Double Date with Death

Well, that's a morbid title, isn't it? That is because the theme of our week in the Ancient City course (the main Roman History course everyone here takes) was tombs! Actually, Etruscans, but most of what we have of theirs is tomb-related. On Tuesday we spent the day in all kinds of different tombs!
First, we went to three tombs outside of Tarquinia, which is a little north of Italy. These three tombs are not actually open to the public, which made them even more exciting to see than they already were! The tombs are all covered (or used to be) in beautiful wall paintings of different daily or mythological scenes, such as Polyphemus being stabbed in the eye from the Odyssey myth,

Or two figures being charged at by an erect bull while copulating...

So really, just average, day-to-day things.
After these three tombs, we went to a nearby site where the rest of the painted tombs were. Every pair of people got a snazzy speaker thing, and when you pressed a number it played a short British explanation of the corresponding tomb, each complete with a subtle mention of the park's Snack Bar. After that and lunch, we went to a museum with lots and lots of urns and things just sitting around, no cases or anything. That made me quite nervous...
The best part of the day by far was Banditaccia. It's an area by Tarquinia with things called Tumuli, (1 tumulus) that were giant mound-tombs. We split up and started climbing around. We went into some tombs, climbed over some tombs (which was probably a terrible terrible thing to do) and laid down in dead people beds. Nothing wrong with that... Here I am in a tomb:

Also important to note- there were at least 10 stray cats in one area of this park, and we were all more interested in them than the missing people we needed to find in order to leave the park on time. But... Cats!

Today we went to the Villa Giulia and saw more Etruscan vases and such, and then spent some time in the British School in Rome, listening to a fairly pointless lecture about things we will see and learn about later in the semester...

Apart from the exciting sight seeing, I don't think much else has been happening... So there you go!