The View

Got home alright. With enough photos in my camera for a lengthy epilogue before closing the chapter on the Roman excursion.

First, a few attempts at capturing the best view in town
(you can click on all the images to see them bigger):

The dewy morning.
(I still find it hard to get the horizon straight...)

The hot afternoon.

The kind of day when the only sensible thing you can do is sit on the terrace with some Gioioso - and good company. Can almost feel the iron chairs burning the back of my legs...

The last rays of sunlight dress the city in bright orange <3>

Last, but not least: the sunrise.
At its best seen on the way home after a great night out somewhere down there... ;)

Some last shots

Time to go home. I'll miss this city.

Alla prossima!

EUR

I'm having writer's block, so thought I'd iddle it out by posting a few pics from our visit to Museo della Civiltà Romana in EUR last week. The whole area is one huge memento of the Mussolini era. Monumental to the extreme. But also very funkkis and sleek. A veritable antithesis to the centro storico a few metro stops north.

For some reason Blogger.com refused to upload this one with the right orientation... this is the exit (identical to the entrance behind my back here.)

Apparently they are still working on something quite ambitious next door...

Jay walking at EUR...

The scale of things. Massive.

And inside the museum, what you get is miniatures and replicas of the originals. School teachers must love it here: everything in one place, and no valuable, fragile originals to worry about :)

They don't even try to hide the logistics. :)

The day was hot, and sunny, and beautiful.

Even the metro station is very EUR in EUR.

Back home in Trastevere, demonstrators had closed down the street in front of the Ministry of Education. As a result my bus got stuck somewhere in between, so I took the opportunity to check out a brand new short-cut home:

Magical :)

Parties and papal museums

It's time to get serious with the seminar paper so I can get it out in time before the deadline on Friday (preferably even a bit ahead of time, as I plan to be done with it before I get visitors). So, no time to mess around this week.

The past week I've been mainly working away on the Gianicolo. Latest excursion was to the Vatican Museums:

And then there was, of course, vappu. We threw a theme party at the institute:

The theme was all things Dionisian - we thought it befitting. These were supposed to look like grape clusters.

Lovely.

Itri + Terracina

Ash-spitting volcanos and cancelled flights. Deadlines to meet. All kinds of unpleasantry. Some highlights in between. A propos, some photos from our trip down Via Appia to Itri and Terracina on Saturday:

This was Itri, where they have unearthed pieces of the Via Appia recently. Then it was time for a lovely seafood lunch at Terracina a few kilometres north, on the seashore:

Afterward, a quick visit to the local museum. The town itself is a veritable wunderkammer of urban history in its various stages of decay. Absolutely fascinating.

(Ok, so the wunderkammer stuff didn't end up in these particular photos, but you get the idea... There were all kinds of ancient treasures hidden amidst and inside (relatively) modern buildings.)

Only three more weeks to go.
Yikes!