Rome was built in a day...clearly not!

Wow it's amazing how much of Rome I can see in a week!

The Ara Pacis museum. As you can see I had some issues with shooting perfectly horizontally. I was holding an audioguide and a purse and a map for the audioguide.

Like I posted last week Adriana and I went to see the Ara Pacis. I forgot to mention that we also went to a gorgeous church with the heart of Saint Charles in the back altar! Since I am not Catholic, I found the custom of relics very fascinating.

On Wednesday, one of my best friends from middle school arrived with her boyfriend, and they stayed with me for a few days. We went to Campo di Fiori, the Pantheon, and Piazza Navonna at night.

On Friday Adriana and I went to an enormous church called Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary the Greatest?). Since I was wearing a sundress, I had prepared a sweater. For Adriana, who was wearing a tank top, they had a basket of shawls made of a mesh material (kind of like dryer sheets without the oil). This church had a lot of Bernini sculptures and even had a chapel dedicated to Bernini's tomb! It also contained the Borghese chapel with the really famous icon of Mary and infant Jesus. The basilica was covered in golden mosaics and under the altar was a recreation of the Holy Crib containing pieces of the original manger.

Long colonade along the central knave of Santa Maria Maggiore

Bernini's tomb in his chapel. There were also popes buried there too.

Ceiling of the chapel of St. Matthew. The painting in the middle seems illuminated because it is in front of a window.

Friday night Eleonora made dinner for all of us. Europe is a really different world without air conditioning. She made this cold rice dish because traditionally, no one wants to eat pasta in the summer. I never thought of this. She also said that people generally lose weight during the warm season that is approaching.

On Saturday we went to Ostia Antica! This is officially my favorite place in all of Italy! Ostia was an ancient port city of Rome, because it was wedged between the River Tiber and the sea. However, the coastline and the riverbed positions have both moved since then, so an entire abandoned ancient city remains. We begain in a necropolis, because according to Roman tradition bodies could not be buried within city walls. At one point I found some hidden stairs that led to a huge crypt with slots in the ground for burying bodies.

Here is a mausoleum with cubbies in the walls to hold funeral urns full of ashes. There were also lots of tombs and sarcophogi laying around.

There was a very well-preserved amphitheatre, which marked the ~1/10 mark of the complex, but we had already spent about 2-3 hours exploring everything.

There was an extraordinary number of baths, each with a beautiful mosaic of tiles on the ground. This one is from the Baths of Neptune, so you can see the sea motif. Except the sea horses (hippocamps), sea cows, sea lions, sea goats (capricorns), etc actually have the head and body of that animal and a long squiggly fish tail instead of resembling the actual sea creatures.

There were many well-preserved frescoes, including this one of women above another set of baths. It also has a lobster and a sea serpent.

It was so fascinating because it was really the ruins of an entire city and we were all free to explore. Even though Adriana bough a guide book which made finding things a little bit easier (not really), we found a lot of stuff on our own which made it 100x more rewarding. There were the remains of houses and you could still see a well in the center and a statue in a niche in the wall. You could also see pools for collecting rainwater in other houses. The forum and capitolium were also well preserved. However the most well-preserved rooms and interesting-looking underground passages were gated and impossible to pass without a key, much to our disappointment. There was a synagogue on the very, very outskirts of the city. It was so far away that we couldn't get there because of the waist high grass.

There were several underground passageways and tunnels that could only be found if you saw the right stairways. Underground could only be navigated with some crawling and jumping in addition to walking. From the height of the lintels and the tunnels, we got a good idea of just how much shorter the ancient Romans were. This statue was at the end of a tunnel that we accidentally discovered. Just imagine how excited we were! There were also additional passageways beyond but gated (see picture).

It really made me realize just how much history is in Rome. Whatever is in Ostia Antica is also underneath Rome, and more! You just can't see it. Every time a new highway or metro station (gasp!) is being built. They have to stop just about every few hours to let the archeologists have a turn.

My friends left on Sunday morning, and Sunday turned out to be another beautiful day. I had made friends with one of my neighbors who has a balcony close to ours. On Sunday some of his friends and he and I went to Villa Borghese, which is a huge piece of green land belonging to the Borghese family and now is a public park. We rented a riscio max, or a pedal cart for four people, and went around the park. There was a gorgeous little lake in the middle with turtles and ducks. I have a feeling that next week we will be going to the lake.

On the way home we passed through some nearby sights, including the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon. I really never get tired of the Pantheon! We saw a calendar in a shop called "Calendario Romano," the spread of which included the top 12 most attractive priests in Rome. It really made me think who was the intended audience/consumer for this calendar. Was it serious? And in addition to that, who decided to make this calendar?

In lab news, the rats have officially had enough recovery time. I have been flushing my rat's catheter with the anticoagulant heparin every day, and he is doing well. Today we begin the experiments by teaching the rats to associate amphetamine with one lever. Tomorrow they will get heroin with the other lever.

...And that's the way the cookie crumbles. Wendy out.