Rome In a Day

Today was the official "first day" in Rome. A group of us had forgotten to visit the grocery store the night before for breakfast food so we all met up at a quaint little cafe for cappuccino and pastries. After meeting the rest of the group we spent a good part of the day walking through Rome and just taking in the sights, our end destination being a museum dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci just down the street from the Spanish Steps. The museum focused on physical models molded after Da Vinci's designs, each illustrating a key concept of Renaissance engineering. Professor Rappaport told us to keep our eyes open for potential project ideas...but honestly I'm not seeing much I enjoy about the man. True, there are some very interesting ideas but most certainly seem like stretches considering none were actually built by the man in question. Perhaps I'm being a bit judgemental...

After that, we climbed a small hill at the back of the Piazza and ended up on a small lookout point from which we could see almost all of Rome in a single gaze. From there we went to the Trevi fountain where we were let loose for a couple hours to get lunch and explore a bit before an afternoon lecture on Roman Emperors. All of the guys ended up at a small pizza and pasta place enjoying the Italian classics before finding ourselves on a quest for gelato. We did not end our search empty handed.

Before long it was time to enter this strange academic building just down the road from these wonderful Etruscan ruins and found ourselves at the Italian home of the University of Iowa, Northeastern's Italian partner. The talk on Emperors featured some interesting opinions of Nero and Caligula, the guest speaker took these two long considered to be mad men and spun their rules likening them to the Kings and rulers of Asia. Rulers who pined after absolute control and flaunted this control. Unlike the rule of Augustus who tried to hide his power and maintain a popularity with the people, Caligula and Nero cared little for that opinion focused far more on their own divinity. This opinion of God-kings really wasn't shared by the Roman people who disposed of both rather violently. Considering Nero went into his rule with any type of plan is definitely an opinion I had not heard before, and I continued to be flabbergasted by his relative dislike of Augustus. The horror! Anyway the Roman tilt of this adventure continues tomorrow at the Colosseum followed by a lecture on Particle Physics. Should be fun!