A drab day in Rome...

Such a rainy day here in the eternal city, very depressing, especially since I have been battling a silly cold that will not go away. Feeling somewhat better now, but we shall see what tomorrow morning brings... Hopefully I am well because we are touring the Forum and Colosseum with our history class! More ruins and dilapidated buildings that are the cultural essence of the city. They have been forgotten and neglected multiple times only to be rediscovered as culturally significant by a later era. If only the Catholic church had not used them as a stone quarry when rebuilding St. Peters Cathedral... Rome would have a cultural history to put its current one to shame. Enough lamenting, there is enough to look forward to in the day tomorrow.

In other less dramatic news, we had our second dinner as a flat tonight! We went out to the Chinese/Japanese restaurant two blocks up Viale di Trastevere. Very good food! I ordered an appetizer of dumplings (my favorite Asian food besides hot and sour soup, which I lament in not imbibing on this particular occasion) and grilled spare ribs with white rice. Tasty! It was a great break from the daily grind of pasta with some sort of sauce. We really need to start being more creative with our meals because eventually, pasta will start to be a burden on our palates. Only one week of class until we are on the road for our first field trip!!! Below are some assorted photos that have not really fit in with the theme of other posts... Enjoy!

The fountain in front of studio

Tiber at night

Ministry of Education at night

A parliamentary building in Rome

Statue in a Park

Church of the 4 fountains

One of the 4 fountains

Trajans column

Ruins in the forum

St Peters (not the big one, a smaller one)

Garibaldi's bust

Monument of Unification under construction

Some tree that looks important because of the plaque and wall holding it up

The Andrew's in front of a bridge paid for by a pope in the late 1800s

A cappucino

RJ messing with my cappucino... 

Really? Now all the cream is on the side...

Field trips are fun for a reason, so Sarah and Dani are having some

Sarah being a statue again...

Ostia Antica; Almost the Sea Pt.2

More great pictures of Ostia Antica!

Ruins of more housing

The theatre again, from the pediment of the remains of a temple to Athena

The forum of the town from the pediment of Athena's Temple

Sarah pretending to be a statue near Athena's Temple

Back to the road and more ruins of shops and houses

An overgrown alleyway

The forum and the capital of Ostica

A view of the forum from the capital

Frescos aged 1400 years or so... Still older than the US as a country.

Imagine a city covered in this and what you get is exactly what Osctica used to look like

Remains of a storage warehouse complete with containers. They were found partially buried, using the earth as a natural refridgeration device. These things are huge! Well over the size of a 55 gallon drum.

The floor in the temple of Diana. I got to step on it to take the next picture... WOOT!

The interior of the temple of Diana (Probably minus a bunch of gold and mosiacs, the statues are in the museums.)

Inside the Baths at Ostica

The baths again...

Old walls of the fort the city was built around.

More ruins...

A rebuilt section of the facade of the theatre

Massive! This place was giant!

Ruined temple to another Roman god, I believe this one was their trade god because it sat prominently on the road right inside of the city.

Ostia Antica; Almost the Sea Pt.1

Greatings everyone! What a day full of adventure we had today. Our studio took a field trip out of Citta di Roma and went to the small ruins of the abandoned town of Ostia Antica. The city of Rome is quite the sprawl, but just like NYC, it just takes a short time on a train to leave the sprawl and Vespa exhaust behind for a countryside with clean air that smelt of rain and pine trees. The city of Ostica used to lie along the trading route that is the Tiber River and was later abandoned for a greater facility constructed under the Emperor Trajan. It is now a park of ruins that has a museum full of statuary and decorative cornices. Unfortunately you could not take pictures of the antiquities in the museum, but the ruins are quite beautiful in their own right. Lots of pictures again today and Friday will have a great deal too (this time I will remember to put the SD card in my camera before leaving my flat... Sorry about last Friday).

Ruins and the old Roman road which serves as a path

The Necropolis of Ostica

Wealthy houses and a glimpse of mosaic floors.

The bath-house of Ostica. This used to be one building, a really dang big one.

The baths again... They later served as the Catholic basilica in Ostica, 

Patrick next to the old Roman road. (Pat has been riding a bus out every morning to do his bike training on roads that are significantly less insane.)

The remnants of a Temple in Ostica. I cannot remember who it was dedicated to.

The theatre in Ostica

Gorgeous...

 Bo is featured twice in this photostitch... And this is magnificent!

It is acoustically formed, so if you talk right here everyone can hear you, and you even get an echo of your own voice.

The backdrop to the stage.

Wow...

Magnificent!