the Tea Rooms. The design of the tea rooms is an original Charles Rennie Mackintosh design. It is absolutely gorgeous. Gavin and I sat down and shared a pot of tea and each had a scone with jam and cream. Delicious!
Our last stop for the day was Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis. We only saw the outside of the Cathedral but it was very impressive. We headed to the Necropolis across from the Cathedral. There are some amazing monuments in the Necropolis (which seems to be the highest point in Glasgow), most of which are emulating the Greco-Roman style. Because of the position of the Necropolis there are great views across Glasgow.
We headed back to the hostel and went our separate ways for dinner. We met up again in the chill out room and watched some of the soccer - Switzerland vs Turkey. The game was hilarious because it was pouring with rain and the ground was waterlogged. The players could not run with the ball or if they kicked it it would come to a complete stop after a couple of feet. We had a great time laughing our heads off at the misfortunes of the players and the complaints of the commentators.
Gavin was heading off the next day for Oslo, so we said goodbye before I headed off to bed. It was really nice having someone to explore Glasgow with.
The following morning I had to do lots of laundry! As I didn't have anything presentable to wear while the laundry was being done I didn't leave the hostel until lunchtime!
I went to George Square to see the City Chambers and then sat on a bench, ate my lunch and watched the world pass by.
I've discovered that there isn't a lot to see in the centre of Glasgow. Most of the sites are out of the centre in the suburbs. It can be a bit frustrating because the public transport is not tourist friendly.
I decided that I wanted to go to the Fossil Grove (as I hadn't been able to the previous day). I figured out which train station was closest but knowing which train to take was interesting. From what I can tell there are 3 train networks in Glasgow. The first is the metro, which serves the city centre, then there is the above ground which serves the surrounding suburbs and there is another above ground which is more of a cross country network. Of course if you're not a local it's hard to know which one you need.
It took a while, but I finally figured it out and bought myself a ticket to get out there. I got off at the stop I needed and the map said it was only about 1km to Fossil Grove. I followed the map and soon discovered that a road I needed to cross was infact a highway that couldn't be crossed on foot, at least not where I was. My guidebook said that the Fossil Grove was located opposite Victoria Gardens across this highway. I was looking for a way to cross the highway, so I was wandering along the edge of Victoria Park when what did I come across.... Fossil Grove. Turned out that my guide book was wrong and the Fossil Grove was located within Victoria Gardens. I wasted a lot of time looking for it and then stumbled across it by accident. *sigh*
Anyway, Fossil Grove is a small area of 350 million year old fossilised trees that were discovered during digging work in Victoria Gardens.
What happened is that 350 million years ago the land that the trees was on was flooded which caused the trees to die. The part of the trees that was above water level eventually disappeared. Of the remaining part of the tree, the core rotted away leaving behind just the bark still in the shape of the original tree and then over the years limestone was washed into the centre of the trees and when the water drained away it solidified and the bark of the trees eventually became coal - leaving behind a perfect replica of the original tree stump. The soil level eventually covered the trees until they were excavated about a hundred years ago. It's rather amazing. There are these large tree stumps emerging from the ground, and even the roots of the trees have solidified so you can get an impression of how massive these trees once were. The trees are all one type - a now extinct tree known as the Clubmoss.
The Fossil Grove is located in a small building and it feels cold and damp and ageless.
After the Fossil Grove I headed back to the hostel and attempted to figure out what I wanted to do on my last full day in Glasgow and how I was going to navigate the public transport system.
So, the plan was to visit Paisley, the University of Glasgow, the Hunterian museum and gallery which is within the uni, and the Burrell Collection if I had time.
I caught the train to Paisley (only about a 15min ride). I know some people are thinking why would you choose Paisley, well the McAllister's came from Paisley so I had to pop there for a quick visit.
I'd heard lots of terrible things about Paisley, but I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't as bad as I had thought it was going to be. Ok, so it's not the prettiest place I've ever seen, but you can tell that they are trying their hardest to update the centre and make it more attractive.
