Life · in · Aquae · Sulis

Monday
We finally made it to Rome! Getting there involved leaving our hostel at 5:30 in the morning, but we did it. To save time we decided to fly from Venice to Rome, so we still had the afternoon to explore. Our first destination was the Vatican since we wanted to see it before the huge numbers of Catholics coming for Holy Week really hit. So we stood in the rain for an hour and a half to get into the Vatican Museum, saw all the famous paintings and the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. On our way out we discovered our favorite restaurant of the whole trip – a pizza place near our hostel. It served delicious, real pizza (not the gross, greasy stuff we have in America) that was really cheap. I think we ended up eating there 5 or 6 times when all was said and done. To keep this somewhat reasonably readable, this will be it for this installment. Stay tuned for the Rome adventures!

Tuesday
The day started with our Rome routine – breakfast at a little café across the street from the hostel that served a pastry and cappuccino for Euro 1.50. In an attempt to make sure we saw everything we could, we had a very detailed plan of attack for the day that covered a huge number of the famous (and free) sights. The path went from the Vittoriano (a monument to Italy’s first king which is now just considered a huge eyesore and called the Typewriter), to the Roman ruins (oh I was so happy …), to more Roman ruins (still so very happy), to the Coliseum, to the Campidoglio (which has the famous statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only bronze statue of a Roman emperor to survive the medieval zeal to Christianize everything) a bunch of different churches. The two relating to St. Peter were rather interesting for their relics. The first was Carcere Mamertino, where St. Peter was allegedly imprisoned. According to the story, St. Peter hit the stone wall with his head to draw water for his fellow prisoners (he was a good chap like that, after all). Well, there’s a dent in wall now, which is venerated as the mark of St. Peter’s head. So we venerated away and wandered out to visit more of St. Peter in San Pietro in Vincoli. This church’s claim to fame is its possession of St. Peter’s chains from both Jerusalem and Rome. Once again, the official story is that when these two sets of chains were placed next to each other they magically fused together, creating the single set of chains we now see. So these are placed as part of the high altar and venerated appropriately as well. Pictures of both the dent and the chains are in my Webshots in case you would like to venerate as well. As Rachel said, when people ask us what we did on break we can say we venerated. To finish up the church circuit we also went to San Giovanni in Laterno, which is the Pope’s seat as the Bishop of Rome. As would be expected it is huge and ornate, with gilt everything. We were wondering why people were lining up to throw coins at and pray at the high altar since we didn’t really see anything important, but later on we read that the church claims the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, saved from the catacombs, are up there somewhere. We didn’t actually see them, but I’m not sure I’d want to. Of interest to me was the main door, which is actually the door from the Roman Senate house (as in ancient Roman). Finally, of interest mostly to Classics nerds like myself I guess, we saw the Trajan Column. This is a 38 meter column that is completely covered with winding carvings recording in detail one of Trajan’s campaigns (about 240 meters of them). At first glance it doesn’t seem impressive, but once you see the carvings it’s amazing. They’re all still incredibly detailed and clearly visible.

Wednesday
Wednesday was another day of wandering around the city looking at various famous sights. Among others we hit the Piazza del Popolo, Pincio, Spanish Steps, Trevi fountain (with the required coin throwing of course), Tempio Adriano, Pantheon (yippee), and Piazza Navona. Of random Classical interest was the Tempio Adriano, which is really just 13 columns that survive from the original temple. However, somewhere along the way someone built a building into those columns, so now it is incredibly easy to miss since the columns don’t stick out much. The Pincio is a park above the Piazza del Popolo that provides a panorama of essentially the entire Roman skyline. It’s all pretty flat except for the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, but it’s still quite impressive. Of course my favorite part of the day was the Pantheon, that monument to Roman engineering every Classics course somehow brings up. Those clever Romans even drilled a series of holes in the floor to drain the water away when it rains since there’s a hole in the ceiling 9 meters wide. As we were wandering around, a men’s choir that was just visiting as part of a tour started singing acapella music in the middle of the Pantheon, which turned into an impromptu concert.

