Aaaaand we also went in the Colosseum. No big deal.
After getting all packed and ready for our trip to the Amalfi Coast, I went to my City of Rome class, which meets at 11 on Thursdays. First, we read part of "On Rome" by Lord Byron, which I was pretty excited to analyze as a class (missing my English courses), but Dr. Locatelli kind of did all the analyzing on her own out loud. (There were a couple random historical/literature-related questions that she asked in the beginning of class though that I got to answer and show off like the obnoxious nerd I am).
Following the poem, we set off for our field trip. We hit several delays: some people didn't buy metro tickets ahead of time like they were asked to, the bus took forever to arrive, and the people selling tickets to the Roman Forum/Palatine Hill/Colosseum did NOT want to give us free tickets...but our prof would not let it go. Watching Italians argue is something else! She did everything she could so we wouldn't have to pay, but they just weren't having it. We all ended up paying after standing around in the sun for quite some time.
The tour was wonderful, of course! I got to take pictures with Julius Caesar's ashes (and even threw in a coin) just like I did last year, and everyone thought I was a weirdo for taking said pictures.
Me and Julius Caesar
The Palatine hill was neat, because I had never actually been up there. The remains of Augustus' house were there, and we got some pretty sweet views of the city.
House of Augustus
And of course, the Colosseum was just as cool as I remember. Sort of fun to see it the way it is now a day after watching Gladiator! Dr. Locatelli technically wasn't allowed to give us a tour of the Colosseum, since we didn't want to have to pay extra to be a group and entered through the individuals entrance. She told us, "I do not know you, you do not know me, but you follow me." And we did. She slipped in a couple facts here in there, but basically left us on our own to look around and then go back to campus whenever we were ready.
We had our first quiz in theology, which was...all right. Grade is pending; I may or may not include it in this blog.
Immediately after theology, we booked it over to Termini station to meet up with Bus2Alps to depart for the Amalfi Coast. It took us some wandering to find the Nike store we were meeting at, but we figured it out eventually.
We traveled on two coach buses down to the Coast, which took about 3 and a half hours. They played Guardians of the Galaxy and Get Him to the Greek (some alliteration there), but the frat boys sitting behind us were so loud and obnoxious that it was impossible to hear anything. I just listened to music and relaxed.
The buses pulled into the little town of Sant'Agnello just after midnight. We ended up being ten girls in our room at Seven Hostel (me, Katie, and 8 super chill girls from Notre Dame), and were apparently the only all-girl room (which was nice). The hostel itself was pretty decent, BUT they did not provide towels, and had somewhat nasty hall bathrooms. I used a sheet for a towel.
Though not entirely pleased with the accommodations, I was certainly happy to hit the hay. Especially since I knew I had to get up and start Day 11 at 5:45 am.
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