My main stop was Paisley Abbey. The Abbey dates from the 12th century and is rather stunning, certainly not what I was expecting to find in Paisley.
Within Paisley Abbey is the grave of Marjorie Bruce, Robert the Bruce's daughter.
I didn't stay long as I had a lot I wanted to see, so I walked back to the train station and headed into the centre.
I managed to find a bus that would take me to Glasgow Uni, so I hopped on. The main uni building is very impressive and looks as though it has been standing for several hundred years. I found out that it had only been constructed in the 1870s and had been built in an earlier style to represent the true age of the university, which was considerably older.
Once at the uni I signed up for a 2pm tour and then headed to the Hunterian museum. The Hunterian is an odd collection. It is named after William Hunter, a physician who was a teacher and former student of Glasgow uni, and it is his personal collection. There are many medical specimens of oddities amongst humans and animals as well as a large collection of Roman and Greek coins and many other bizzare bits and pieces. It was unusual and I don't know that I particularly enjoyed it. I'm undecided at this point.
I had a quick look at the building the archaeology department is in. It's not the nicest building I've ever seen.
I walked back to the main building to meet up with the tour. There were only 3 of us on the tour - myself and a French couple. We were shown around by a young girl who is about to graduate. It was only an hour long, so it was a very quick tour. We visited the main gates, the Hunter memorial, the lecturer's square (where the professors originally lived), the Cathedral (we couldn't go in as there was a wedding taking place at the time), the front of the University building, which actually is at the back, we went inside the main building and into the room which housed the university court (which would try students accused of crimes such as plagiarism), into the graduation room (which was smaller than I had imagined it would be - it's smaller than Winthrop Hall), down into the quad, then we snuck into the Cathedral for a really quick look as the wedding had finished, and then the tour ended.
After the tour I headed over to the Hunterian Art Gallery (not to be confused with the Hunterian Museum). The Art Gallery was the personal collection of William Hunter again, but it is housed in a different building across the road from the main University building. The Art Gallery contained a large collection of Roman, Greek and other coins and much of the works of art are portraits. It was a diverse collection.
Connected with the Hunterian Art Gallery is Mackintosh house.
Mackintosh house is a reconstruction of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's house. He used a lot of white in the design of his house but it doesn't make the rooms feel cold and sterile, instead they feel warm and welcoming. It was really quite interesting.
I had been hoping to see some of the Burrell Collection, but I was completely out of time. So, I just headed back to the hostel to attempt to repack my suitcase for the next day.
I was up early the following morning (14th June) to finish packing for my flight to Rome.
I grabbed my camera and took some final photos of the centre of Glasgow before I left.
I caught the train to Prestwick airport for my flight to Rome. I checked-in for my flight, but my bag was 5kg over the limit. RyanAir only has a 15kg luggage limit, which is tricky when you're travelling for as long as I am. My hand luggage was completely full, so I couldn't take anything out of my suitcase, so I had to pay 60 pounds for my luggage being overweight!
It's a huge amount of money, but unfortunately that's just the way Ryanair opperates. They have a really bad reputation for screwing people around and getting as much money as possible. I couldn't pay the 60 pounds right then and there, I had to go over to a separate desk and then once I had payed it I was told to push back in at the front of the queue to collect my boarding pass. I really hate pushing in - the line is sacred! And of course it was causing people to get pissed off, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
Oh well, at least I was on my way to Rome.
I ran into one of my room mates from the hostel in Glasgow in the airport. She was flying back to Barcelona that afternoon, so we chatted for a while which made the time pass more quickly.
An interesting thing with Ryanair is that they don't have reserved seating. It is very much first come, first served. I had priority seating, so I was one of the first on the plane and was able to choose my seat, which was good.
