Thursday night we went to Trastevere, a really neat, quaint section of Rome, for dinner. We saw San Maria in Trastevere, which was beautiful. Its one of the oldest churches in Rome.
















The inside has beautiful gold mosaics all over the apse and most of the church.


















The fountain in the Piazza in front of the church. There were lots of young people just hanging out on the steps. Most of them had crazy hair, mohawks and spikes, and lots of piercings. They were on the other side of the fountain, I felt weird taking pictures of them. Anyway, they were playing bongo drums and even using an old satellite dish upside as a drum. It was pretty cool to listen to.




Friday we went to the ruins at Pompei! They were so awesome because they are so detailed and intact. You could really see people walking aroud in togas doing their day to day activities. You can see the original marble and mosaic floors, frescoes on the walls, even political propoganda carved into the walls. It was really amazing. When they were excavating, any time they hit an open space or cavity, they stopped and poured in plaster. So they have plaster casts of all of the wooden parts of houses and tools and things, but also of people! The people were really creepy because you can see the scared expressions on their faces and some of them holding their hands over their eyes or mouth. There were 22 "red-light" districts complete with beds and frescoe "menus" of services you could purchase. It was so strange.


This is part of the outside of the city walls.













This is the theater. The stone seats and the steps are the original ones. There was even a v.i.p. section for the wealthy people. They also found masks in the "dressing rooms" nearby. Because the seats were built into the hillside apparently it had great acoustics because the sound echoed.







This is a rich person's house that is still intact and we got to go through it!












Every house had a square hole in the roof and a sqaure basin in the floor to collect rainwater. You can see marble mosaics outlining the basin. The rich houses were very ornately decorated.











A fresco on the wall in the dining room. The colors are so bold! We also saw the bedroom, living room, and bathroom.










The ceiling in the bathouse. So detailed! This main room was the changing room. There are even selves on the walls to put your clothes and belongings.










The hot water bath. The little piles of stones held up another floor so that they could heat the water underneath this second floor.
















Thats our guide holding the umbrella, and my Italian professor in the white hat. This is a bakery. I forget what the oven they are standing by did, but the one in the background made flat breads like pizza ovens today.









This is the ruins of another house. You can tell because of the square basin in the center.












Me in the middle of a street in Pompei. You can see Mount Vesuvius in the background.












Me and Jen in the marketplace, standing in a circle which would have held a giant fishbowl full of live fish for people to buy.











All of the smaller pieces found like pottery and statues are kept in big open air meseums, which were behind bars so people didnt touch anything.











Me standing in front of a temple dedicated to saturn. The smaller light colored column behind me is a sundial.












Steph, me, Jen and Mary Kate standing in front of the ruins (and really pretty yellow flowers!)