Today I opted to go for something I had researched way back when I first started planning this trip. Outside of Rome there was a city named Ostia, it is quite close to the coastline. It appears that it is somewhere in the 2400 year old range or so but it fell into disuse in the 5th or 6th century AD. The site of the ruins is called Ostia Antica.
To get to Ostia Antica you really need to take a metro train from Rome. The best place for me was to walk to the Piramide station (right near the Pyramid of Sestia) and to get on there for the ride to Ostia Antica which is about half an hour. I could have taken the metro the whole way I assume but I like the walking and all that so rather than get in a dark crowded stuffy underground I would prefer to walk the 45 minutes or so to the train I needed to take. Vacations are supposed to be about relaxing and walking is a way I relax so it makes sense for me anyway.
I woke up at 7 and had breakfast at the hotel at 7:30 and was on my way to the train station. Armed with a lot more knowledge of how to get around the city it was probably less than 45 minutes to get to Piramide station. First I used a self cleaning bathroom which looked like the self cleaning part wasn’t working so well, and that for .50 Euro. Inside I bought a day pass metro ticket and then found myself confused as to which train to take. It says this way to Lido line but then the Lido line just says the name of the stop Porta St. Paolo. So I had to ask if it was the train I needed to take. It took a few minutes to get through this process but I boarded a train that departed at 8:45 or so. The train ride was about a half an hour. This train was not very clean and very shabby looking and didn’t have any announcements or anything so I just had to keep track of the stops myself which I guess wasn’t too difficult.
Arriving in Ostia you get out of the station and do a flyover walkway over the autostrada towards the site. On the way you see a castle wall and then as you get there you turn into Ostia Antica. The site costs 6.50 Euro to get in if I recall. I think it was highly worth it. The city of Ostia is all ancient Roman ruins without the various transformation that Christianity brought on in Italy. There is one Christian basilica ruin but that was from 400 AD or so. I realize that most all of it has fallen down and many of the buildings would be much taller than they are now but it is still amazing to think how people actually used to live there well over 2000 years ago.
The site is gigantic. I need to point that out. Getting there at about 9:15 or so I was inside the actual grounds until about 2pm, including only a few minutes for a pizza and beer lunch. It is the remains of a complete city that used to live on the banks of the Tiber. The problem is in the 15th century the river flooded and the course of the river changed so the site is no longer on the river but that might actually be for the best. There is still a fair amount of excavation and restoration going on but even then there is an unbelievable number of buildings to see and may different varieties whether they be warehouses, housing, hot baths, temples, stores or whatever. I would have to assume there are some liberties taken with some of the placements of statues and the like but overall it looks like they mainly have tried to dig up what they have found. Another cool thing is that there are a very large number of areas that are free reign to walk about. I mean there are more places you can go than can’t. It was neat to get inside some of the buildings and even into some more underground stuff. I am not sure if they are dug completely down to the original ground level. I suspect some buildings may have had cellars based on stairways and the like. In the common living areas it is obvious that the living quarters were overall very small. I am sure the wealthy had more to live in but still if the book I bought is accurate most of the buildings were made of non-flammable materials in an effort to reduce fires. They also had a fair amount of water collection and deposit to help deal with fires. It is believed due to their regulations they had a lot fewer fires than the city of Rome did in similar time.
Something that is found all over Ostia is mosaic floors. Whether in the mercantile area or in the baths or whatnot there are tons of black and white mosaics. I am sure most of what has been found is restored and according to their information boards they have had to recover from problems caused by poor restoration techniques in the 20th century. In many cases they had to go back to original photos in order to more accurately reproduce the corrupted versions that were created during initial restoration. Still there are tons of them all over the place and many of them are quite nice. It was not really predictable where you might find one so it meant a lot of zig-zagging through various parts of the ruins to see every nook and cranny to make sure you don’t miss anything. I think it was worth it though. It was a lot of walking and even a fair bit of climbing steps and the like but I enjoyed every minute of it. It helped that the weather was all sun with a maybe 75F day an no real wind, though I think a touch of wind may have helped for cooling this off a bit at times.