The flight wasn't too bad, it was only about 3 hours long. From the airport I caught the bus in to Termini station and then walked to my hostel. By the time I'd checked into the hostel it was 7:30pm.
It's not the best hostel I've ever stayed at - it was small and cramped, and the bedroom doors did not lock, which is a bit worrying when you've got a laptop and an ipod and everything.
I had a free day the following day to explore Rome. I didn't really want to do anything too touristy and I knew I would be seeing most of the sites with the dig, so I just decided to wander around Rome and see how much of the layout I remembered. I was surprised to find that it was very familiar and was pretty easy to find my way around again. I had to of course stop and see the Pantheon and have some Gelato in Piazza Navona.
I wanted to have an early night as the following morning was the big day - the start of the Villa delle Vignacce dig.
At 10am I was due to meet Lynda (program organiser) and 3 other participants inside Termini Station and then she would take us to our apartment. I was there early, of course, and Lynda was already there. 2 of the people due to meet us were instead going to meet us at the apartment, so we were only waiting on one person (Pete) to arrive at the train station.
Once Pete arrived the 3 of us headed off. We caught the metro to Piazza Barberini and walked the short distance to our apartments. My apartment is Via Rasella 134. We are in a great location - only 5 mins from the Trevi fountain.
David and Jay met us at our apartment and we headed upstairs. David, Jay and myself are in 134 and Pete is in 137. We all headed up to our apartment to be shown around and be given the safety lecture, etc.
The apartment is really nice. It houses 9 people in total in 4 bedrooms. Three bedrooms are 2 people and there is one triple room. Each bedroom also has it's own bathroom (which is great). There is a lounge area with tv and a quite well stocked kitchen with 2 fridges and a washing machine.
It's really nice and it's good that we all have our own space.
We got settled in and not long after Kristin arrived and after she got settled in the two of us went for a bit of a wander around and popped to the supermarket at the end of the street. Later that afternoon Indira and then Katie arrived. There were 6 of us in the apartment - the other 3 weren't due to arrive until the next day. Indira and I hit it off straight away. She's studying at Harvard and is absolutely lovely.
In the apartment Pete was in 2 other people arrived - Mike and Ted. The 9 of us all decided to meet up for dinner that first night. It was really nice. We had a few drinks at the apartment and then headed to a local restaurant and had a cheap dinner. It was really nice as we got to know each other in an informal atmosphere.
The following day our last 3 people arrived - Neal, Steve and Pascal.
Indira, Mike and myself decided to go for a wander to get a bit more familiar with our area and Indira needed to find somewhere she could buy an Italian sim card for her phone. We spent at least 5 hours walking around looking for a sim card place - it took forever and when we finally found one they told us there was a store located just around the corner form our apartment! *sigh* Oh well, it was fun and we found a great little restaurant for lunch.
We headed back to the apartment and got to know the 3 new people in the apartment before we had to head to the field school office for our orientation at 6:00pm. The office is based at Foro Traiano - it is one of the best locations, overlooking Trajan's column, the wedding cake, Trajan's forum and markets. It's pretty phenomenal.
At our orientation we met the other students who are staying further out of the city - there is Andreas (from Sweden), Sam and the second Mike in one apartment and then Julia, Jessica and Ashleigh in another apartment. We also met our 2 professors who would be showing us around Rome and teaching us for some of the dig.
After the orientation the staff took us all out for dinner in Trastevere. Dinner was great and I got to speak to some of the people from the other apartments. The big Italy-France soccer match was on that night, so after dinner all of the students headed to Campo de Fiori to find a pub to watch the game. I should mention that I have become designated navigator!
After leading Mike and Indira around Rome successfully the previous day and then leading both of our apartments to the office, they nominated me as the navigator. So, I had to find how to get to Campo de Fiori from the restaurant (luckily it wasn't far) and then take everyone there. I don't know that I like having this pressure!
