Minturno!

For my third weekend in Rome, I joined a big group on an organized trip with the Rome Center to Minturno.  Minturno is a small beach town located half way between Rome and Naples.  It also has thousands of years of history in both the city and the ancient town of Minturnae.

We all took the train down together and an hour and half later arrived at our nice hotel (AC included) located right across the street from the beach! We all dropped our stuff and went right out to the beach.  Since we were with the hotel, we all got lounge seats and umbrellas.  Unfortunately it was super windy, so there was lots of sand blowing around, but it did make playing in the water really fun.  Rather than flat, still water like most European beaches, the waves were almost as big at at Stinson! But we all enjoyed our afternoon, before heading out to dinner.

In the evening we walked along the beach to meet our tour guides who were going to show us a private property that use to be part of the Roman city of Minturno.  We met a fruit seller along the way, tried to buy some fruit, when we offered us all a few peaches and nectarines for free! He was really nice.  The private property was gorgeous with lush gardens and lots of ruins hidden among the bushes.  There were amphoras, baths, walkways, and water canals.

The Ancient Mill

After our tour we walked to dinner where we had a delicious 5-course meal full of seafood.  The appetizer was  all fresh shrimp, clams, calamari, and octopus.  Both pasta dishes included shrimp and calamari before we were served some yummy white fish along side two prawns.  For dessert we had coconut pie covered in white chocolate sauce.  It was one of the best desserts I've had in Italy so far!

Delicious Dinner

The next day we were up early and ready to head to a buffalo mozarella making factory.  We watched the men working with the cheese, forming the cheese balls, and even making braids.  We bought some sandwich making ingredients and had a great lunch that afternoon.

 Braided Buffalo Mozarella

Otherwise we spent the day on the beach (much calmer day) and even rented a pedal boat with a slide on it.  I did some relaxing but also swam a ton! In the evening we drove up the hillside to see the historic area of Minturno, took a tour, and then went to dinner.  The historic area of town was gorgeous and still had many elements for hundreds of years ago.

Here's all the girls from the trip.

 These balconies were actually built when it was popular for women's dresses to be super poofy and this way when they stepped out onto the balcony, the bars wouldn't decrease the size of the dress!

We also had beautiful views of the coastline and the plains below.

The highlights of the fabulous dinner we had were the pasta served in a cute jar, perfectly cooked white fish, and pane cota with berries.

The next day we were up early and made our way to Minturnae, the city that existed before Minturno was established in order to better protect themselves.  This was an entire city of ruins, but we were able to walk around and see exact places like houses, temples, the market place, public bathrooms, and the amphitheater.

Awesome Ruins!

Before catching our train home, we made a stop at Villa Matilde for lunch. This beautiful villa is a lush garden with vineyards all around and beautiful flowers over many of the walls.

We ate lunch outside under a wooden roof, amongst the vineyards.  On our way out we bought some wine and rushed to catch the train.

 The menu

Bread shaped like grapes and veggie pasta!

We just barely made it and were soon enough back to JFRC to relax!