The Roman Boonies

Hey, sorry for the big delay in posting, I don't know how far back I'll be able to remember to write about, but there is a lot that happened in the last few days that I can write about.  In last Friday's history tour class we saw the Imperial Forum, where the we saw lots of old ruins, including the remains of a temple to Rome's coolest-named god, Mars Ultor.  We also looked at Trajan's column and the remains of his old basilica.  We ended that class looking at the Ara Pacis, the altar of peace which is the stone box inside of a glass box seen below.  That was where Romans would sacrifice bulls to the goddess of Peace.  Then on Saturday, John, Adam and I went out to Appia Antica to visit the old catacombs.  Unfortunately both of the catacombs were closed when we got there, so we walked down the road a bit and found the old Circus Maxentius, which I'm going to go ahead and say was my favorite historical site I've seen so far.  Today its basically a big open field, but its easy to imagine Ben Hur charging around that big field.  Near the entrance there was an old twisted tree that was really good for pictures, but I think Adam might have gotten a more dramatic shot.  We also went to the huge castle-looking building which turned out to be a mausoleum, but it was kind of a disappointment inside.

So when we were at the castle the lady at the entrance indicated, in a mix of English and Italian, that our ticket for the castle was also good for another museum, which was just down the road a bit.  Or that's what we thought, but after walking down the old Appian highway for over an hour, we decided that it was certainly farther away than we thought, so we found ourselves out in the middle of the country, without knowing how to really get home.  So that began another journey of bus hopping which was very tiring, but at least ended with our learning how read the bus route signs.  On a side note, whenever I see the old Roman road, I wonder what Thoreau would think of them, "The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the Highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!"  

The last thing I want to write about is a bar we found last night called Spazio Sociale Incantiere, which we think means "Singer's Social Space."  Anyways we went in last night and saw a show which was some weird mix of open mic and interpretive performance theater.  In the picture below, the woman is reading, the drummer is drumming and the piano player is tuning the piano.  We don't know if the reading had anything to do with either of the other two, but it was really cool to watch.  After that a guitar player did a one-man show which made me think of Leo Kottke if Kottke had a day job pouring concrete.  We'll probably go back there.  

So, today is Sunday and tomorrow is our first review so I'll be spending most of today finishing drawings for that.  Then on Wednesday we take our first field trip, south to Napoli, Pompeii and some other places.  I'll be sure to put some stuff up from there, best wishes to everyone back home.  Ciao!