They have a small museum with some relics that were taken out of the ruins and have been cleaned and put on display. There is also a gift shop (book store in Italy) and a cafeteria where I bought my pizza and beer and an ice cream bar. The pizza was not so great and the beer was a Scottish 9% version called Tennants Extra Strong I think. It was decent. The ice cream bar was a Togo classic which had very thick chocolate on the outside and vanilla ice cream inside. I liked it. There is also a section that displays some of the various marbles that were excavated and where they were from and what they were used for. It was interesting to see so many versions. I really know little about geology. This sorted of helped to point that out. Rock is rock, right?
When I was finally on my way out I was interested in seeing about the castle on the edge of town. It is in your face as soon as you get off the train basically so I hoped it was something I could visit. Walking around the wall to the square I found there was a small church and the entrance. It was closed but not locked and some people in cleaning uniforms were heading in at the same time. It turns out that the place would open for a tour at 3pm and it was just a bit past 2. While finding this out I met a woman from Canada named Kate who had just arrived in Rome today and was also curious to see the castle. Since we had near an hour to kill we decided to see if we could find a coffee and to chat. Her husband is a pilot (second woman married to a pilot I have met) for Air Canada. She was going to be going on a major Mediterranean cruise in the next couple days it sounded. We chatted about travel and killed the hour fairly easily. She has been to a lot of the place I have been to except many years before I went to them. We compared notes on how they were then to now. It was very interesting.
After finishing our coffees we headed back to the castle and were allowed to come in for the tour which amounted to a woman walking us to various rooms and waiting for us to be done looking. There were about 4 Italians and 2 Spanish people aside from us. The guide did not speak English at all. According to the Spanish people she was not really giving any history or the like, just taking people in to the rooms. I had already read on the signs outside the castle it was initially built in the 9th century and then redone in the 15th century and of course was almost entirely Christian based. There was some theory it might have been built on older ruins but it is speculation. In any event the castle was very nice and they were restoring some ceiling frescos. It has an outer wall and an inner keep with a tower. We got to the top room of the tower but it is enclosed. They have some artifacts in cases in the various rooms. I think the tour took maybe half an hour or so. I wasn’t fully watching the time. The unfortunate thing was that they didn’t allow pictures inside. I would have liked to take a few. Still for free it was definitely worth it.
When we had finished the tour both Kate and I were heading into Rome, her to a stop before mine so we rode the metro back together. It was much nicer train that announced next stops and the like but there were no seats available so we had to stand. In any event we talked until her stop then wished each other safe and enjoyable travels. When I got off the train I had to walk back to the hotel about 45 minutes or so and the I took a few minutes to start writing this because it was before dinner time being just a few minutes before 5pm. Most of the time it is easier to write while it is still fresh in my head and I haven’t clouded myself with too much beer or wine. All in all it was a very fine day. One of the best days I have had in Italy. Granted I had the whole drama of having the GPS stolen that really set me off for a while, the driving the car was a bit of an issue too, and I really didn’t like the cleanliness or visit value of Palermo but overall it has really been an enjoyable trip. That might be lost somewhat in the mix of my issues with my arrival in Sicily along with a couple of days of sort of crummy weather, but it has not really been a bad time at all. Those were blips that I eventually dealt with and moved on. Still today was pleasant and something very much in line with what I enjoy seeing and doing. And it is always great to meet nice people to chat with here and there. That obviously has happened more in Rome than in Sicily and I am grateful for it.
After the brief stop I walked the block really quickly to decide where to eat and ended up at the Trattoria Elektra which was right downstairs from my hotel. I had spaghetti aglia a olio a peperoncini for a primi and grilled sea bass for the secondi (not able to give the Italian name sorry). The pasta was decent but I make this at home on occasion and I believe mine is better. The sea bass was a whole fish presentation. I managed to get the vast majority of the meat but I had to fight through a few bones in the process. I accompanied this with a very gigantic beer (I didn’t think large meant keg sized) and followed everything up with a vanilla ice cream and coffee sauce dessert. This was by far my most expensive meal in Italy and though the food was good I won’t go back there. The service was reasonable but the prices are a touch high for my tastes. I realize I ate a lot of food but all the same I don’t think the bill amounted to what I did eat in the long run. If you accept the whole fish was the same cost as the fish I had at other restaurants then it really seems disproportionate. I suppose I could have made it cheaper by trying a tourist menu but I wanted what I ordered rather than what was on the tourist menu. As I said, the food was reasonably good but not for the prices.
From the end of dinner it was up to the room to watch some odd European sports channels then call it a night.
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