Tanti Auguri Sissy!

If you know my sister then you know that she loves the beach.  So for her birthday in April we decided to get some Mediterranean Sun and head to a beach near Rome.  We did a little research and found out that Santa Marinella is a short train ride away and has great sandy beaches.

It was beautiful! We got there and found a great stretch of beach that had a few people but was definitely not crowded and soaked up some sun.

I had some fun writing Erin some birthday messages in the sand and luckily snapped this picture right before the wave came in!

2 seconds later it was gone

Sand, sea, and sun.  And a close encounters mountain.

At the end of the little beach that we were at were some rocks that we of course had to go climb on :)

We hung out there for a little while and had a little picnic with the snacks we brought.

After heading back to Rome Erin picked some Chinese food for dinner at a cute restaurant around the corner from our apartment.

And we grabbed some gelato on the way home.  Usually when we got gelato there a small got us two, maybe three flavors, but apparently the guy scooping on this day was generous because we each got 6 flavor cones.  He didn't even let me pick my own flavors, I started to tell him and he shook his head and said, "no, I'll choose for you" and proceeded to make these flower like masterpiece gelato cones for us!  

They were fantastic!  Happy birthday to Erin! and "Cento di questi giorni" (wishing her to live long enough to celebrate 100 more birthdays).

Gelato Art

Ostia Antica aka Awesoma Antica

One of the day trips we took from Rome was to Ostia Antica, the harbor city of Ancient Rome.  We heard it was like a little Pompeii, but easier to get to, so we opted to go see it.  I am so glad we did.

You can get there using Rome's Public Transportation so after 1 train change and about a 30 minute ride we had arrived for a day of exploring (and it only cost one metro ticket to get there)!





 We started out by going through the museum there and saw the better preserved sculptures and artwork and then began to make our way through the ruins.




We were surprised to see people sitting and hanging out in the "rooms" of the ruins we walked by at first, being used to the cool parts of ruins being roped or blocked off, and then we discovered that Ostia Antica is awesome (Awesome Antica) and you can walk pretty much anywhere you want!

Want to walk through that doorway? Sure!  Go up those stairs? Go ahead!  Climb into this little hole or down into that tunnel? Why not! It was so fun.




It was great to be able to really walk through the ruins instead of just peeking into them from behind the rope or looking down on them from above like those in the main city.  We were actually surprised at how well preserved they were considering people have free reign to explore as they wish.

 It's a pretty big place, and despite our "Ostia Antica Guide" that we had thought ahead and brought with us (thank you Rick Steves ), we ended up pretty much just roaming around as we both get distracted easily and are likely to veer off track when we see something cool even if we are supposed to "Climb back down, turn right, and immediately take another right." in order to see some cool mosaic. 

I guess our attention spans aren't quite long enough to stay on track.  Or we're free spirits.  We'll go with free spirits.  Anyway on one of our detours (in actuality it was probably a detour of a detour haha) we came across this awesome find, an underground walkway with a statue in it looking into a skylight above.  It was fascinating.  No sign, no markings at all, just some incognito stairs in the ground.  I bet most people totally miss it, it was like finding treasure.   The treasure of Awesoma Antica.  

So we spent the day exploring the place and here are some of my favorite pics from our Ostia Antica adventure:

The last place we stopped was the amphitheater.  It was cool to sit on the steps, and we enjoyed the "dramatic face" sculptures nearby.  It was right next to the ancient marketplace, a big square that had merchant stalls all around the outside.




The merchants would advertise their goods with mosaics outside their stalls on the floor.  So you can walk by all the old mosaics and see what used to be sold there.  We found the elephant for mom where they used to sell ivory and exotic animals (this was one part where our handy dandy guide was actually used, so again, thanks Rick Steves)!