Thursday
For our final day in Rome we did something a little different. We actually wandered without a plan for the first couple hours of the day before tackling the journey to the catacombs. For such a major tourist destination I thought they would be easier to get to, but the Italian transportation system definitely leaves something to be desired, especially in comparison to the British system. But after getting off to early and having to walk quite a ways we eventually made it, and the catacombs were definitely worth the effort. A little dank and cold, but what else is to be expected from something that far underground? Since we had to leave the hostel at 4 in the morning to get to the airport on time we didn’t do much else except have one final dinner at our favorite pizza place.

So after 8 hours of traveling our Italian adventure was finally finished and we were back in our beloved city of Bath for a couple days before our whole program headed to Stratford on Avon for three days of Shakespeare love, but that’s a story for another day.

Among the various things I no doubt left out of the Venice part was our adventure with the shutters in our hotel on the second night. We stayed in a hotel outside of Venice for a night because none of the hostels had room for six of us that one night. As with every other building in the country the hotel room had shutters, rather than curtains, which were open when we arrived. We didn't think anything of it until we saw someone go running past our room and noticed they opened onto a balcony, not just a windowsill, so we figured we should shut them. But shutting them proved to be easier said than done since the bed was wedged up against the door to the balcony and we couldn't move the bed. We could open the door a few inches, but the farther shutter was too far to reach with just an arm. After staring at it for a few minutes Rachel L and I eventually came up with the brilliant idea of a coat hanger. So I stuck my arm out the door as far as I could and with Rachel's direction since I couldn't see anything I managed to fanagle the shutters closed. And with that, the Italian adventure is complete, I promise.

All spring break pictures (well, the select ones) are up at http://community.webshots.com/user/nhhsbacon2.

So finally the long promised summary of my spring break. Three of my housemates (Nicki, Rachel L, and Kari) and I (along with a couple other people who joined and left us along the way) went to Venice and Rome for our break. The general summary of what we learned is that Venice is like Disneyland for tourists (I don’t think I saw a single non-tourism related business in the entire old part of the city) and Rome has way too many churches, all of which have some relic we were supposed to venerate. Off the top of my head I remember a couple of nails, the inscription from the cross, a copy of the Shroud of Turin, some thorns from Jesus’ crown (in two different places, nonetheless), a footprint Jesus made when appearing to someone, the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul, the chains of St. Peter, and the dent made by St. Peter (more on those later). Overall the best way to describe our trip is “We saw everything that was free." So here goes the brief (and un-proofread) summary:

Thursday
Although we didn’t actually see anything of note on Thursday, our travels were entertaining enough to mention. I think we counted six different modes of transportation we took to get to Venice. We flew on Ryanair, which is a super budget airline, out of Stansted, one of the London airports. So to get to the airport in the first place was a 3 hour process involving taking the train from Bath to London, taking the Tube from Paddington to Liverpool, the Stansted Express train to the airport itself. But we eventually made it to Venice, where we then had to take a bus into the city, a waterbus to our end of the city, and eventually we found our hostel.

Friday
We spent Friday just wandering the city. Venice is impossible to navigate, even with a map, so we just picked a direction and weaved our way there. By the end of the day I think we had been in almost every corner of the city, including the residential areas. This was the day for seeing all the traditional sights, including the basilica, Piazza San Marco, and several churches. This was also the day I learned that getting a digital camera was either a really good or really bad idea for me since I was taking pictures left and right. By the end of the trip I had taken something along the lines of 550 pictures. We also began our tradition of getting gelato at some point during the day, our one splurge. After all, we had to try many different flavors to get a good idea of what gelato really is, right? That night we met up with Leslianne, another girl from our program, who stayed with us for the rest of Venince.

Saturday
Since we had seen so much of Venice, we headed out to Murano for a little change of pace. Murano is the famous glass-making island, filled with expensive glass shops and factories. Because we were there on a Saturday none of the glass factories were open, but it was still a lovely place to walk around and enjoy the weather. We brought some cheese and bread from the city (lunch for three for less than $2) for lunch, which we ate on the side of one of the canals.

