Wednesday, March 19 - Final day

Today we went to the Naples museum in the morning and Cumae in the afternoon.  After the initial setback of not being able to bring our bags into the museum, we had a lot of fun seeing all of the incredible classical art housed there.  There were statues, mosaics, and even a section of ancient erotic art.  After the museum we ate pizza at Pizza Decumani.  Now, this wasn’t just any pizza, this was like the Mount Vesuvius of pizza; it was an explosively delicious ending to our Italian dining experience.  Full from this delicious meal, we boarded the bus and headed off to our final site-seeing destination, Cumae, where the notorious cave of the Sybil was located in antiquity.  There we read some Vergil, which described the very spot on which we were standing.  We later found out that this was also the very place where Jason and Mr. McDougal conceived the idea for this trip.  We ended the trip at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean, where we recounted all of the great memories that we made over the course of our magical journey through time.  

Henry Barker '14 and Alex Tabor '16

Reading Vergil with Jason and Mr. McDougal at Cumae

Max taking in the view at Cumae

Tuesday, March 18

9am sharp. We wait for the bus scheduled to take us to Pompeii. The first time everyone is on time, the bus breaks down before it reaches us. Mr. McDougal assures us these things happen sometimes in Italy and you just have to roll with it, so we pick up oranges from the fruit wagon while we wait. At 11, we leave on the three hour drive. Lunch is at some rest stop. For under 6 euros, I score a decent meal complete with cappuccino and dessert, far better than anything you can dream of in the miserable bleakness of an American rest stop. When we reach the remains of ancient Pompeii, once a seaside town of 20,000, an Italian tour guide leads us around. Without a doubt, he is the liveliest, most hilarious tour guide I have ever met. We start with the plaster casts of the cavities left by people trapped in the volcanic ash. Particularly memorable is the silent scream of a slave boy who was about our age when he suffocated in the ashes.

slave boy who suffocated in the ashes of Vesuvius.
Preserved fresco wall paintings visible in the background. 

Next up is the local party place, the balneum (public bath). The colors of the wall frescoes, the details of the floor mosaics, and the sculptures set into the walls are surprisingly well preserved because the covering of volcanic ash had buried the city and protected it from pollution, weather, and invaders. The technology was extremely applicable to the modern world. I was impressed by the calidarium (hot bath) which had warm floors thanks to the slaves constantly feeding fires for the central heating below ground, and the condensation that would have formed on the cool ceiling was not a problem because the ceiling was arched and had smooth grooves running straight across to make sure the water would flow down the walls instead of dripping on people’s heads. We then head to some private homes. The roads we take are amazingly level, with beautiful sidewalks. In comparison, every walk from Groton to CVS is a life-threatening struggle due to the barbarian lack of sidewalks. Our tour guide says repeatedly that in some ways, life might have been better back then. Agreed. The houses of the middle and upper class families turn out to be exactly the same, differing only in size and decoration. Then with a flourish, our guide takes us to the climax of our tour, the lupanare, or the red light district. We enter a building and on the walls to see the “menu,” consisting of illustrative frescoes depicting the options a client could choose from, designed to prevent miscommunication between travelers speaking foreign languages. The Romans really did have a solution for everything.

-Sowon Lee ‘15

Our glorious tour guide demonstrating how the Pompeiians operated their flour mills