The game was really fun and Italy won of course, so the locals went a bit nuts. There were fireworks and flares and then when we were heading back to our apartment, we saw heaps of Italians blocking off a street and not letting cars pass, and jumping infront of buses and stuff. They were having a great time and we were enjoying watching it.
We had to go past Trevi fountain to get to our apartment and as we walked past (at about 1am) a commercial was being filmed in front of the fountain. I think it was for Italian coffee. We stopped and watched for a bit before continuing back to the apartment.
The following morning (Wednesday) was the first day of our lectures.
I should mention something of the structure of the Villa delle Vignacce program first. The dig will take place over 7 weeks and we will be excavating the Villa delle Vignacce which is located in the 'park of the aqueducts'. The main aspect of the Villa delle Vignacce dig is the bath house (right up my alley). For the first 2 weeks, we aren't digging, instead the project director and other professors will be giving us a guided tour of ancient Rome. That is pretty exciting as they will be taking us to the Forum, Colosseum, Capitoline museums, Circus Maximus, etc. Then at the end of the 2 weeks we will have to do an exam to show that we have learnt something. Then for the following 5 weeks we will be excavating at the Villa delle Vignacce site.
So, on Wednesday we all headed to our meeting point for the day which was the entrance to the forum. We were met there by Darius Arya (the program director) who led us on a detailed tour of the Forum, the Palatine Hill (which overlooks the forum) and the Colosseum. Something that was really exciting was getting access to Augustus' house. Augustus' house has been known to archaeologists for quite some time, but has only opened to the public this past March. The house is actually the one that Augustus lived in while he was Emperor. It has been preserved really well because it was buried and forgotten about for a long time. Inside the house are 4 very well preserved rooms and the most amazing wall paintings covering every wall. The colours are amazing and they look as though they must have been restored, but in fact they are original and have not been touched by art restorers. It is phenomenal that something like this has survived as well as it has for 2000 years. If you've seen Pompeii, it's nothing on the wall paintings in Augustus' house.
It was definitely the highlight of the day.
Our tour of the Forum, the Palatine and the Colosseum was supposed to take only 3 hours (it took me all day to do just the forum the last time I was in Rome), but in the end it was 5 and a half hours.
After the tour (late afternoon - we didn't start until 11:00), Indira and I headed back to our apartment to get out of the sun and relax a bit. I think we all ended up having a cold shower.
Later that night most people headed to a pizza place 20m down the road from our apartment and had a quick slice of pizza. Indira and I headed back and attempted to get some of our reading done for the next day (we have a course reader for the first 2 weeks).
Neal and Steve got lost that night and when they finally got back to the apartment they didn't have any keys to get in and our buzzer from the outside doesn't work, so they had to sit outside for over an hour until one of our group came back to the apartment and was able to let them in! Poor guys.
The following morning we were due to meet one of the other professor's, Albert, at the Theatre of Marcellus at 9:00am for our next tour.
Our day consisted of a lecture on the geological formation of Italy and the layout of the seven hills of Rome, then a tour of the Tiber Island, the Forum Holitorium, the Forum Boarium, several temples and arches. It was a very interesting tour into a part of ancient Rome that most tourists probably wouldn't visit. I was speaking with Albert and he mentioned that the previous year they organised to take some students into the Cloaca Maxima (the first Roman sewer - built by the Etruscans) to have a look. Of course, because it is still used as a sewer today, there was all sorts of safety requirements and equipment they had to organise before they could go in, but he said that despite the smell it was fantastic. I would love to do that, but they aren't planning on doing it again, so I'm disappointed. I think if they offered it I would probably be the only one interested in actually doing it! Sad, I know.
After the tour ended we all headed back to the office to check email and stuff and then, as it was lunch time, Indira and I decided that we would take everyone to a restaurant nearby that we had found on our second day. Most of the group came with us and we had a great time. It's definitely a locals restaurant as we were the only tourists in there, so the food was great and cheap.