Sunday
To escape the hoards of tourists Nicki, Rachel, and I ventured to Bologna for the day. Since it was Palm Sunday (and a Sunday in general), almost everything was closed, but we were still able to walk around the town and take in the sights. The most bizarre thing about the city is what we dubbed the Leaning Tower of Bologna. We had seen a leaning tower in Murano, but it was nothing compared to this thing. At first we wondered if we were just seeing things, but sure enough, the base is very noticeably crooked. Before we left Venice, however, we sort of participated in religious activities of the day as a processional wound through the streets. As they passed us they handed out olive branches, which we noticed a lot of churches using, so we joined in for a little while. We won’t tell anybody that only one of the three of us is actually Catholic.

Monday
We finally made it to Rome! Getting there involved leaving our hostel at 5:30 in the morning, but we did it. To save time we decided to fly from Venice to Rome, so we still had the afternoon to explore. Our first destination was the Vatican since we wanted to see it before the huge numbers of Catholics coming for Holy Week really hit. So we stood in the rain for an hour and a half to get into the Vatican Museum, saw all the famous paintings and the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. On our way out we discovered our favorite restaurant of the whole trip – a pizza place near our hostel. It served delicious, real pizza (not the gross, greasy stuff we have in America) that was really cheap. I think we ended up eating there 5 or 6 times when all was said and done. To keep this somewhat reasonably readable, this will be it for this installment. Stay tuned for the Rome adventures!

So ... this isn't the Italy entry either. The work has picked up over the past few days since we got back from Stratford, so things are a bit busy. Stratford wasn't too bad, but I feel like we were busy all the time, yet I can't name very many things we did. We saw Antony and Cleopatra, Miss Saigon, and Romeo and Juliet over the course of three days. Antony and Cleopatra was probably my favorite since Miss Saigon was rather weak and I'm just generally not a fan of Romeo and Juliet. Plus Patrick Stewart played Antony and since the theater was structured like a true Shakespearean theater, we were only 20 or 30 feet from the actors at any one time. And in my eternal Latin nerddom, I spent half the time going over my Roman history from a course I took freshman year and trying to remember what happened to each of the characters after the time period of the play. I knew my major would eventually do me a little good ... Well, I should get to work on my Latin and my papers, so this is it for now. Jane Austen, here I come.

Just thought I'd let everybody know that I made it back to Bath from Italy (we were on spring break in Venice and Rome) this afternoon. It's been an exceedingly long day since we had to get up at 3:15 (2:15 Bath time) to catch our plane, but it was more than worth it. I won't have a chance to update about it until next Thursday, but hopefully it'll be all ready by then. I already miss the sun ...

Our entire program spent the last week in Oxford studying at University College, since the vast majority of our tutors are from Oxford. University College maintains that it is the oldest college in Oxford, but that is up for debate depending on which college one visits. Our rooms were our fist adventure as each room was a single with a sink, but some, along the staircases, had huge common rooms with an attached bedroom. Those were complicated though, since to get to a bathroom they had to go down all the stairs to the basement, including essentially walking outside since the staircases are immediately off the outside without doors. Jenna’s room had the added adventure of a statue, which stared directly into her room and completely freaked her out. We couldn't even find my room at first because it involved going through a series of about 10 hallways, 8 doors and a few flights of stairs.

