French Week in Italy, Part 2

Here I am at 11 PM again, blogging. I never learn...
Time for the second half of my Campania trip! Where did we leave off? Monday? Monday!
So, Tuesday! We went to Benevento, where we saw a really cool church with a lot of weird angles and arches and such, called the Church of S. Sofia. We also saw an arch of Trajan, but the rain added to the hour or so we spent just standing in front of it kind of took away from the general excitement...
After a rainy lunch we drove on to Sepino for an autoptic. I must say, the two dogs mating while I was trying to figure out how a tomb showed a man's power was quite distracting.
Wednesday! Wednesday was kind of a fail of a day. We said goodbye to the Villa Vergiliana and drove to Pozzuoli. After seeing the macellum (or rather, the kittens by the macellum) we were supposed to go into the amphitheater and see the tunnels underneath, but we weren't allowed inside. After this, we were supposed to go climb a volcano. But there were too many children/tour groups there, and the professors inexplicably decided that this was a good reason not to go, and to rather give us about 5 hours of free time in Naples. If you read the last post, you know I did not really enjoy Naples the first time around. So this made me sad. One good thing Naples does have to offer is the Archeological Museum, which has many wall paintings from Pompeii and interesting sculptures from Rome.
That night we stayed at the Motel Villa Dei Misteri, where the food, unfortunately, could not measure up to the food at the Villa Vergiliana. But really, could anyone?
Thursday was Pompeii day! We spent about 10 hours there, so instead of talking about it, I will just post some pictures.

 Awesome body casts of people suffocating in the ashes

Villa of the Mysteries

 Pompeian street

 Brothel, of course

Amphitheater

Just to explain the blog title- there were SO MANY FRENCH PEOPLE in Pompeii. And everywhere else, for that matter, but Pompeii especially. So much so that the cashiers in the snack bar were speaking french. It was culture week in Italy, meaning everything ancient was free, basically. Free=french, apparently? Anyways, end rant...

Friday morning we all woke up, took Advil for our feet (Pompeii was painful!) and went to Herculaneum. We spent most of the time there doing autoptics on different houses, which was cool. Many of them still had the 2nd story, which was something we hadn't really seen before.

We had lunch at a pasta factory, and then got to go on a tour. The tour itself was cool, but by far the best part was the coat and shower-cap type things they had us put on to go inside. Everyone looked like a lunch lady, in the most unflattering way possible. 

After that fun, albeit random, tour, we visited the Villa in Oplontis, another area affected by Vesuvius. It was fun walking around a mostly intact villa and getting a better idea of what they would have been like in ancient times, wall paintings and all. 

Saturday was pretty laid back, as it was our last day of the trip. We started the morning by seeing the mithraeum and amphitheater at Boscoreale. We finally got to go underneath the amphitheater! Cool stuff.

the secretive under-tunnels of the amphitheater

In the afternoon we went on a tour of a Bourbon palace in Caserta. Since there was really nothing ancient in there, apart from one statue, no one really listened, including the professors. I did make note, however, of how many rooms in that palace had nothing in them but chairs. Who could possibly need that many uncomfortable chairs? Rich people... After the tour we had some time to walk around the giant gardens in the back, so my friend and I strolled around speaking in British accents and pretending we are the rich ladies who live in this palace, our 'early autumn home'. Yeah. We're normal. 

We got back to Rome for dinner that night, and to celebrate Rome's birthday, I went to sleep early. I know, livin' large. 

Well, that's Campania done. At some point I'll write about last week... it wasn't terribly exciting, but (spoiler alert) I did go to a soccer game!

French Week in Italy, part 1

PompHEY GUYS
I spent this last week in Campania, which includes exciting things such as Pompeii, Herculaneum, and a bunch of other towns no one's ever heard of/cares about! The trip started on Saturday, when we visited Terracina. As a city built on a cliff over-looking the ocean, it should've been a beautiful place. Unfortunately, we spent most of it undercover or battling umbrellas in the wind, as it was raining quite hard. It was still pretty, just... in a gray way. After that fun experience, we continued on to Sperlonga, where Tiberius (I think) had a really cool dining room/fish pond inside a huge grotto. With the rain and fog and all, the grotto looked a lot like the horcrux cave from Harry Potter. By the end of the visit, I decided that a grotto will be one of the many features of the Roman villa I build. Just as soon as I become a rich Roman emperor.

