7/2/2008

Sleeping in a bit to catch up on some sleep, we finally left the hostel around 10am. We set out to see the Vatican for the majority of the day.

With temperatures reaching into the high 90’s and the humidity becoming almost unbearable we spent some time within the Basillica. The Basillica took over 150 years to complete….once you see the inside it becomes very apparent why! The inside is absolutely amazing! We also saw the tombs of the past popes. To no surprise, once arriving at John Paul’s tomb, there were quite a few people kneeling down and praying.

After seeing the Vatican we headed down to eat some lunch at one of the many local pizzerias. My first real Italian pizza was the Napoli! The Napoli is basically a margarita pizza with a few anchovies on it! My first bite did not disappoint….it was very good!

The rest of the day we spent walking around Rome just looking at whatever we passed by. At one moment in time, we were looking for a certain plaza and had found ourselves seeking some directions. I stopped and made my best attempt at speaking Italian and asking a man how to get to the plaza. Next thing I know a girl walks up from behind me and asked if she could help. Turns out this girl was studying in Rome for the past four months and definitely knew her way around the city! While following her to our destination we talked and found out that she was from Connecticut. She is currently a senior at UMASS Amherst. Once we arrived at the plaza we had been looking for she invited us both to come out for the night with her and some friends. With nothing yet to do, we accepted the invitation!

We met up with her and her friends at the Coliseum around 9:30pm (still very hot and humid). What I thought was just going to be a sit in one place and “chat” kind of hangout, turned out to be a night tour of Rome. We went to the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and finally the Vatican…..couldn’t have asked for a better night tour!

One funny thing that happened while we were at the Trevi Fountain was that there were two dozen illegal swindlers trying to sell you there little toys. Well I became so fed up with it that I thought I might as well have some fun with telling them off. So one of the “jibrones” (trying to keep it PG-13) came up to me and tried to get me to play with one of the toys he was selling. I then proceeded to play the starring game with him! The funny thing about it was that he asked me about thirteen times within a 30 second span if I would like to try one!