Thursday, June 18, 2009

Fargo and Rome Together

Well, when I said start at the Colloseum, what I meant was, get off at the Colloseum metro stop...

What we did was much more special the Coliseum. We got to go into the Forum of Augustus. It is normally closed off and people can only see it from above on the street, but we got a special tour of sorts. It was absolutely astounding standing on original marble floors, walking up the steps into the Temple of Apollo. Touching the pillars. Imagining what it all looked like when it was there. Noticing where the temples once stood because of imprints in the tufa fire wall. All of these things were just dumbfounding really.

After this we attempted to enter the Roman Forum as well to look at the objects put up during the Augustan period, however it was closed for "security reasons." No one was really sure what that meant... so instead Luke and I decided to head back while a few others went to a Renaissance art museum, which we didn't really want to pay the 7.50 Euro for.

The rest of the day was mundane as I had to finish a paper.

That night was quite the opposite. It started with lots of great music being DJed by DJ Zach Attack, me. Add in some drinks with just a dash of great people and you have yourself a pretty bomb night. We left around 11 to go to Trattoria to a club called Coyote. The bar charged 5 dollars a beer and played very American pop music. Our group took up the entire dance floor. We were rocking it all night long. I mean it. Like, we were there until 3 am. At about 3 we decided it was time to head home. Lily and I started walking and using her GPS to find the bus station... I don't know how but we followed it the wrong way. After fixing this problem we finally ended up at the bus stop where we met up with others we had gone to the bar with but had separated from towards the end of the night. We caught a bus home and I crashed. Hard.

Noon rolls around and it feels amazign to finally be able to sleep in. Although with no time to rest I jump out of bed. My Dad, Strand, and Volk are going to be arriving in Rome in 30 minutes. I stumble to find everything and look up the address on google maps. 12:30 I start walking, hoping to catch them before they head off with their tour group. I'm walking and realize I only wrote the street down and not the exact address. No time to head back though. I keep walking and see a bus in the distance... maybe that's theirs... but probably not. I keep walking and the road starts curving... I don't remeber it curving on google maps in the 5 seconds I looked at it... I keep walking. I turn the corner. I see a yellow shirt on a guy whose walk I could recognize from a mile away: David Volk. Then Malm, then Strand, then the pops. I help move a bag into their room and we headed to a small place for lunch. They left to go on their trip and I headed back to the Candia to wait until we had class at the Mausoleum of Augustus and the Ara Pacis.

The Ara Pacis. Um. Wow? I'm really not going to go into everything I saw here because there was one thing that really struck me today. On one of the panels that looked like jsut a bunch of random vines and flowers was something completely different. At the termination of every vine (pictures will be up on facebook and hopefully here if I can figure that out), was a different kind of flower. What attention to detail! Even MORE amazing than that though... Someone had gone through and figured out exactly what flower each one was and took a picture of the real flower and placed it next to a picture of the flower on the panel. Ridiculous.

After class was over I went and met up with Fargo again for dinner. Following dinner we went to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish steps. After bringing the youngans home, the high school students, I brought V, S, and D, to my place to show them where I'm staying. Volk informed me that Anna Swenson had stayed in the same place while she lived in Rome! What a small world.

The end of this seems rushed. And it is. I have a paper to finish now so I can spend the rest of tomorrow with Fargo.

Night.

No comments:

Post a Comment