Palestrinaby Lia Pittman

Friday the 13th! Ahh!! Fortunately there was no bad luck today! We took a joint visit with the honors students to Palestrina, a town just an hour outside of Roma. The bus ride was a little bumpy....I think the bus driver could have used a bit of a refresher course on how to drive a giant automobile. The weather was absolutely beautiful outside, however, so the views on the way there were great.




View from the hill where the museum was located

The main thing we went to see in Palestrina was the museum which was the home for one of the most beautiful mosaics I have seen. It contained intricate details of landscape, animals, and people in an amazing style. Also in the museum there was a large collection of ancient trinkets, statues, and other artifacts. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but I got a picture of this case of artifacts before I was told "no foto!" Oops!

Trinkets in the museum
After we had finished in the museum, we ventured outside and ate our sack lunches on the sunny steps while we looked at the pretty scenery of the town below and of the mountains nearby. A few of us looked around at the ruins outside of the museum and the church that was close, too.

Lunch time!!
Later today, we went with our Italiaidea intern to a cafe/bar called Pourquoi that is slightly outside of the main parts of Rome, over by the University of Rome. A group of us went there by bus with Daniele, the intern with an awesome English accent, and another group of us tried to find their own way. Well, the group without Daniele got lost and we had a fun adventure trying to figure out where we all were! It all ended up great, though, and Pourquoi was a great little place with a fun atmosphere. We all had so much fun interacting with the locals and ordering our drinks in all Italian. After that, we took buses home and called it a night! :)