A Day At The Beach

This is old news, but still some nice pictures: two Sundays ago Brendan, Alex, and I headed out on a day trip to the Ostia Beach. We packed a picnic lunch, brought a towel or two, and headed out. Here we’re waiting for the wonderful 982 bus that takes us into the city from the VOICA house.


While we were waiting for the next bus that would take us to the train to Ostia we saw a papal motorcade. The local police rode alongside the cars headed to the Vatican. They probably love it – the traffic is insane in Rome (as you’ve read from Brendan’s blog) and it would be a nice break from the craziness.

So we caught the bus after a long wait, and made it to the train station at Piramide. We got on the train and thought that are troubles were over – Francesca’s directions said that all we had to do was ride the train for a long time, get off, walk for 5 minutes, and we’d be at the Ostia beach!

Near the end of the line there was a stop called Ostia Antica (old Ostia). The name should have given us a little clue, but nooo. We dutifully set off and walked five minutes in what seemed like a good direction. We saw many tourists headed in this direction so we figured we couldn’t go wrong.

What we discovered was not a beach, but loads of ancient ruins and a walking path through them. We looked at a sign and it had a beachlike symbol so we followed the path. The ruins were beautiful and it was a nice day out so it wasn’t too bad. Finally thinking that maybe the beach was not in this direction, we asked at the gift shop and the lady almost laughed at us. She said we needed to get back on the train and go farther, to the very last stop.

Here are people in an old ampitheater in the middle of the ruins. Look at the trees too – these trees are the same as in Rome. They are all very tall with leaves only on the highest branches. The park across the street from the convent is filled with these trees and they make for a gorgeous landscape, it’s just too bad their not very good for climbing.

Waiting at the Ostia Antica train station Brendan took this artistic picture. We got on the train and made it to the last stop: Cristoforo Colombo. You can see why we thought that the Ostia beach would be at the only station with Ostia in the name.

We had finally made it to the beach and we were only a few hundred feet away – we could see it and smell it…but we couldn’t get to it! The whole beach was lined with private beach areas that you had to be a member of to pass through to get to the few feet of public beach. We walked half a mile before we could find a place to sneak through. And there we were at the Italian beach in all its glory!

This isn’t the best picture of me and Alex, but it gives you a pretty clear view of the twenty feet of dark sand, massive black pipeline of who-knows-what, and the ocean!

Here we are enjoying our small plot of sand : ) It was actually very fun and very relaxing after our adventure getting there. We sat in the sand, waded, talked, and people-watched!

See how dark the sand was at this beach! But it was so soft and fine. Walking barefoot into the surf was great!

Brendan spied this sign as we left the beach. NO PET ELEPHANTS ALLOWED AT THE BEACH! Oh yeah, and no dogs either ; )

Alex and I on the train ride home. We made it home just in time to grab dinner and talk to my family on Skype before they headed out to the Davis Family reunion!

In more recent news:

Brendan and I booked tickets to Ireland during the five day break from training that we have in early November. We were invited to visit Tom and Tina Cummings and we are so excited to join them for a few days and get to see a little bit of the gorgeous 'home' country!

We got two of the free tickets Ryan Air is giving away which was awesome - we just have to pay for our connecting flight and a few dollars for required English transport fees. But we’ll let you know how it goes when that time comes. Ireland here we come!

Much love,

Rachel and Brendan