By Jessie

Today I woke up and walked out onto our terrace to see the beautiful view of Paestum. We ate breakfast then departed for the first place. It was a Greek and Roman colony with three temples and a town. The temples were to Athena and Hera (two for Hera, you can see them at the end of this post). There was another possible temple dedicated to the Capitoline Triad. We found places in the forum for commercial, religious, and political. Two of the temples were for Hera, the mother goddess, and the other was for Athena. We explored the temples and completed the assignments. We then had some delicious gelato on the site.

We then traveled to Herculaneum and had lunch before we explored the ancient city. We first went to the boat houses, which were filled with skeletons. It was disturbing but cool.

We were then set free to finish our assignments. We had to find some mosaics, a bakery, and a tavern. My group, Team Gamma, the best team, recreated a scene that possibly occurred in the tavern.

We finished our assignments early and had extra time. I found this awesome drinking fountain that had the spout as the mouth of a man.

We only explored 1/4 of the city because the rest of it was covered by the volcanic ash and the new city. Visiting this ancient wonder was such a great experience because I had learned about it last year. Today was one of the best days of the trip so far.

Below are Hera’s temples at Paestum.