Monday, March 17

On our last full day in Rome, we did what every tourist must do when visiting Rome—the Vatican. After waiting in a surprisingly expeditious security line and passing the modesty check, we passed through the ornately carved wooden doors and entered St. Peter’s Basilica. St. Peter’s is the biggest church in the world, but it doesn’t seem as big as it is. Eric, our tour guide, told us that it’s possible to fit the entire Statue of Liberty in the main dome. The basilica is scaled so that the statues, inscriptions, etc. that are closer to the top are larger. The inscriptions that circle the top seem to be only three to four feet tall, but each letter is actually twelve feet long. Joe, another guide, told us that the basilica is so immense that it sometimes rains inside the church. After being fully dazzled by St. Peter’s, we had lunch then went to the Vatican Museum. There we saw dozens of beautifully detailed Renaissance paintings, and of course, the Sistine Chapel where we were shushed multiple times by the stern guards patrolling the crowd. We spent about an hour at the hotel, exhausted by the day’s adventures, until we headed to L’Archetto for dinner. The restaurant specializes in spaghetti, so I ordered the Ghiottona—a mix of tomato, cream, and pesto. After our final dinner in Rome, we headed out to our final gelato in Rome at a place called San Crispino near the Fountain of Trevi. I, feeling adventurous, decided to break free of my norm of ordering Nocciola (hazelnut) gelato and got a combination of grapefruit and the house special, honey. Delizioso! All in all, it was a great way to spend our last day in Rome.

-Kasumi Quinlan ‘15

The Laocoon statue in the Vatican Museum ft. the back of Alex Taber’s head in the lower right corner.

Front view of St. Peter’s Basilica

A few Grotonians plus Eric and Joe taking a quick break at the Vatican Museum

Sunday, March 16

Almost a week has passed and today’s journey was to the Via Appia, one of ancient Rome's earliest roads. After an optional mass service at 8:00 am, we took a bus from the lovely Cappucini Hotel to the catacombs of St. Callixtus. We saw the graves for the martyrs who gave their lives for Christianity when it was illegal. After going underground into the catacombs, we went for a walk down the ancient Via Appia and we got to see the beautiful country side. In the afternoon, we went to the National Museum of Rome and got to see lots of cool mosaics and paintings. We ended the day with an underground dinner full of bruschetta, pasta and an unexpected second course of meat. 

--Melissa '16 and Violet '14

views from a nice stroll on the via Appia

sandwich from an Italian Deli

800 years and still looking fine

end the day with a nice treat

last visit to the Pantheon before Naples

Tired Grotonian after a long day of walking around Rome or bronze statue of a boxer from 330 BC? 

Saturday, March 15: The Ides of March

Alex admiring the Ara Pacis

Today was a breathless day. Tanner and I accidentally slept in and had to hurry out the door to meet the group. Apparently my hair in the morning is quite impressive. Anyway, our first order of business was to visit the Mausoleum of Augustus and the neighboring Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) Museum, designed by Richard Meier. We translated the first couple of lines of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The Deeds of Divine Augustus), a funerary inscription chronicling his life and achievements. He defeated Brutus in 44 BC when he was only 19! It was interesting to see that Mussolini had put up another Latin inscription detailing his own achievements close to that of Augustus, as if to show that he was trying to bring Italy back to older ideals. The Ara Pacis was very ornate, with many tiny animals carved into the stone.

Reading Ovid at theVilla Borghese gardens

After that we visited the Basilica of Santa Maria Del Popolo. There were some beautiful paintings by Caravaggio, and many interesting uses of skulls. We then adjourned for lunch, after which we walked into the Villa Borghese park to read Ovid’s version of the story of Apollo and Daphne. Apollo loves a girl who does not love him back and chases her so persistently that she prays to be turned into a tree. We saw this story dramatically come to life inside the Galleria Borghese as one of Bernini’s amazing sculptures. We also saw his David, an aggressive and dynamic statue, as well as his amazing Rape of Proserpina and his Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures, but a camera couldn’t really capture the minute details anyway. The entire experience was amazing. Today was an art day, and was the most fun I have ever had in a museum.

