On Friday we had a fieldtrip to Ostia Antica, which is a town of ancient ruins outside of Rome. It was originally a harbor town at the mouth of the Tiber River (the main river running through the center of Rome), but because of silt deposit over the years, the coast is now a few miles farther out. I’d have to say I enjoyed Hadrian’s Villa (previous week fieldtrip) more because those ruins felt more natural. It is pretty visible that Ostia Antica has a lot more than has been reconstructed than Hadrian’s Villa. It was interesting though to see how the apartment/house layouts and baths differed from Hadrian’s Villa.
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| Originally a portico (with a building behind) |
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| Theater |
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| Huge fallen ruin |
We experienced our first run in with the infamous Italian transportation strikes. Friday we had the fieldtrip and were supposed to take the metro out to Ostia Antica. However, there was a ‘scheduled strike’ so our teachers knew to move up our departure time to avoid the strike hours. Apparently the metro still runs in the morning until 8:30am and then again from 5-9pm in order to allow people to get to and from work. On the way home, we were able to catch a train around 2:30pm because they do have metro trains that come roughly every 40 mins during the strike. I was surprised to learn that the strikes are actually worked into the transit workers’ contracts. People here say that when the workers want to have a 3-day weekend they end up calling a strike on Fridays. I hope that these strikes don’t affect any of our travel plans later in the semester, but for this weekend it worked out fine.
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