After that everyone headed back to their apartments and we agreed that we would all meet at 7:30 that night at the Trevi fountain and go out for dinner.
Later that night, while we were waiting for everyone to finish getting ready so we could go out for dinner, Steve and I were watching an Italian game show. It was really weird (mainly because we could only understand half of what was going on), but very addictive and it wasn't long until we were hooked!
Anyway, we headed out to meet everyone at 7:30. The problem with being in a group is that it can be hard to make a decision about where we want to go for dinner, as no one wants to choose something that someone else won't like. In the end I decided that we would head over to the Pantheon and find a restaurant over there. Even though we'd all been in Rome for at least 3 days, no one but me had visited the Pantheon yet, so I thought it would be a good idea to head in that direction. Of course the Pantheon looked spectacular at night all lit up with people dining in the piazza around it.
On the way to the Pantheon I'd pointed out a place to Indira where I'd had dinner the last time I was in Rome. When we were trying to decide where to eat, Indira suggested that we should eat at the restaurant Casey had eaten at before! Shit! It was 2 years ago and I had a feeling it was probably expensive - being so close to the Pantheon. Everyone agreed and on the way they were assuring me that I would be blamed if the food was bad and of course forced to pay for anyone who wasn't happy!!!! They're a funny group.
The restaurant sat us upstairs in a small dining room that we had to ourselves, which was really nice. It turned out that the food was as good as I remembered it and it was really cheap. In fact it was cheaper than most of the other restaurants we'd eaten at so far. It was a great meal and we spent ages laughing and chatting.
After the restaurant people wanted Gelato, so I lead everyone to Piazza Navona (which wasn't far) to a great little Gelato place I'd been to before and then everyone wanted to go to Campo de Fiori to find a pub. After we'd lead them there, Indira, Ted and I walked back to the apartment.
Friday was our tour of the Capitoline Hill and Museum. The museum is extensive - housed in two buildings. We spent a full four hours exploring the museum and we could have spent a great deal longer. One of the most impressive aspects of the museum is the view across the forum.
After the museum we popped into the office to use the computers and then went back to the apartment. While Italian food is fantastic, it was getting a bit expensive going out for both lunch and dinner every day, so when Indira came up with the idea of making egg sandwiches for lunch everyone was on board! I've never seen people so excited about egg sandwiches.
In the afternoon I decided to go down to the supermarket to grab a couple of things and ended up wandering and shopping for quite some time. I managed to pick up a couple of nice things!
We decided to pop out later for a quick dinner. Someone really wanted to have McDonalds, so we ended up going there. Not what I was particularly interested in having for dinner, but oh well. Certainly the most expensive McDonalds I've ever had!
As it was our first Friday in Rome, the decision was made to make a night of it - although we'd been out every night so far that week. We headed back to Campo de Fiori - there is a slight obsession with that place at the moment and I'm not sure why. We went to a couple of pubs and then most people wanted to go to a discoteque. So, we all headed over there, but neither Neal nor I were interested so we walked back to the apartment and ended up chatting and getting to know each other for quite a while.
Saturday morning we had no classes so we could sleep in - luxury! Going out for dinner every night was starting to get really expensive, so some of us (Indira, Steve, Neal and myself) had decided to get together and cook most nights. So, our plan for the day was to decide what we wanted to cook and write up a shopping list and then try and get everything we needed. We'd found that there was an international food store over near the Vatican and as most of what we want to cook is Indian, Thai, Mexican and the like, it sounded like it might be the place to go.
The shop is called Castroni's and is on Via Cola di Rienzo, which is a street filled with gourmet food shops. We found a supermarket to buy the essentials and then headed into Castroni's. It was fantastic! It had everything we could possibly want and was divided up by country. I even managed to find Vegemite!! Next time we go I'm going to see if I can find Tim Tams!
We bought enough food to last about 10 meals and it only ended up costing about 150 euros total, which is only about 40 euros each. That's pretty good for nearly 2 weeks.