This was in the museum. There's also a pope on the side I didn't get...

You can almost see Voldemort if you look closely

That afternoon we had an autoptic in which, as a group, we had to draw a plan of a small town we had never seen before. It was a painful experience. 

That evening, and for the next four nights we stayed at the Villa Vergiliana. It's basically the Centro, but in Campania, run by Franco's sister. While the food was amazing, and there were baby goats in the yard, it was quite an old building, and the bouncy bed and cold showers made the experience not as enjoyable as it could have been...
On Sunday we went to 'the Flesh-Pots of Baiae', an ancient Roman sulfur bath resort thing. It was cool, but by far the most exciting thing we saw was this UPSIDE DOWN TREE. Seriously, how is that even a real thing?

 WOAH

After the biggest lunch I've ever had, we went to the ancient site of Cumae, where we saw, among a bunch of ancient stuff, the place where Franco and his wife Pina would run around when they were 'courting'. Adorable. 

When we got back to the Villa Vergiliana, it was baby goat time! Here's a picture- no words needed.

So fluffy!!!

Monday was an Art History day. We walked around Naples while the art history professor lectured about different churches and such. While it was very interesting, it was also very relaxing- since I'm not in the art history class, I didn't have to take notes, and was able to just enjoy the sites and information without the stress of a quiz or a test. Unfortunately, apart from the old stuff, Naples is pretty icky. We had an unnecessarily long lunch break which was not the most fun.... ah well. Not every Italian city can be awesome. 

Well, that's about half of the trip. Since it's 11 PM and I have not done any work today, I'm going to cut this in half. I'll be back soon with more about Campania, and back less-soon with this week's adventures!

No Pope This Time

First off- that chocolate egg I said would last for weeks? It was gone by Tuesday morning. We're still trying to solve that mystery...
Anyways... this week's been exciting! Monday was a weird day- since the day after Easter is a national holiday in Italy, we had no food served at the Centro. It made the day feel like a weekend, because we were feeding ourselves, yet we had classes... What a hard life.
Tuesday we went to Ostia! As my professor described it, it's 'Just like Pompeii, but without the terrible people!' Now, I personally disagree. I haven't actually been to Pompeii, but from what I've heard and seen, it's pretty damn cool. And 100-500 years older, which pleases the antiquity elitist in me...
But that's not to say Ostia is not a cool place! We got to see a theatre, some houses, flour mills and latrines. And- most exciting- the most ancient synagogue found in the western world! For our Ancient City course, we each have to give a 10 minute presentation on something at one of our field trips, and mine was on the synagogue. Which was amazing. I think the presentation went well- I was told I have a good 'radio-line' voice.

Post-presentation Inbar is happy and in synagogue

Menorah, shofar, lulav and etrog. FROM 2,000 YEARS AGO

While Ostia was quite awesome, after 10 hours there we were all close to crawling on our way out... On the train ride home, we all admired/pointed out each other's lanyard tans (we have to wear our headphone-radio machine things on our necks all day...) Mine is more a burn than a tan... Ouch.

Wednesday was graciously left free of field trips, probably to avoid any riots. When I decided not to wake up for breakfast, I was woken up instead by my friend Quinn clambering (with much difficulty) into my (top bunk) bed yelling, 'you weren't at breakfast!! I missed you! I'm falling!!' The day could only get better from there... But really, I did nothing all day, except go to one class. It was just what I needed after Ostia.

Today we finally went to the Vatican Museums! Since there was an unusual amount of crowds (even for summer, apparently) our visits to certain things took longer than planned, and the professors had to leave before we saw everything we wanted to. Fortunately I planned to stay later, so I got to see the Laocoön statue and the Sistine Chapel, which was pretty underwhelming. I'd imagined it would be much bigger. And less crowded and loud. (the guards 'shhhh'-ing everyone all the time didn't help). In true Centro fashion, of course, we got to go into a whole bunch of closed-off rooms while crowds of tourists stared in curiosity, or, as always, tried to follow us in only to be turned away by guards.

