I thought it would be cool but it was better than I expected.
That is probably the most succinct way to put it.
We were laying out on the grass at the college and marveled at how little of the sun was needed to light the area. Then in totality, seeing the corona and was I eventually learned were the solar prominences was amazing. I've seen a few pictures of the corona but most pictures (like mine) don't do it justice.
One thing that we thought about afterwards was that with solar glasses the process takes awhile but without them it really is a sudden event. Yeah, there are some subtle changes leading up to and afterwards but not so drastic as we were expecting. Until totality the sun was bright enough that you can't look at it directly. So, I can totally understand how the ancients were like "what the fuck is this, fuck the gods are pissed" and change what they were doing. One minute things are normal and then suddenly everything goes dark, it is basically dusk, and the sun has a fucking hole in it.