We had to lug all of the food we'd bought back to the apartment via the metro, which was fun, but we eventually got there.
We decided that Steve was going to cook that night and he wanted to make Chicken Fried Rice - heaven! As much as I love Italian (and you all know I do), I was craving something Asian and this sounded perfect. Steve cooked and I assisted. Dinner was absolutely delicious. During cooking heads kept appearing around the door frame exclaiming on the wonderful smells and quite obviously angling for an invite, but we were cruel and didn't offer our food to anyone else! Mwahahahaha!
After dinner most of the apartment decided to head out, but Pascal and I stayed back. We ended up chatting for quite a while which was nice as I hadn't really had a chance to talk to him much at that point.
At around 1am Neal, Steve, Ted, Indira and Jay came back to the apartment and then they started talking politics. I have never seen anything so scary in my life! Americans get very passionate and aggressive when discussing politics. Steve said to me that Americans don't discuss politics with their friends because you may not be friends at the end of the discussion! It was certainly entertaining and I kept well out of it and just observed. I don't think Australians get quite that aggressive when talking politics, at least not in general. In the end we didn't end up going to bed until 5am, which was a bit of a problem as we were supposed to be leaving the apartment at 10am and heading to the beach. After the hot weather we'd been experiencing the beach sounded like a wonderful idea.
So some of us were up around 10 (slightly later than we would have liked but we were up) and proceeded to drag everyone else out of their beds.
We weren't entirely sure how to get to the beach, but Julia (who is in an apartment with 2 other girls in the Trastevere area of Rome) had lived in Rome before, so she gave us directions. Unfortunately she wasn't coming with us, so it was a bit complicated. One of her room mates - Jess - was going to meet us at a place called Piramide.
So, Julia instructed us to walk to the Colosseum (a good 20 min walk with towels over shoulders, which was pretty funny) to catch a bus to Piramide. We wondered why we couldn't just take the metro, but we assumed she knew what she was doing, so we just followed her instructions. When we got to the Colosseum we realised that the whole street becomes pedestrianised on Sundays and therefore the buses don't run! Aaarrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhh! So, we called her and discovered that we could take the metro to Piramide from the Colosseum. We could have taken the metro from Barberini which is literally around the corner from our apartment and saved ourselves walking for 20mins in the hot sun. Oh well.
We arrived at Piramide and had to find Jess. Julia told us to meet her at the Post Office. We assumed that would be simple enough, everyone stayed at the train station and just Indira and I headed out of the train station to find her. Do you think we could find the Post Office? Of course not!
We wandered around for ages and finally got some really good directions from an English woman who worked in the cemetery. It turned out that we had walked straight past the post office and never noticed it. The post office had absolutely no signage on it, neither in English or Italian. It didn't even say 'Post Office'. We got there and Jess wasn't there. We called Julia who told us that Jess had left her phone at the apartment and had gone back to get it and wouldn't be there for another 10mins. So, we headed back to the Pyramid to wait.
Finally Jess turned up and we were on our way.
To get to the beach from Piramide you have to take an above ground train. Julia had recommended one beach, but we weren't entirely sure where it was, so we'd asked the woman at the cemetery if she knew of a good beach and she'd suggested we get off a Ostia Central and walk to the beach from there. That seemed straight forward, so we decided to do that. It took another 30 mins by train to get to Ostia Central and then from there another 15 mins to walk to the beach.
All in all we left our apartment at 10:40 and got to the beach at 12:45. 2 hours to get to the beach!!!!
The beaches in Italy are private, there are very few public ones. We were planning to look for a public beach to save us some money, but in the end we were so exhausted and hot that we just stopped at the first beach we found and payed 7 euros which got us access and a beach chair. It was pretty good.
The sand in Italy is grey (because of all the volcanic rock) and is boiling hot. You can't walk on it barefooted. I actually burnt one of my feet running to the water. The water was lovely though, and not at all cold. We spent a good few hours there.