This evening we had a lecture about Campania to prepare for our week-long trip next week. After a short intro to the Naples Museum, we had one of the strangest lectures from our Italian professor/PhD student, Massimo. It involved 100 slides (about 20 of which were covered in the hour we had), google-earth, elaborately illustrated cartoons of people burning alive in Herculaneum, a Discovery Channel volcano-making website, and warnings about how Vesuvius could erupt any moment. Hardly any Pompeiian history, which was what the lecture was about. But we'll learn it all there, I guess? During our 11-hour day on site in Pompeii... 

Parent's Week and the Pope

Since I just realized I'm sitting in my room watching a video titled 'Mini Kittens Pat Things,' which is exactly what it sounds like (Don't judge, I know you're looking it up on youtube right now), I decided I'd at least be pseudo-productive and update my blog! My parents were here last week! Things happened! I saw the Pope! All this and more- right here.
My parents and grandparents got here on Saturday, which was very exciting. On Sunday morning, after they had settled in and all that, we went to the Porta Portese market, which, after all I've heard about it, was pretty disappointing, Mostly just a flea market with normal street-vendor things... ah well. After that, we walked around and made it all the way to Piazza Navona and Campo Dei Fiori. After a much-needed afternoon nap, we headed over to the Victor Emmanuel monument and went up to the top- WOW. I've gotten so used to Rome and seeing all the beautiful monuments that I've almost forgotten how beautiful they all are when put together in this city. From the roof of the monument, though, not only can you see the whole landscape and how it works together- you can't see the crowds. It was amazing.

Hey... I live here!

It was also fun walking around all of the forums, explaining them, and actually knowing what I'm talking about, and being able to show that I've learned stuff this semester!!

Monday, as usual, was uneventful... 

On Tuesday, we had quite an exciting field trip. We started at the Forum of Trajan, which we got to go inside (once again... I'm the only one excited by this, aren't I?). After lunch we went to the Pantheon, and after learning that 'if you measure the distance from one end of the circle... to the other end... so to say, the diametrical distance...' (classics majors aren't good at math!!) we got to go INSIDE THE WALLS OF THE PANTHEON. That's gotta be exciting to someone other than me, right??? 

See the wall. And Professor Bucher walking into it.

The rest of the day was full of other, less exciting, things. You know, the usual 2,000 year old temples and such. I did manage to drop my pencil into a ditch in the temple of Hadrian... that'll confuse future archeologists! Hehe. 

After the field trip I met my family at Trevi fountain and we walked over to the Spanish steps. After 2 months, I finally saw those! (I fail at Rome...). 

On Wednesday we toured the remains of the Baths of Diocletian, which was cool, because they're located within different buildings spread out through the area, like churches and even a planetarium! Then we went to the epigraphical museum, which wasn't too exciting. I found an inscription with hebrew on it, which was nice, and we got to see the inscription that is our final project for latin. Which wasn't nice. 

Thursday was, once again, uneventful. On Friday my parents, sister and I went to Florence! Honestly, Florence in February, despite the unbearable cold, is much nicer than Florence in April. SO MANY PEOPLE. It was interesting to compare walking into the Uffizi in February, buying tickets on the spot and getting in right away, to waiting in the reserved tickets line in April... hmmm. I saw David and Venus again, and got some leather goods. That was the good part of the trip :). 

Sunday was Easter! With his magical powers, Franco managed to have an unlimited number of tickets to the Easter Papal Mass, so I went with my family. We got there a bit late, so we didn't get seats. But I got to kind of see the Pope? 

I'll admit- this is my friend's picture. But I was there!

That evening I said goodbye to my parents, sister and my winter coat and headed back to the Centro. Where a 16 pound chocolate egg was sitting in the living room. Franco and Pina are the greatest. Unfortunately I missed the throwing of it on the floor to open it, but there is still plenty of chocolate... and will be for a few days.