Post-Dig Craziness...

Since I’ve been home all I’ve wanted to do is go back to Italy. This summer was one of the best that I’ve ever had and so ridiculously successful in every way. I had so much fun that not even the incredibly crappy experience of travelling home could ruin it. I guess I'll start with the shitstorm that was travelling home.

Well, we were supposed to fly from Rome to Philly to Charlotte to Tallahassee on Wednesday and get in at almost midnight on Wednesday night but that plan was lost pretty much from the moment we woke up that morning. We were staying in a hotel close to the Rome train station so we got there with plenty of time to make our train to the airport but we went to the wrong platform and missed it. We took the next one, which was a half hour later, and thought that we were going to have to rush to the plane but it turned out that our flight was delayed for 3 HOURS! So we had to stand in line for those 3 hours waiting to change the flights we were going to miss because of the delay. So we finally made the flight to Philly and our next one was delayed for 2 HOURS. That means that by the time we would have made it to Charlotte we would have missed our flight to Tallahassee which was the last one. So we had to completely overhaul our itinerary. My travel buddy Abbe is from Orlando so we decided to hop a flight there and spend the night at her parents’ house then take one to Tallahassee in the morning. We got onto the flight (after it was delayed for over an hour) but the plane sat on the tarmac for 4 HOURS because of bad weather. After 4 hours of sitting on the plane and it not leaving, they decided to just cancel the flight. So it was now about 2 in the morning and we were stuck in the Philly airport with no flight. So we called US Airways (the biggest piece of crap airline on the planet) and there were no flights the next morning to Tallahassee so we decided to take on to Jacksonville. We slept in the airport that night and the next morning (my birthday) we flew to Jacksonville where Abbe’s boyfriend picked us up and drove us to Tallahassee. Our bags had stayed with our original itinerary so we had to go to the Tallahassee airport to pick them up. Luckily they were there. It was by far the worst travelling experience that I have ever had. Abbe and I have officially dubbed June 27, 2007 as "Cluster Fuck Wednesday".

Now to the good stuff. After the dig, I went to Orvieto (which is like another home for me) and got to spend some time with some of my old friends. Silvia and Teddy were on another archaeological dig in town so I hung out on the dig with them and got to help them take balloon photos of the site. I also spent some time with my professors (who ran my first and favorite dig) and get this…they invited me back to dig with them next year! I never thought I’d dig there again and was actually pretty bummed about it so when they invited me back it was such an amazing surprise. I haven’t dug there for two years and in those two years the site has transformed into one of the most amazing digs I could ever imagine. Only a meter or so away from where they had been digging for the last six years they found a temple foundation! The site is officially a major Etruscan sanctuary and will be presented at the annual AIA conference in January. For three years I was a part of this dig with so much potential and now I am going to be part of one of the most important Etruscan digs ever.

I was supposed to leave Orvieto on the 23rd and go down to Naples and Pompeii to start work on my thesis but of course with my luck with travelling there was a major nation-wide train strike so I had to spend an extra day in Orvieto. It was fortuitous, however, because an old friend of mine was having her honeymoon in Orvieto so I got to see her again, which was cool. Also, it turned out that my professors were taking their study abroad group down to Naples the next morning. So they let me hitch a ride down there with them and they paid for me to get into the Archaeological Museum and then they detoured the bus and dropped me off at my hotel. I can only imagine what the 80 kids on the program were thinking when a stranger jumped on their bus and it makes me laugh.

When I went down to Naples, I spent most of the day in the Archaeological Museum and then met up with Abbe and Jen from the dig this summer and the next day we went to Pompeii. Southern Italy in the summer is absurdly hot and Pompeii is the hottest of the hot. They say that Pompeii is in the shadow of Vesuvius, but believe me, there ain’t no shadows. It is all dirt and stone and the only respite from the heat is the few ancient fountains that they refurbished. At each one you can see people surrounding the fountains, dumping water all over themselves or filling their water bottles. I had to do some work and look at some mosaics and houses so Jen and Abbe called our visit the “Mosaic Death March”. I told them they didn’t need to follow me around but they did. And it worked out well because I saw almost everything I needed to see. One of the houses was blocked by a small wooden fence that we hopped over and snuck into (shhh, don’t tell anyone). And another house I needed to see was in an area of Pompeii that was blocked off. One of the guards was nice enough to unlock the gate and lead us to the house I needed to see. Then he proceeded to give us a tour of the house. He obviously didn’t know we were students of Pompeii so we were laughing to ourselves every time he would say something obvious or wrong. But we didn’t want to complain, he was doing us a favor. It was definitely special treatment and we’re not supposed to tell anyone about it. But I don’t think anyone I know moves in the same circles as this guard so we’re probably ok. The girls got tired of the “Mosaic Death March” so they went to see the Villa of Mysteries and they missed the coolest thing of the day. There was one more house I needed to see but it was closed for restoration. So I began a dialogue with a guard hoping that he’d let me in like the first guy. But he was a little more stubborn. We were chatting about the house and I was telling him I was a student but he kept telling me that I needed a letter of special permission to get into the locked houses. Apparently this “letter of special permission” was a 5 euro note. I offered him 10 but he laughed and said he’d do it for 5. So I actually bribed a guard (although it seems like he wanted to be bribed) to get behind the scenes…it was awesome.

That night we went to Sorrento, which is just a gorgeous beach town in the south, and we were kicking ourselves (well, the girls were kicking me) for staying in Naples instead of Sorrento because Naples is by far the dirtiest city that I have ever seen. There is literally garbage lying in the streets. We couldn’t take it so for our last day down south we went back to Sorrento. For the most part, the day was AWESOME. We rented Vespas and drove around Sorrento for like 5 hours. We drove up into the hills above the beach and stopped at one of the nicest hotels I’d ever seen. Somehow, I was able to persuade the pool bartender to give us some towels and let us use their pool. So we swam and sunned at this gorgeous hotel in Sorrento for a while, then had a nice lunch, and jumped back on our Vespas. After scooting around for a while longer, Abbe fell off the Vespa and scratched herself up. And then, if that wasn't bad enough, she was FREAKED OUT on the Vespa and still had to drive it for an hour to get down from the hills. Plus, she had to pay for 300 euros to pay for damages to the Vespa. I can’t really talk about it with Abbe because she’s still so pissed off about it all. But I had a TON of fun on the Vespa. Jen rode on mine with me because she didn't bring her driver's license/was afraid to drive one so I had to drive kind of slow, especially after Abbe fell. But when Abbe fell, I scooted off to a nearby hotel to get ice and water for her and Jen stayed with her so for about 20 minutes of scooting, I was gunning it down the streets and leaning into the turns and it was so cool. After the scooting, we went down to the beach and swam around and watched the sunset. For me at least, it was the most amazing day. When we went to leave Sorrento, there was a problem with the trains and they weren’t running so we had to take a bus, which took over three hours, back to Naples.

The next day we went to Rome, and spent almost 9 hours tooling around the city. Abbe had never been to Rome so Jen and I gave her the tour of the major monuments. We walked for a very long time but I love Rome and was loving every minute of it. The only bummer of the day was that the Ara Pacis was closed. That is one of the few monuments in Rome that I had never seen before and they closed it the day before we got there. We saw the excavations at the forum and they looked awesome. I know I got hooked up with some good digs but to work in the Roman Forum would be so cool. Rome at night is almost cooler than Rome during the day. We saw the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain and Piazza Novona and they were glowing orange and green, it’s the coolest thing.

So that was my post-dig experience for this year. I had a ton of fun, got some solid work in, got even more hooked up for next summer, etc., etc., etc. What a trip! (in every sense of the word).