Wednes­day, Septe­mer 2^nd, 2009

After the usual class with Pro­fes­sor Walsh, I then worked on my Ital­ian home­work, which was to trans­late a biog­ra­phy of an indi­vid­ual our group is inter­view­ing, and then to find out how to get to the inter­view loca­tion. After suc­cess­fully find­ing it with­out too much trou­ble (it is near the Pan­theon and Cham­ber of Deputies), I ambled back in the sear­ing sun to take a very much needed nap.

Then Rachel showed up at 4 or 5 or so, and we decided to wan­der around aim­lessly since we had noth­ing bet­ter to do. After end­ing up at the Tiber river, we went north and explored the var­i­ous bridges and enjoyed the sun set­ting over St. Peter’s and some obscure Piazza’s and assorted work­ings of Rome. Then we decided that while we would not be able to sat­isfy our bur­rito crav­ings in Rome, a cheese­burger from McDonald’s would also do the trick. There are signs all over Rome direct­ing peo­ple to where the near­est McDonald’s is, so it seemed like a easy task to find one. Right?

Not really. It was pretty hard to actu­ally find one, and took us about an hour of cir­cling a few blocks to actu­ally locate that par­tic­u­lar MickeyD’s. After that episode, we then promptly got lost and walked about an hour in the wrong direc­tion and ended up at the shop­ping dis­trict at around 9pm. Finally we got our bear­ings and had to take a large back­track and cir­cle to get back to the Campo.

Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 3^rd, 2009

Pretty relaxed day. Another class with McCann before tak­ing the rest of the day off until our group din­ner at 7:20pm. After some fairly unin­spir­ing food (yet free wine), a few of us decided to go off to the Span­ish steps. 2000 bil­lion steps later, we arrived at around 22:30 and started chill­ing. Rain was play­ing the gui­tar until a cop came along and some­how man­aged to say that music was not allowed at the “mon­u­ment.” We were all rather con­fused about this, as other peo­ple were doing the same thing, but decided it wasn’t our place to argue this asser­tion. Then we split up again, and I was barely awake so I choose to go back to the apart­ment to sleep.

Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 4^th, 2009

Wak­ing up at 6:00am, I showed up at the Rome Cen­ter at 7:20, ready for our bus tour! After head­ing out to the bus stop, it started a very inter­est­ing (and warm) Roman rain shower. Slightly soggy, we all climbed aboard the bus and trav­elled north. We stopped at a old “gar­den of mon­sters” which were a bunch of old sculp­tures and mon­u­ments of var­i­ous objects, includ­ing giants in a fight, the “mouth of hell,” a lean­ing build­ing, and a giant war elephant.

Get­ting aboard again we arrived at Orvi­eto, which is a moun­tain top town in Italy that is char­ac­ter­ized by the fact that it’s on top of a large vol­canic plateau.

Rid­ing the funic­u­lar rail­way to the top and then a short bus, we were dropped off in front of a clas­sic exam­ple of Ital­ian Gothic archi­tec­ture in the form of a church. Dom, Rain, Rachel and I then got tick­ets for the under­ground tour. The tour was basi­cally a bunch of tun­nels and base­ments that the res­i­dents in the city cre­ated for tax-free work­spaces, stor­age, and shel­ter from the heat and (later) bombs.

Then we wan­dered around for a while, doing some shop­ping in the nar­row streets. The town is noted for its ceram­ics, and this rep­u­ta­tion cer­tainly did not dis­ap­point. Finally we ended up going down the side of the cliff to check out the necrop­o­lis and cir­cle the city before com­ing up on the other side and walked up a very steep street that really hilighted the idea of “we will build what­ever we want, when­ever we want, and we don’t care how it looks” construction.

We got back on the bus at around 4:00pm, and after get­ting back at 6 or 7pm, took it pretty easy and retired to bed early.

Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 5^th, 2009

Dom, Rain, Rachel and I were going to the beach!

We woke up early, took a bus to the Romi Ter­mini, and then a 1hr 20min train (6,20 euro each way) to Fondi, which is a town near the sea. The train sta­tion was huge, with trains going every­where. Luck­ily Rain and Dom knew what they were doing and we man­aged to find the cor­rect train and set­tled in an Air Con­di­tioned Car. Another fun thing is that the stops are not announced, you have to look at the sta­tion signs when the train stops. Except some of the sta­tion signs are really hard to find, and you have to almost guess where you are. After meet­ing a large group of girls who were in our pro­gram who inde­pen­dently were going ot the beach, we trav­elled together for the next few hours. Arriv­ing fine,  after miss­ing the bus to the beach and wait­ing around the sta­tion, we took a crowded bus to Sper­longa (beach). Find­ing a "free" beach (most beaches are paid, where you pay to have a chair, umbrella and such), we set up camp and chilled on the Mediter­ranean Sea for 5 hours while swim­ming in the beau­ti­ful surf, eat­ing Kabob, and soak­ing up the sun. After walk­ing along the town and along the water, we came to a large sea cave before hav­ing to turn back.

At the bus stop, we sud­denly found a march­ing band play­ing some pretty awe­some tunes march­ing on the main street of town. Get­ting on the shut­tle and then take the train back to Rome, we got back to Roma at around 10:00pm when Rain and Dom sug­gested we go to a pretty awe­some place to eat that they knew about. It was pretty great food, and we took a bus back to the Campo after that.

I got sun­burned on my front lower legs and feet pretty badly, but every­where else was fine. I think the sun­block must have got­ten washed off or I just didn’t apply enough.