Today a group decided to go together and visit the Palatine Hill and the Colosseum. We got our biglietti, hopped on the good old 75, and made for the Palatine. Because we have special "tessera" indicating that we are "special" we only needed to show our ID cards to receive free tickets. As you might guess, something called the Palatine Hill means you have to walk up it. It was hard to not stare at the stairs instead of looking at the signs of antiquity everywhere. It seemed like we just kept walking past all sorts of interesting things. We were heading for the House of Augustus. These were special rooms, closely guarded, where the mosaics had been carefully restored. One small room was particularly impressive. I didn't try to take a picture, since we were being told not to use flash. It would be just my luck not to get the flash turned off and get tackled by the guards. When we arrived at a museum, two of our group went to talk to one of the guards. They could speak Italian and asked him if we could see this special place that was closed to the public. They showed the Tessera cards and the man got his keys and escorted us inside the other building. One section had a ceiling painted from the Renaissance period, and the other showed the restored mosaics from the ancient Roman times.

We wound our way back across the Palatine Hill toward the Colosseum. It is quite an impressive structure. Right now they are also showing an exhibit based on the triumphal processions the Roman army would make on return from victory. The inside of the Colosseium was spectacular. It's difficult to think about the horrible tragedies that occurred there with people who were captives. There was great brutality there as animal fought against animal, humans fought against animals, and humans fought against humans. At one time they would flood the Colosseum and reenact naval battles.

After spending several hours at the Colosseum, we took the bus back to Trastavere and had lunch together in a nice little restaurant. The afternoon was a bit spoiled by one of our group discovering that her wallet was missing from her bag. We went on to do some shopping in a supermarket. I bought some food for supper: a sandwich, salad, and some other interesting look pasta kind of stuff in olive oil or something.

I took a much-needed nap in the afternoon. Then I read two or three articles and book chapters. At about 8pm I went and got my food from the kitchen. I opened the packages and started to eat from the oily concoction. I began to notice bits of crab meat and other such things. it didn't taste too bad, but I didn't really know what I was eating. I took a larger hunk of something on my fork and then realized what it was. It was some kind of small squid or octopus. It had tiny little arms with suckers. I think I picked out some more pieces of crab meat, but then put that dish away. I didn't know what I was going to do with it. I didn't want to dump it in the garbage in the kitchen. I was afraid it would go bad, probably within a few minutes, if not already, and start smellilng. i finally hit on a plan. I sneaked it into the bathroom and dumped it down the toilet. I figured it couldn't be much worse than what usually goes down there.

Tomorrow's Sunday. I need to get some reading done for the next class session and I need to do some laundry, I think. Other than that, I'm not sure what I will do. I discovered online today that today is the beginning of the year of St. Paul. I looked at the web site for the St. Paul Basilica. Tuesday evening, I think it is, there's a big concert there with a famous conductor, Mazel I think. If I go anywhere tomorrow -- besides the library -- Imight go to St. Paul's.