Retrospective #1- Pompeii/Paestum

I’m going to hopefully start updating all of you on what I have been up to the last few weeks, beginning with my first trip to Pompeii and Paestum. Pompei and Pasetum were group trips that included all of the Architecture students, the Landscape Architecture students and the Liberal Arts students from a different program. We left early in the morning in Saturday, February 21st to drive down to Pompeii. On the way down we experienced an Italian rest stop (which was surprisingly similar to a rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike). Once in Pompeii, the head of our program took us on a tour and gave us an introduction to some of the sites in Pompeii.
As I’m sure many of you are aware, Pompeii was an ancient Roman town that was destroyed in the 2nd century AD after the eruption of the Volcano Mt. Vesuvius. The ash from the volcano covered the town, perfectly preserving much of the architecture and buildings. After a formal lecture at the site, we were given a few hours free to explore Pompeii and to do some sketching.
That night, we drove to Paestum, a sleepy little beach town a few hours south of Pompeii. The hotel that we stayed in was right on the beach, so we had the opportunity to go down onto the beach that night as well as the next morning. After dinner, everyone went down the beach and we had a wonderful big bonfire. It was a lot of fun and it was great to hang out with everyone in my program (photo).
The next morning, had breakfast at the hotel and then spent a few more sunny hours on the beach until our appointed time to leave (photo). We took another bus from the hotel to the archeological site of Paestum. Paestum is the ruins of an ancient Greek colonial town that was located in southern Italy. The site has some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the entire world- even better than the ones at the Acropolis in Greece! After a lecture at the site, we had several hours free by the ruins to sketch and take photographs. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and I spent a very enjoyable afternoon sitting under a tree sketching ancient Greek temples framed with impressive mountains (photo). Later, we toured the Paestum Museum as a group. Finally, we got back on our bus for the long ride back to Rome. I spent Sunday night in Rome frantically unpacking and repacking for another two straight weeks of travel before falling into bed!