Friday afternoon and evening was spent getting familiar with the town, complete with a brief tour of the town highlighting exciting things such as grocery stores. We ended up at the King’s Arms for dinner, a pub which claims to have the highest IQ per square foot of any anywhere. Saturday had the rather typical tour of Oxford filled with pointing out which college was the oldest, etc. One of the strange parts about Oxford is hearing about the same things from different people. New College will brag about its ownership of part of the medieval wall and say they bought it so the college could be more easily defended. Others will say that they only have that land because it was the cheapest and all they could afford. One college boasts of its original medieval quad, while others point out that it’s the only one because in the 16th and 17th centuries all of the colleges knocked down their old quads to build new and improved ones.
Perhaps the highlight of the entire week was Saturday's punting on the river. Jenna volunteered to be the designated punter (the person with the pole) for our boat and the Rachels were the designated paddlers, who had to correct our lack of steering. Problem number one, other than the fact that none of us had any idea how to actually punt, was that we all started off in a herd, meaning there was a massive traffic jam, complete with boats running into each other and getting stuck sideways in arches, etc. That night we also experienced the joys of being back in a college town - the kabob trucks on the streets of Oxford. 3 pounds will get you a chicken kabob (or a veggie one for 1.60 or a lamb one for only 2.50). Lots of yummy food all heaped on a fresh, warm pita, not one just out of the bag. Sunday I went to Christ Church Cathedral for service with Kari and Rachel. Since it was Mothering Sunday in England, the church handed out bouquets to all females as we left service. Sunday afternoon many of the college gardens were open to the public to raise money for charity, so we went to Merton and New College. We had to pay to get into Merton, but we got into New College for free since our program's Irish Lit tutor was our tour guide and she is a fellow there. New College's main claim to fame at the moment is its ties to the Harry Potter movies. For those who are interested, I took the required pictures of the cloister (which served for the Hogwarts cloister in at least the last movie) and the tree in the cloister, which was last seen by the world with Malfoy being turned into a ferret under it.

The next couple days weren’t anything too exciting, as we went to classes as usual, exploring different places for dinner and adventures. On Wednesday night most of my program went to see A Woman of No Importance because our Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (I think that's his official title) was one of the directors for it. It wasn't bad, but it was definitely an amateur production. Afterwards everybody who went to the play ended up at the same pub next to the theater, the Goose, so we had our own little party there.

Thursday was a day of fun, as Nicki and I went back to bed after going to breakfast in the morning before we spent the afternoon wandering the streets looking at all the stores. Every morning breakfast was served 8 – 8:30 in the main dining hall, the huge Great Hall, (once again, like the dining hall in the Harry Potter movies). It was a huge, full English breakfast with all of the traditional foods, so we all managed to drag ourselves out of bed for free food like good college students. Lunch was brought to us as well, as the program ordered baguettes for everybody each day. Thursday night was our huge program formal dinner. We ate in the formal dining hall again, but with fancy food, multiple sets of utensils, and that jazz. Since I am the only Latin student in the program I was called upon to read the traditional Oxford prayer at the beginning of the dinner. After dinner we, meaning the tutors, the students, and the staff, all headed down to the university bar for more group bonding in a less stuffy environment. Somehow it was already Friday, our day of journeying home. After one last huge breakfast we stopped at Blenheim Palace on the way back since part of the program’s objectives seems to be to make sure we get some historical British culture along the way. And thus we ended up back in good old Bath, ready for a few days of classes before spring break and our program trip to Stratford-on-Avon to do all the good Shakespeare stuff.

Since I have taken so many pictures here I have had to start a new Webshots account. You can find it at http://community.webshots.com/user/NHHSBacon2. All of my Oxford pictures are up there and I'm working on putting up a bunch of random pictures from other events I have gotten from friends.

Well, here's the trip to France. Beware - it's very, very long.

Thursday:

After we stood in the drizzling rain for a litle while, Andy (Associate Dean of Student Events, who gets to go on this trip every year as the driver) showed up with the minibus to begin our adventure. The term minibus was a bit deceiving as well, since it was really just a bizarre Econovan type thing which was exceedingly tall and ran like a tank. So off we went to Portsmouth to catch the ferry. "Ferry" is a rather understated word for this thing, since it was really a small cruise ship, complete with at least 9 stories, 3 different restaurants, a pub/bar, and various lounges. After hanging out with Andy and Peter (our tutor) in the pub for a while, Jenna, Rachel, and I wandered around the ship for a while, eventually settling into a lounge type thing before attempting a few hours of sleep (sitting up in the “reclining” chairs). I was impressed with the preparedness of many people on the ship. They came with sleeping bags, air pads, etc and set up camp immediately after getting on the boat.


