Southern Italy

Although there are plenty of things I'm excited for this semester, the trip we took this last weekend came as a complete surprise to me. Before I got to Rome, I had no idea we would be taken to Montecassino Abbey, Pompei, the Amalfi coast, Positano and that we would be staying in Paestum. Needless to say, it was an extremely nice surprise.

We started early on Monday morning, with a two hour bus ride to the Montecassino Abbey.

Abbey was great in it of itself, but what Ireally enjoyed was the bus ride up the mountain to get there. We had magnificent pictures drawn outside our windows, with layers and layers of mountains within clouds and rays of sun behind the view of the city of Montecassino.

There -> is one of the many pictures we took on the way up.

Once we got to the Abbey we got to listen to Dr. Hatlie tell us about the history of it, and Sister Catherine told us St. Benedict's and other saints' stories right inside the monastery. (St. Thomas Aquinas was a student here for a long time). We were able to then buy St. Benedict medals and have them blessed by a priest of the Benedictine order.

The (slightly crooked picture of the) court yard of Montecassino

Then we got back on the bus on our way to Pompeii! Pompeii was yet another amazing surprise. My mind went back to fifth grade, when I studied Mount Vesuvius and the great city that it had destroyed, but had been dug up and you could visit. It was exactly that... a city almost frozen in time, of course in ruins, but with still identifiable components of what it once was.

The coolest part was seeing the paintings on the walls, still living as frescoes, and seeing the very decorations that the Pompeians enjoyed in their own households. We were able to spend two hours touring the entire city, my group being led by the Art&Arch teacher, the other by the West Civilization professor.

UD Romers walking in one of the main streets, and another picture of some of the remainders of some houses, with Mount Vesuvius in the background.

_

After Pompeii, we got on the bus for another couple hours and arrived at hour hotel in Paestum till the next morning!

Saturday started out with a beautiful boat ride to Amalfi. It was an extremely small -very Italian and of course surrounded by beauty- town on the very coast of Amalfi. Much to my enjoyment, its patron saint is Sant Andrea. Unfortunately Andrea is a guy name in Italy... but it was still cool to see my name everywhere, and to go into the his Basilica. His crypt was there, as well as many relics.

After the guided tour through it, and the very short lecture, we had some time to venture through the town. Many of us decided to try the lemoncello since it's famous in Amalfi (because of its abundance of lemons mainly), and others went to the paper museum to buy leather-bound notebooks. After touring around a little, me and my friends decided to go sit by the port to admire the clear waters and write in our Art journals. It was of course, just awesome to be there :P.

To the left,

the coast of Amalfi,

and then, some of us...

It was slightly windy on the boat.

We got on the boat once more, and arrived at Positano. Positano, though I had never heard of it before, is possibly my new favorite place on earth. (To the left is the coast).I was awe-struck by the view from the very first second I saw the coast, and although we were given 2 hours to tour around and shop in the city or to swim, I decided to spend the whole time in the water.

So we hiked to the ocean (we found two little boys were dying of laughter as they threw sand and tiny stones at the huge line of us entering the beach with a broken plastic cup). I jumped right into the ocean after walking, and decided to venture as much as I could. I swam along the coast with two other friends, and we found a cave! Definitely one of the coolest things I've seen in my life, especially because in one of the sections of the cave was a slightly hidden staircase, the only thing that kept us from exploring further was the lock on the gate before it :(. We explored that cave (and got a some cuts all over our bodies) for about half an hour, finding smaller openings after big ones before swimming back to shore to get back on the boat. Of course no one had a camera, but we all talked about how much we would've loved to be able to share this amazing natural happening with everyone else. Once we were further away from the cave, we saw a tower above it, and realized (or pretended) that the stairs probably were probably a secret passageway to the dungeon.

When we got back to the hotel, we had a couple hours to spare before dinner, so most of us headed to the beach. It was a really cool bonding experience for about 40 of us, since we swam about 200 meters in, and reached a sand plateau where we played chicken fights, and (although the girls mostly watched) built 3 and 4 man pyramids and cheered for the winners.

Sunday began with early mass, followed by a traditional Italian breakfast of croissants, cheese, and ham before heading out to the Archeological Site of Paestum.

We sat beneath the shade of huge trees as we listened to each of our professors' contributions to the site. Dr. Osborn (Literature) talked about the literary geography of Virgil's Aeneid through the coast of Southern Italy, Dr. Nelson (Philosophy) spoke of the Greek philosophers in Italy, Dr. Hatlie (History) spoke of the Greek colonization in this part of Italy, and Dr. Lisot(Art&Arch) described the components of the enormous Doric temples from the Early Greek Classical era that stood before us. It was truly the epitome of the UD Rome Semester. Standing on-site, taking in knowledge on the columns of a true Liberal Arts Education, interacting first hand with the pictures in textbooks. (So above is the picture my friend Maggie took of Hera II, a temple believed to be dedicated to Hera of course. It stands next to Hera I, one believed to be dedicated to either Hera and Zeus, Hera and Poseidon - since the name Paestum comes from the previous name of the city: Poseidona from when it was dedicated to Poseidon- or to two sides of Hera: a motherly goddess, and a warrior goddess). We also went into the Archeological Museum of Paestum, and got to see many artifacts from the time period, not only from Paestum but also from other parts of ancient Greece.

I wish I could write with much more detail, but unfortunately I was not able to work on homework as much as I could have wanted this weekend, and I'm going home on Thursday :), so I have to get on it.

Hope you enjoyed this entry as much as I would've enjoyed to truly share this experience with you!