Being the middle of the day, the sun was strong and I could feel myself starting to get pinkish after 3 hours so I decided to head back before I got sizzled. Neal and Steve are as pale as me (Steve burns so easily the poor guy) so they headed back at the same time as me. The trip back was quite a bit quicker, but still a good hour.
That night was the big Italy-Spain soccer match, so of course we had to head out and watch it.
We wanted to have a quick dinner beforehand and Katie and Kristin had found a place they wanted to take us to, so we headed there. Unfortunately it was closed so they chose another one, which ended up being a slight disaster. It was a bit of an American restaurant (called 'Wine and Grill') and quite fancy. The food was expensive as were the drinks and it wasn't very good. I've had much better from cheap, side street restaurants. I think I ended up paying 15 euros for a plate of pasta and water - that's about $25!
Anyway, after dinner we headed to Campo de Fiori (can you see a pattern emerging?) to watch the game. Indira really wanted to find a nutella crepe so we had to visit 10 gelateria's before we found one that would do it for her.
We got to Campo de Fiori and watched the second half of the game. It was 0-0 at the end of 90 mins so it went into 30 mins of extra time. At the end of that it was still 0-0. So it went on to penalty kicks, which is so nervewracking. In the end Italy lost 2-4. There were quite a few Spaniards in the crowd who started to wind up the Italians when they won so we decided to hightail it back to the apartment before a riot broke out (although I must admit that I was hoping to see a car flipped onto it's roof and on fire, but I wasn't lucky enough to).
We had to be at Largo Argentina at 9am this morning to meet Darius for today's tour. After Sunday night - and all of the previous late nights - it was a bit of a struggle getting out of bed.
The tour started at Largo Argentina, which is a Roman site consisting of 4 temples (and a large latrine!!!!!! Yay!!!!!) and it is also home to hundreds of cats. It sounds weird, but it's true.
Largo Argentina has become a sanctuary for abandoned cats. It's a wonderful enterprise and the cats have free rein over all of Largo Argentina (people can't acutally get down into Largo Argentina, so the cats are undisturbed).
We arrived there a bit early this morning so a few of us stopped and watched the cats going about their business. It was gorgeous - most were only just waking up.
Our tour started at Largo Argentina, which is where Julius Caesar was assassinated. To make sure that people couldn't gather at the site on which Caesar was murdered to plot against the senate, a huge latrine was built! I think that is hilarious and very intriguing for me. Of course I got quite a bit of shit from everyone else because of my love of ancient Roman latrines, but I don't care. I'm pretty used to it by now. I have to say that it was huge and I would love to explore it properly. I may have to go back later and have a better look.
The tour took us through the Campus Martius, past the theatre of Pompey, the theatre of Marcellus, the Saepta (huge hall 300m x 100m used for voting), the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Ara Pacis, the baths of Agrippa (yes that Agrippa) and the Pantheon (my favourite building in Rome).
It was rather a lot of walking, as it covered a rather large part of Rome.
Afterwards we made a quick visit to a bookshop and then back to the apartment to have egg sandwhiches - yay!
Most of this afternoon was just spent relaxing. Indira was cooking dinner tonight and she was planning to make Chicken Tikka Marsala - yum!
I assisted. I'm becoming very good at cooking rice on the stove - 2 meals in a row! Sounds like an odd thing to say, but I always do it in the microwave.
Dinner was absolutely delicious. We had Chicken Tikka Marsala, rice, and dahl. Tasty!
Tomorrow night is my turn to cook.
We've just had a lazy night tonight, not doing much. It's been quite pleasant.
Tomorrow is a tour of the Imperial forums and the connecting museums. Should be interesting.
Finally, I've caught up! What a relief. I will try really hard not to get so far behind again.
Toodles for now, will try to post again in a couple of days.
