The End of Italy!

(April 13 - Ostia Antica)

The Ruins of Ostia Antica

The Theatre

Murals on the floors of shops often signified the merchants trade

Nick mixing drinks at the ancient tavern

Me and Nick wearing sweet bathing suits on the Ostia Antica beach

The group on the beach at Ostia Antica

(April 16 - Naples - the beach day that never was)

Mount Vesuvius

The nice end of Naples

Laying out on the Naples "beach"

The Castel Dell'Uovo (Egg)

Naples fountain

The group in front of the Castel Nuovo

The Castel Nuovo

The sun setting on the train ride home from Naples

Loyola kids as airport refugees

The only plus side of the 22 1/2 hour bus ride - the Swiss Alps

Hello all! I realize that these blogs have taken a while to compile and that Italy happened nearly a month ago and yet I’m still dwelling on it, however, this blog will finally finish off our spring break trip and I’ll finally be able to get back to current events (after a couple more catch up blogs).

Our first trip outside the city was the 13th, when we traveled to the ancient city of Ostia Antica. Ostia Antica was the port city which led up to Ancient Rome. Now-a-days the ancient city has been preserved, and in addition it is a thriving coastal city for the residents of Rome.

We spent the morning touring the ruins of what once was the center of trade for the Roman Empire. The old city had just about everything from an ancient tavern to a theatre to gladiator training facilities. It reminded me of the Roman Forum except it was a little bit better preserved. Once we finished appreciating the ruins, we headed out to the shoreline to relax and enjoy the coast. Though it wasn’t terribly warm, the group gathered on the beach for lunch in the sun nonetheless. We spent most of the afternoon just lying around lazy with cool breeze coming off the spring shoreline.

As I mentioned earlier, we finished our time on Fr. Linnane’s (Loyola’s President) bill on the 14th, and by the 15th we were left on our own in Rome. However, though we were off the bill, for the most part the group stuck together in the same hostel and traveled together to most of the same cities. In addition, the Ireland group was just beginning their trip in Italy the weekend we were leaving so we were able to spend some time with our northern brethren before heading back to Leuven.

On the first day off, we spent most of the day just walking around the city taking in sights we hadn’t yet seen. Liam, Tim and I met up with Ireland contingent and headed out to see two Basilicas: St. John Lateran and St. Mary Maggiore. After walking for a good amount of distance during the day, we headed out to meet up with both the Ireland and Rome study abroad students. We spent the night in Rome’s college hot spots and enjoyed a great bit of Roman craic (Irish word meaning “good fun”).

The following day was an early morning and a planned trip to Sperlonga, however, due to an… interesting… twist of events we ended up in Naples. I’m not going to go into details, but I’ll give you a hint: there were two trains to Sperlonga, both with Naples as their final destination. One was a local train that cost 6 euro and got you to Sperlonga in an hour and a half. Another was an express train which cost 56 euro and got you straight to Naples in an hour. Guess which one we took?

That’s right we ended up in Naples in an hour and 50 euro in debt. As the famous adage by John Steinbeck goes: “the best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry” – I suppose that’s what we get for letting Mighty Mouse plan our trip to Sperlonga (though I doubt Mickey would have made the same mistake).

There were 7 of us who got on the wrong train, 7 of us dressed in bathing suits and sandals (prepared for a day at the beach), and 7 of us instead, walking around touring Naples in the rain. Trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation, Chase, Nick, Morgan, Leah, Matt Shaw, Katie, and I, bought a map and began touring the city. Now I’m not sure if Naples is a hot spot for tourists or not (and by “not sure” I mean “I’m pretty sure people only go there so they can take a boat across the coast to the gorgeous island of Capri or the coastal city of Sorrento”) or if we may have missed the main touristy area (we didn’t), but Naples was not much of a city to see. We wandered to most of the big name things on the map, and weren’t much impressed with what the port city had to offer.

One of the few highlights from the unplanned trip was that the Castel Nuovo was in the middle of a festival week where the entry was free, so we were able to tour the Castel which protected the harbor for the perfect college student price. After we finished inside the castle, we headed to the coastline and got the most out of the Italian sunshine on the rocky (understatement) coast. Soon enough, we were back on train to Rome. The only down side being that the local train back (in comparison to the express train we took down) was a three hour ride – adding a long ending onto an already long day. However, I suppose these types of unfortunate events are a small price to pay for traveling the world.

Our final day together in Rome was on Saturday the 17th. I took a small group of people into the Traversere neighborhood which is famous for having good food at cheap prices. We spent most of the afternoon there and then headed out to sit by the Colosseum to enjoy our last couple of hours in the warm Italian sun.

However, to say our trip was over on our last day in Rome would be a bit of an understatement. On our last night in the city, the fateful Icelandic volcano began its first batch of eruption disruptions – cancelling our flight home. We were destined from there to spend the night sleeping in the airport – which was set up like a refugee camp (I thought for a second we were at the volcano eruption site). We then met with Dr. Forni (who had been stuck in the city since Thursday when she was scheduled to head home) and began our 22 ½ hour bus ride back to Leuven. We left at 6 am Sunday morning and arrived at 4:30 am Monday. Needless to say we were a bit delusional and though it was a long day to say the least, I suppose it will make a good enough story to tell the grandkids one day!