Will Norton '17 and Tanner Coffin '16

Friday, March 14

Today started off with a tour of the Basilica of San Clemente, where we saw several layers of Rome’s development. At the ground level of the basilica is a beautiful, ornate 12^th-century church, with an early Christian basilica located directly underneath, in which the bones of Saint Clemente and the oldest-known Italian-language inscription, the latter of which contains an immensely rude expression that should not be said around Italians, can be found. Even below the Christian basilica is a temple dedicated to Mithras, the central deity of Mithraism, which is a religion brought to Rome from the Near East. All these layers date back to the first century A.D. Afterwards, we visited the Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo, a smaller, circular church dedicated to early Christian martyrs. On the walls of this church are paintings depicting the gruesome deaths of those martyrs. After lunch near the Coliseum, we headed over to the Circus Maximus, where we played a game of Jackpot with a pinecone (pictured below) and read ancient Roman pick-up lines by Ovid, before heading to the Baths of Caracalla.

pinecone Jackpot at the Circus Maximus

As we were making our way to the baths, we took many candid pictures of each other, with Henry “Mr. National Latin Scholar” Barker ’14 being the most affected victim (photo allegedly forthcoming). The gargantuan Baths of Caracalla amazed us all, being a sure highlight of the trip. Despite missing their ancient dome roofs, the Baths of Caracalla, with their remains, truly show the large amount of manual labor that was prevalent in the Roman Empire and the need for a dictatorial regime to be in place for such a mind-boggling structure to be constructed. After walking around the amazing baths, we sat outside and read a Seneca passage about how annoying it would be to live in one of these baths in ancient Rome. The day was capped off with a choice of Korean or Indian viands or burgers for dinner, gelati for dessert, and a goodbye to Lawrenceville School, which leaves tomorrow.

                                                                                    --Victor Liu ’17 and Max Klein’18

Post-dinner leisure at the Spanish steps

Thursday, March 13

Greetings from Day Four in Rome! How are you guys? Good? Fine? Okay, cool. So, let’s get down to the real question on everyone’s mind—what did we do in Rome? Well, it was a fun-filled day of wonder and amazement. For breakfast, we had our usual cappuccino/tea, juice, and a flaky pastry at Ciao Bella.  After everyone was fed and sated, we headed by train towards Ostia, a gorgeous port ruin that tends to pop up in a lot of Ancient Roman history (Tyler doesn’t really know what happened he wasn’t paying attention — bad Tyler!). But yeah, we visited the preserved ruins of the city of Ostia on a gorgeous sunny day. It was amazing to see what a real Roman unperturbed city looked like—what the people way back then lived like. The gorgeous city included an amphitheater, business/merchant offices, apartments (including one of a famous Latin writer supposedly), grain mills, laundry/dye gardens and a bunch of other random stuff that was probably pertinent to life in the Roman Empire. It was pretty neat and extremely hilly with a lot stairs. Afterwards, we proceeded to have our hour-long lunch, where we spread out in groups to eat tourist priced lunch ($$$). Lunch lasted, and we had fun cracking jokes, talking and seeing some Hotchkiss students that we know. Soon after lunch, we gathered again to go to a museum in the preserved city, and to see the bathrooms that they would have used, before walking through a really cool medieval city. Then we hopped on the train to get back to our lodging at Cappucini; some students split from the group to go explore the stores around the famous Spanish Steps and others preceded to the hotel to hang out and get some much needed rest. When everyone had gathered from their siesta, chilling out, maxing, and relaxin’ all cool (but not shooting some b-ball outside the school), we had a delightfully delicious dinner. The meal was served in courses that never seemed to end: tomato on toast, tasty vegetables, pizza, fried vegetables, bread, and then a pork and chicken dish. Even though everyone was full, we had a little celebration with a chocolate and cream cake for Ms. Nihal Kayali’s birthday (YAY!), and we finished off the day by going out for some gelati/gelato with the Lawrenceville students. All in all it was a fun day that seemed to never end. Good night it is 12:15 am here, and after putting it off, we have finally finished this blog post! Ciao!

Sincerely,

Your Lovely Fifth Formers

exterior of the Ostia amphitheater

The whole gang at the amphitheater in Ostia Antica

Hannah and Violet pose for a moment in Ostia

Mr. G getting some much needed sun after a long winter 

Ms. Kayali's birthday surprise