Friday:

We pulled into the port of Caen nice and early (7 AM) and immediately headed off to a small town for coffee/hot chocolate and croissants. Getting there was an adventure in itself as we were driving an English car in France, where they drive on the right side of the road. Before really starting our medieval tour we went to a WWII memorial at Falaise Gap, where a Polish band of the Canadian army closed the gap and kept the German army trapped, thus securing Allied victory in Normandy. Next came Falaise Castle, where William the Conqueror was born. He was technically born in a wooden castle that was on that site, but his son built the stone one that stands now. Now, the French being French, they have turned this into a bizarre light and sound show. Everybody has to wear these little headset things that trigger a radio system when one person walks in a room. Each person hears a little narration while a slide show type thing is broadcast on a couple screens around the room. The rooms are decorated with a piece or two of modern art that is supposed to somehow evoke the idea of an eleventh century castle. One room had abstract statues of a queen and a king, another had a modern style seat type thing for a throne.

Next was the Bayeux Tapestry, which is genuine eleventh century propaganda supporting William the Conqueror’s claim to the English throne. It’s housed in a huge building that tells the story of the tapestry ad nauseum. First comes the tapestry’s story told image by image. Then it’s on to the museum part, where mannequins represent each step of making the tapestry and the story of the tapestry. Next, this movie that goes through every detail yet again, mostly focusing on the story the tapestry tells. The best part was when it talked about Harold being killed with an arrow to the eye. The movie shows the tapestry’s image of it as the audio tells what happened, followed by *thunk* *AAAAAHHHHHHHHH.* Finally the herds are allowed to see the tapestry itself. Everybody is led along the tapestry by a little audio wand that narrates each little scene of the story, nicely herding everybody through at a convenient speed.

We then wandered next door to Bayeux Cathedral, which is pretty much yet another pretty cathedral, but it does have some gorgeous fourteenth century paintings down in the crypts. After crashing for a bit at our hotel (we stayed at the Novotel in Bayeux, which is like a Holiday Inn), it was time for a real French dinner. Dinner was certainly European, three courses including escargot for an appetizer, as we were at dinner for close to three hours. When we got back to the hotel we (Rachel, Jenna, and I) ended up watching Passion of the Christ on TV, which means it was in Aramaic with French subtitles. Talk about a culture confusion.


Saturday:

This was religion day. A significant part of the day was spent at Mont St. Michel, medieval monastery and pilgrimage site. Now, having discovered the wonder of tourists, France has built a permanent road over the water so anybody can come at any time. Legend holds that a local bishop was in a cave on the island/rock when St. Michael came to visit. Well, he didn’t get that it was really St. Michael the first two times, so the third time St. Michael touched his forehead and burned a hole in it, so the bishop finally got the point and decided to build a church there. We were innocently following Andy up the winding streets of the island (the whole thing is essentially a pointy rock, with the church itself at the top of the rock) when he randomly stopped and asked if we had everybody. Without waiting for our answer he said “Good, up we go!” and charged into the wall. Sure enough, between these two shops was a teeny little alleyway, no more than a foot and a half wide, and all stair (there are several pictures up on Webshots). So up we went, definitely taking the faster, steeper way up rather than the traditional, less strenuous route. The one problem with Mont St. Michel is that it is a religious establishment in France and was thus completely stripped during the French Revolution, leaving the whole monastery area as essentially just a huge stone shell. However, it’s still quite an impressive sight. One feature the buildings have retained from the French Revolution is the treadmill, which amounts to a human version of a hamster wheel, used to torture people throughout the revolution. It’s rather useful because it both tortures people and gets work done at the same time since it was used to haul heavy things up, like a huge pulley. Perhaps the most amusing part of Mont St. Michel for me is that it is once again a huge tourist trap, with the teeny medieval streets packed with little tacky tourist stores. This is hardly changed from when it was a huge pilgrimage site, as there were little shops in the exact same places selling all sorts of the medieval trashy souvenirs.

After we’d exhausted Mont St. Michel, we piled back into the minibus, bound for Dol-de-Bretagne, which is a little town with a cathedral and a museum about cathedrals. Once we got to the museum, however, we found that it was closed without explanation. We eventually realized that France was playing its final game of the Six Nations tournament, the one that would give them the title if they won, so we assume every Frenchman was glued to the TV for the afternoon and figured no explanation was needed for the museum being closed. But all was not lost as we climbed on the model treadmill (the torture version) that was outside the museum for our group picture and poked our head around the cathedral across the street. The cathedral was nothing too exciting, but it has its own quirk since the church ran out of money while building, so one of the towers is only partly done.

