Ostia Antica! and Ah, the Beach!

It seems like every time I post something, I keep saying, "This is maybe my favorite thing of the trip so far." I need to stop saying that, because I keep coming up with new favorite things. My current fave is Ostia Antica, which we visited in class today. Ostia was the seaport of Rome from the 4th century BC onwards (we're not sure where the port was before that, although we know they had one). Today, the ancient site is 4 km from the sea, because the coastline has receded that much. Also, the Tiber no longer flows by the site because it changed its course. These things are mildly interesting, but very important in terms of the site's preservation. Because they no longer had the sea or the river, the people of Ostia moved and built elsewhere, leaving us an entire town of ruins to explore. Unlike Rome, where we have to dig through the layers of subsequent habitation, Ostia is a great picture of what an ancient Roman town would have looked like. It doesn't have many monuments, but there are lots of business areas, apartments, and places where people made things / stored things. It is amazing. Here are some pictures:

Rachel and I, enjoying cappuccino before class at a bar in Ostia.
A fairly well preserved public restroom. It was a whole room with these benches with holes in them, lined up around the walls. Apparently going to the bathroom, like bathing, was a social activity. My professor even went on to inform us that people used sponges on sticks instead of toilet paper, and slaves were in charge of cleaning them for the next people. Can you imagine? "Please, master, don't put me on sponge duty! I'll do anything!" Lol.
In the center of the town, there's a whole commercial area, a square lined with stalls. Each stall had a mosaic in front that was the "sign" of the businessmen or corporation that ran it. This one is the stall of a group of shipbuilders.

A very nice and well preserved theater, completely covered with OGSNPs. Yeah, that's right, they were there. In droves. Somehow they were managing to completely mob both Rome and Ostia at the same time.*As a side note, one of the OGSNPs was climbing where he shouldn't have been, and my professor yelled at him. She was quite indignant that he was "offending the ancient ruin." I'm sure the ruin was beside itself, so we're glad she said something.

This is my wonderful teacher, Professor Fuhrmann. She is pretending to be a bartender in this amazingly well preserved snack bar, which is much like the ones you'd find in Rome today. "Caffé? Margarita? Beer? Ja, for good luck, this bar is very well preserved!"
So that was Ostia Antica. It was absolutely fascinating, and not the sort of thing I've ever studied in books (not flashy enough), and I just love the ability to walk through the actual corridors and see what it would have looked like for a person who lived there. :)

After we fully explored the ruin, the rest of the class went home while Rachel and I went the other direction, to go to the beach. Ostensibly we were going to the beach to study together for our final tomorrow; however, both of us knew that we were only saying that to rationalize our trip, and that once we got there we would no longer need to rationalize it and therefore wouldn't study a lick. :) Rachel studied some of the men on the beach, if you count that. We had lots of fun, because we get to talking and can go on for hours. Rachel is one of those really opinionated people, and she's a complete liberal in many ways, so I disagree with at least half of what she says. But she can always tell you why she thinks something, and she is always willing to listen to and respect my viewpoint...so this is why we get along so well despite being extremely different. I will listen to her, and while I don't always agree with her conclusions, I can always see how she got there, so I respect her a lot. Such a relationship is rare, at least in my experience, so I think it's great fun. We discussed everything from homosexuality, to Catholicism, to evolution and atheism, to reincarnation, to politics, to our families...you get the idea. And if we ever had a lull, we could always rant about how those OGSNPs were everywhere. They didn't have their neckerchiefs on at the beach, but they were not hard to spot...just look for the blindingly white teenage people who speak loud German. :)

We didn't get into the water until the very end, but that was, um, funny. The water was very choppy, with lots of huge waves. I got in about thighs deep, and the waves would come up to my shoulders. Everything was all hunky-dory until this exceptionally big one came in...I saw it coming, but it still wiped me out! We're talking completely prostrate, face down in the sand. It was hilarious! Fortunately, I didn't breathe in / swallow any of the water, or get it into my eyes. A little went up my nose and burned a bit, but that was all. Mostly it was just funny. :) I decided I'd better stay ankle deep after that...I'm such a helpless landlubber, and obviously can't handle the ocean. I didn't want to die. :)

On our way back to Rome, Rachel and I started a list of the things we'll miss. A lot of it centered around food, like some of the things I've mentioned before. Some of it is just the beauty of the place we're in...or the character of this wonderful city. We'll even miss the river. Rachel was like, "Oh Tiber, I will miss you...you big green stinky thing!" Lol.

So yeah...I have a final tomorrow. It's almost 8:00 and I still haven't studied a lick. Ah well. But I guess I need to quit rambling here. Ta ta for now!