The Pope and His Hat.

This weekend in Rome was a blast! From the time we got there until the time we left I was having a blast. Right after we got there we started walking. We had no idea where we were going, but the girls were on a mission to see a fountain that was in some chick flick. Did we ever get there? No, I don't think so, but had fun looking for it.
Our first stop of Thursday was gelato. They didn't have the melon that I remembered from Florence, but it was still delicious. We then started out on our adventure. We walked in a huge circle looking for the river and finally found it. Our destinations were determined by what domes we could see. If the dome looked big we headed that way. That worked out pretty well. We came out of a little ally right next to a church. It was a nice church that was decorated like most others. Next we ended up at the Spanish Steps. We climbed the steps and were able to see out over the city. It had been raining, but was clearing up while the sun set. This is when the girls decided to look for the fountain from the movie, we didn't end up there, but we did end up at the Trevi Fountain. It was cool seeing it lit up at night. We did the whole throwing money over the opposite shoulder thing and took a lot of pictures. After that we went and had our first Italian dinner. I'm pretty sure we ended up at some sort of tourist trap, and got charged for everything we did, but it was good. Thursday night we were all tired and went to bed early.
The next day we had to be up early for a panoramic tour of Rome. The breakfast in the hotel was pretty good, not as good as Madrid, but it was free. The bus tour was kind of hard to follow just because we drove past some things really fast, and weren't able to see them well. It ended at the Colosseum. It is a lot bigger than I imagined and really cool. We never went inside of it, but I have to have things to do when I go back. After we walked around the Colosseum we got back on the bus and went to the Trevi Fountain again. This time we had a tour guide to explain everything about it to us. After our tour with API ended we had another tour set up. The dad of one of the girls here knows a tour guide in Rome and we were able to set up a private tour of the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peters that afternoon. It turned out that our tour guide for the afternoon was the same tour guide we had earlier that morning around Rome which was nice because he was fun and nice. The Vatican Museums were really cool. We only saw three of them, but he said that if we were to be actually be able to see everything it would take years. The three rooms that we did see had a lot of interesting things in them. The Sistine Chapel was amazing! It was also a lot bigger than I thought, but I'm glad it was because it was packed. They were really strict about talking and picture taking inside of it. Our guide told us all about the chapel and about every pope that helped build it. It was so much information to try and take it, but I enjoyed it. Next we went into St. Peters. It is the largest basilica in the world. They had markings on the ground that showed were others compared to it, no other even came close. We saw another famous Michelangelo sculpture inside, and a few mummified popes. When a pope is raised to saint hood his body is mummified and put in a tomb in St. Peters. They were working on that tomb that John Paul II will be put into in May. We weren't able to see very much of the basilica, but what we did see was amazing.
After we got back to our hotel we all went to took naps to get ready for the night. We didn't do anything fancy for dinner, just quick street pizza. One of the guys from Salamanca found this deal on-line where we could pay 20 euro to go to a pub with and open bar for an hour, then to two different clubs, and at the end of the night we would get pizza and a free t-shirt. Needless to say we did this. The pub was really small and overly full, but it was a nice little place to hang out. The first club was also nice. When we got there it was still early and people were eating dinner where the dance floor was, but leave it to the girls to make there own. The nice part about their makeshift dance floor was it was right around the couches so we were able to sit down when we were tired. The second club was packed. We had a lot of fun and danced a lot. We didn't drink anything at the clubs because the drinks were 10 euro each, and we thought Bilbao was bad.
Finding our way home was a different story. The metro closed pretty early for such a big city, but the buses run all night. We took a few wrong buses and went the wrong way, but we made it back to the hotel in time for breakfast. After being up all night people look at you funny in the hotel restaurant while eating breakfast, but we were just glad to be home.
We woke up at like 1:30 that afternoon and started out on our adventures again. We went to one of the other big monuments in Rome. I don't know what the real name of it is, but our tour guide kept referring to it as 'The Wedding Cake'. Apparently the Romans call it that, because it is big and white. It lets you have a nice view of downtown Rome, and also hold the WWI 'Tomb of the Unknown'. The rest of the day was spent just walking around and hanging out. Saturday night some of the people wanted to go out again. I did not. A few of us ate dinner around the hotel and then just hung out in my hotel room. Saturday ended pretty early for us.
Sunday we woke up kind of early to get breakfast and a few of us wanted to try and go to St. Peters for mass. For some reason we thought we could get there at 10:15 and still get in. We hung out in the Vatican Square until 12 when the Pope speaks from his window. He gives a quick sermon in Italian and then a prayer in different languages. He spoke in Italian, Spanish, German, English, and Portuguese. After that we headed back to the hotel and left for the airport. The flight back wasn't bad, but our flight from Madrid to Bilbao was delayed and we didn't get back until 10.
It was nice to get away for a weekend. It was also nice to be around other guys for a weekend, the girls are fun, but they get old sometimes. Some of us are thinking about going to to Salamanca this weekend to hang out with them again. I want to go, but don't want to spend the money. Decisions, decisions.