final post. day 87.

Unless something bad happens!

It struck me I've probably spent 32 hours in train stations but never took pictures. I buy through app Trenitalia, but you can also buy tickets, biglietti, 2 ways

 the arrival departure boards are often separate. 

This is Civitavecchia, a very small station. Rome's Termini station is like a small city. It has 32 active  tracks, binari,  and 450,000 people move through it daily.

This small station handles 10K people on cruise ship days, and less than half that on a day like today.

I'm sleeping at the airport tonight, Rome FCO. Flying out early, too early for cabs and buses. 🤷‍♀️

Civitavecchia

A major port for Rome. Container ships and cruise ships both dock here.

i walked the lungomare (lit., along-sea) my first morning before dawn

You can't go in to this 16th C fortress

But you can walk this out to a spit of land. 

Except walking, i probably won't do anything here in my 43 hours. But dawn reflection over the sea is nice

i had hoped, in a strange way, knowing I'd hate it, to watch a big cruise ship disgorge 1500 people at once, but no docking is scheduled. So I've been saved from my own odd curiosity!

pisa, part 2

The museum of antique boats, Pisa

I prepped for this museum visit by watching two videos on Roman boats a and warfare, presented by scripta manent, a YouTube channel i really like.

The museum ends up also being a mini archeology museum, Bronze Age, early Etruscan, then they have excavated nothing from 450-50 BCE. Then Rome and boats in particular.

2 hours there wore me out! It's one of my 5-8$ museum finds I'm so happy i figured out how to find. First, i took a 2- block detour to get my river walk in, should I not get a second chance.

For anyone who speaks Latin, here's today's quiz. 

Some very large amphora. Early Etruscan. 2500 year old burial goods, amazingly intact

Wait, you want another Latin quiz? Here you go. It's instructions on how to keep Julius Caesar's tomb after he dies, which he wasn't yet. I know that cuz i cheated on my quiz and used Google Lens.

A Large anchor, roman ship.

A film on how they navigated by stars, with useful rhymes to remind sailors, also in Latin. The film was in Italian. Some signs are in English, but I read Italian, and only go look for the 2-3 words i am typically missing. 

Absolutely my favorite thing in the museum. This is a mock-up of the train station departure boards in every station in the country, but it's for ancient boats! Number of days to each port, in Roman numerals. So clever!

A timeline about who controlled Pisa when, with the excavated ships laid in. Excellent signage. Good curators.

Here's a shipwreck they found underwater, recreated.

a boat, a river ferry, i think 

another boat, and a shot where I tried to get some of the ax strokes. You can see them, and it's like you're communing with the boatbuilder across time. So cool.

You don't think about amphora designs often (okay, I'm a Time Team geek, so I do sometimes) but they had many displays on them, world region, time, design, what they carried...  Oops upside-down. Lol. The grain or fish sauce would leak out! This shows how they tied them in and cushioned with straw.

This cool map of marble that was transported throughout the region. The small round bit is Carrera  marble, which I saw the mines for Wednesday.

Graffito of roman fighting ship, probably by a sailor hanging out  after visiting a prostitute or restaurant or both. Very accurate! 

Enjoyed it mightily. A+  museum curators.