Dinner then was interesting since we were sent out into the world on our own. We were standing outside an Italian place looking at the menu when a random guy walking by asked us (in very murky English) if we spoke English, then informed us that the place was no good and we should go to the Italian place around the corner. Out of curiosity we gave it a try, and with a lot of menu pointing and “merci” we ended up with some very good, Italian style pizzas. To top the whole evening off Jenna and I stumbled across Law and Order: SVU dubbed in French with two actors playing all of the parts. It’s amazing how much of the story line can be deciphered without understanding a single part of dialogue.


Sunday:

This was D Day day, which has absolutely nothing to do with our class, but I get the impression our tutor is a WWII buff and figures that we might as well go since we’re in Normandy and we couldn’t really get to any of the places without a car. Stop One was Utah beach, which was wonderfully freezing with gale force winds and dark grey clouds. To get down to the actual beach we took a definitely unofficial path which our tutor blazed, bounding down across the sand dunes, along a 6 inch sand ledge with a 6 foot drop to the beach on one side and barbed wire on the other. Then we slid down the steep bit of the path and landed on the beach itself, only to discover that there was a real path just down the beach a few yards. Stop Two: St Mere Eglise, which was the town at the center of American operations in Normandy. Its main claims to fame are the Musee Airborne and John Steele. The Musee Airborne is a decently sized museum which focuses entirely on D Day, complete with all sorts of various D Day related things, from guns to uniforms to government handbooks, to pictures, etc. In strange opposition to the rather somber subject, the loudspeakers in one of the display rooms play happy, peppy 1940s songs. John Steele, the other famous point of St Mere Eglise, was an American paratrooper who had the bad luck to have his parachute become stuck on one of the spires of the town church. German snipers were using the tower as a hideout, so he just hung here for two hours, playing dead, until he was eventually taken prisoner. To commemorate him, the town has placed a mannequin in full paratrooper garb and a torn parachute over that spire, recreating his landing.

Next was Pointe du Hoc, which is now a crater riddled field thanks to the massive D Day bombings. Nothing is roped off, so everybody can wander around the craters, poke into bunkers, and see what it was like to be in a machine gun turret. Many bunkers were blasted to shards of concrete, which are still lying around the field, but some of them are still standing, complete with entire rooms with doors still on them. We then made a brief stop at Omaha Beach before our final destination – the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. The cemetery is technically American territory since the French government granted it to the United States as a permanent American possession.


So that's pretty much it, not really in a nutshell, but there it is. The ferry ride back was rather uneventful but still entertaining since we were on a ferry. This coming week is our program's residential week in Oxford, where we move into and hold classes in Oxford. One of the great perks of this is that I no longer have to catch a 9:40 train to get to my 11:30 tutorial in Oxford. Instead, I can just stroll down to our meeting place.

Sadly the Six Nations Rugby Tournament ended on Saturday with France winning the whole thing and Italy managing to snag last place. However, we still cherish the oddities of international rugby, including their bizarre sponsorships. My personal favorite is Italy ... which is sponsored by Jaguar (the car company).

This weekend was quite the adventure, when all was said and done. A real update and pictures will be up after the flurry of work has died down, probably around Wednesday.

Well, in a few hours I'll be off to France with my Medieval History class. We'll be spending the weekend tromping around various parts of Normandy seeing lots of fun old things that allegedly relate to medieval England in some way. The travel itself should be entertaining since we'll be driving down to Portsmouth and then taking a ferry the rest of the way, a 7 hour ride overnight. Our tutor and the program guy who gets to come with us as our minibus driver claim the ferry has really good, cheap food, so we may just stay up for that. Well, off on the adventure we go ...

Well, I guess there is one somewhat exciting thing I forgot - we woke up to snow this morning. It's nothing compared to the snow of the American Northeast, but since snow is apparently a once-every-five-years type of thing here it's still something to note. The entire snowfall consists of a half inch or so on cars and roofs and nothing sticking to the ground. I took a couple pictures out of my bedroom window, but haven't gotten a chance to upload them yet.