Random

A lot has happened since I went to Florence last weekend.  On Saturday it was raining so I went to Trajan's Market which is a museum that contains artifacts and what is left over from Trajan's market and forum.  These places used to be ancient markets and political centers.  Most of the museum is now inside and I had to go for one of my art classes so I figured I would just check it out.  The museum was really cool because it was built around the ancient architectural structures.  Trajan's Column is outside the museum.  It is the only column in Rome that is still standing after 2,000 years and hasn't moved despite several earthquakes.  Most other columns here have been moved to different locations.  You can walk into the different "shops" which have been restored and now holds sculptures and pieces of buildings that were found on the site.  In some rooms there were models of what the buildings originally looked like.  There is also an ancient jewelry exhibit in the museum which had different gold and metal artifacts found in areas outside Rome and in Greece, as well.  I took a lot of pictures in the jewelry exhibit but as I was leaving I realized there was a sign saying no pictures were allowed.  Oh well.

On Sunday I went to a Latin American festival with one of my roommates and two of my other friends.  The festival went all the way from the Vittorio Emanuele monument to the Colosseum.  I am not sure why there was a Latin American festival but it might have been because it was the last day of Carnival and everyone wanted to celebrate.  We went to the festival because we thought there would be Mexican food like nachos and burritos but sadly, there wasn't any.  Instead there was a giant parade and different countries from South America came by with everyone dressed up in costumes doing dances and playing music.  Tons of people were there watching and I am really glad we decided to go, even if there wasn't any food.

On Monday two of my roommates and I went to explore an area of Rome called Testaccio, where we hadn't been before.  Testaccio is even less touristy than where I live and it is more working class people. It felt like we had walked into a completely different place.  The streets were a lot bigger and there was graffiti everywhere.  There are some attractions in Testaccio, such as an egyptian-style pyramid that was once part of the Aurelian walls, and Monte Testaccio, which is actually an ancient trash pile made of broken jars and whatnot.  There are a lot of bars and clubs built into the hill now but other than that, I can't think of a reason why anyone would want to go there.  I guess the area used to be full of slaughterhouses, which makes sense judging by the appearance.  There is supposed to be a really good market somewhere in Testaccio during the daytime so maybe I will have to go see that.

Another thing that we saw in Testaccio was the Protestant Cemetery, which is right next to the ancient pyramid.  The cemetery was really small but I had never seen so many graves in one area in my life.  People must have been buried on top of each other.  There are some famous people buried there such as Keats and Shelley and a few Italian and German philosophers.  The cemetery was really pretty but after a while I started to get a weird feeling and we all decided to leave.

John Keat's grave 

On Tuesday I had to go back over to the Testaccio area for one of my art classes.  Our class went to a museum called Centrale Montemartini, which ended up being one of my favorite museums here so far.  We all met at school and then took the bus over to the museum with our professor.  As we got off the bus and waited to cross the street there was a huge car crash right next to us.  There was glass everywhere and the people in the two cars got out and started screaming at each other.  I am surprised I haven't seen more accidents here because the drivers here are crazy.  They speed everywhere and run red lights all the time.  Plus, it doesn't seem like there are any laws here regarding traffic anyways since I never even see police pulling people over for speeding.
The Centrale Montemartini Museum was really interesting.  It used to be an old sewage plant that they were using to store ancient states from the Capitoline Museums that had been recently discovered.  However they just renovated the sewage plant about 10 years ago and turned it into a museum, but they left all the pipes and boilers exposed.  The name of the permanent exhibit there is called "The Machines and the Gods" and its supposed to juxtapose ancient art against modern machinery.