Flavian Amphitheater

Have you ever heard of this thing? It's a pretty obscure title for this one Roman building. It was made way back in the year 80 c.e. and it's still mostly standing today. Here's a detail picture of it:

I'm sure you wouldn't recognize it from this, how silly of me. How about this one?

Any better? Ok, one more, how about now?

Surely now you have an idea of what the Flavian Amphitheater is. Well ok, in case not...

The Forum

Well, today we spent our time seeing some more of the sights. I got up, packed my camera, and headed out, but I left my memory card in my laptop at home, so it was more or less dead weight to me. Needless to say, I don't have any photos from today, so sorry kids. I wanted to post up something though, so here's the map I made last night for how to get to the Campidoglio, the capital buildings of Rome, where we were meeting this morning.


It was pretty fun to make, but I didn't have time to write in street names. Grr. It was ok though, we got there on time anyway. So the Campidoglio has for a long time been an important place in Rome, but it became what it is today when a little guy named Michelangelo completely redesigned the place into a beautiful piazza surrounded by three buildings. A nice composition, you might say. From the capitol hill, we walked down a hill to the Roman Forum, the seat of power in ancient Rome. Today it is just a ruin of course, but the scale is incredible. We're talking columns made of a single piece of stone forty feet long, and weighing in the neighborhood of a thousand tons. Absolutely rediculous. A quick sketch I did in the forum:


From here we visited such structures as the Basilica of Constantine and the complex on the Palantine. If you know what those are, you understand how impressive they were. If not, let me just say that these are intense. We're talking the scale of a football stadium, made nearly 2000 years ago. In a way, you just kind of go brain dead, because if you try to think about it you just feel overwhelmed. Especially because we saw so much today, it became a sort of information overload.

After that we walked (despite the fact we had already walked like 10 miles today) to Isola Tiberina to a certain little gelato (ice cream) shop. Yes, Carla, it was incredible, and thanks so much for the recommendation. We also met Scott Finn (our professor) wandering around, and talked with him for a little bit. So then we went home, slept, and now are looking for a night out on the town. Being a bunch of architecture dorks, that means going into historic Rome and seeing all the buildings at night. I'm especially interested in the Pantheon. Ok, talk to yall later, chao!

Thoughts for the day:
Sucra means Sugar.
Italian city cleanup people are somewhat attractive for some reason.
Grafitti is ugly.
There is too much trash in the river.
Cappucinos and gelattos are amazing.
The architecture is stunning.
I wish we knew Italian.

That's all for now. Read my other blog and post comments!
Bye Americans.

Evie

Apartment

Ok, so I just removed my contacts for the first time in like 36 hours, and wow it feels good.

So after we were shown our apartment, having both rested and showered, Zach and I met up with Alan and Katie and headed out to see our neck of the woods. We were really hungry, but given that it was ONLY 6:30 we knew we couldn't eat dinner yet. Crazy Romans and their late dinners. So instead we found a little gelato (ice cream) shop owned by this awesome guy named Georg. He would speak to us in English and Italian, and we would do our best to reply in his native tongue. After eating, we walked around our neighborhood for a bit before meeting up with Amy, Ashley, and Nicole, and proceeded to try to find dinner. We asked gelato Georg for advice, and he pointed us to Piazetto Pizzaria, whose house wine was some of the best I've ever tasted. And here's a photo of our apartment.

Arrival

Once in Rome, we were shown to our apartment, and it's pretty huge. Perhaps obscenely so. We're talking 15 foot ceilings and 7 foot windows, with a front door that reminds me of a Fallout Vault. The hot water didn't work though, so Jamie, our handyman, came by and did what he could with it. It works off and on now, we'll be having an electrician by later to work on our hot water heater.

Hop, skip, jump

Well, at the end of the day I made it to Rome.

The trip from Atlanta to Detroit was largely uneventful. I was by myself, beside two business men, against the aisle. I just kinda sat around and read a little. Oh, and I realized that I'm really terrible at European geography, so I started working on a map of Europe. I'll post that later. Image: the Detroit terminal

From Detroit to Amsterdam was better, I was on the aisle with two seats between me and the next guy, so plenty of room to spread out. I was again by myself. However, I met some other college students who just happened to be in architecture school in Ohio (I think). They also just happened to be heading to Rome. So I think we may end up hanging out at some point while we're here.

So we arrived in Amsterdam, and I must admit it was a lackluster welcome to Europe. The airport was fine, in its Dutch industrial-aesthetic way, but we were completely encased in fog the entire time. We couldn't even see to the edge of the airfield. Well, we arrived earlier than expected, about 6 am local time. That would have been great except that it didnàt speed up the departure of our 10:25 am flight. So the five of us hunkered down to try to eek out 3 1\2 hours of sleep, but to no avail.

Well so some time later we boarded our flight and I was thrilled when we finally broke through the mist and I saw blue again. Unfortunately, now the clouds were below us, a featureless blanket of white.

So they tell me Europe's a pretty place, not that I'd know.

Countdown: 2 Days

Just tonight and tomorrow, then I fly to Rome. I went by AAA today and picked up some guide books and maps, I guess that's when it really hit me just how soon it is. Apparently it's going to be a bit warmer in Italy than it is here, which is good because it's been freezing here! When was the last time we even had snow? Everyone always refers to the "blizzard" of '93, and that's the last time I can remember having very much at all. Of course it's all melted now, but it was really nice while it lasted.



































I even got to make myself a nice little snowman. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.