Roma - Giorno 2 - Destinazione: Ovunque ma non qui

I woke up at 6:45am on Saturday morning with just one alarm going off. For me, this is a miracle. I guess it makes sense since we were going to the Vatican that day. Every morning, like most people, when I wake up, I go to the bathroom right away. In Europe, especially in Italy, almost every bathroom has a bidet (an ass cleaner). Well, being right next to the toilet, I was bound to look at it. My wonderful(ly drunk as hell) roommate Jake decided to leave a gift for the maids in the bidet - let's just say when you consume that much alcohol and the same night you have pastas, hams, tomatoes and other stuff, it's going to end up looking like an omelet. It was quite nasty but thankfully did not smell as I would have punched that kid in the nuts. I went down to eat breakfast for 7:15am. I saw a few other students down there and we ate together. Rob and I went back to our rooms after breakfast to wake up our roommates (Rob actually ended up waking both Mark and Jake up, both were still drunk, not even hung over). In the end, only Jake made it down in time to walk with the group to the metro to the Vatican. Mark and Matias had to catch up later on (right before we entered the city actually, lucky for them cause they would have had to pay their own way in).

We eventually made it into the city and, of course being the awesome Catholic that I am, the first word I said was 'fuck' just because I could. We took a guided tour through out the City. We saw many painting and statues. Nothing extremely famous, but still some amazing stuff. I took many pictures of them and will post them on my flickr eventually. We started off seeing the painting and then the statues. Before the statues though, we were in this field with a giant globe in the center. Now the Italians are very lax when it comes to keeping people out of places they don't want you to go (now if they really don't want you there, that's different). There was only a chain in the way of the people from touching and spinning the globe. Some people (with the bad influence of the tour guide, haha) decided to go and spin the stunning spherical statue. Then after some statues, we finally got to see the Sistine Chapel. Personally, I was underwhelmed by the entire thing as there were too many tourists and I thought that it was going to be much bigger. Plus I hated the fact that we could not take pictures (legally).  Not even two minutes into the viewing, I was yelled at by a guard for taking pictures. This did not stop me of course. Many people were also asking me to snap pictures of them looking at the ceiling and of course I did cause I am a nice guy. After the Chapel, we set out to view St. Peter's Basilica. Personally, I thought it was a selfish and too arrogant of the Catholics on what they did to this beautiful building. Not only did they make it a tourist trap, but it didn't even feel like a place of worship. This is another reason why I sometimes hate being a Christian, let alone a Catholic.

After seeing everything the Vatican had to offer, a group of us set out to eat some lunch. We made it to this one little place near the Vatican. It was honestly the single worst Italian meal I have ever had. The waiters were rude and sneaky, the food was worse than Chef Boyardee canned food, and the prices were just too high. After eating that shit, we set out to walk toward the hotel cause some people wanted to nap. We saw a few sites on the way, but nothing all that spectacular. A castle that we didn't go in because people didn't want to pay and a square (Piazza del Popolo) that was underwhelming. After the Piazza, the rest of the group wanted to head back while I wanted to go up on the hill to see what was up there. You would think that a few people would want to have a view of the city from up there, but no, everyone wanted to head back. Once again, I was alone in Rome. At the top, there was a great view of the city and a very beautiful park. After spending about 30 mins up there relaxing, I decided to head back to the hotel and nap as well.

For dinner, the primo piatto was a pasta dish with a white sauce and sausage. For the secondo piatto, a bit of chicken with potatos. Our dolce was an ice cream dish with mints. Over all, the dinner was the best part so far. Also, for dinner, I initially sat with Evy (don't know how to spell her name) as she was sitting alone. Later on, Stella and Zim sat with us and we had a great dinner conversation.

Later that night, Jake and I met up with some of his friends who were back packing. We saw the trevi fountain at night which was amazing and also went to see the Colosseum at night too. While at the Colosseum, we took some photos of us jumping. There was one photo that I was actually so high that I was halfway out of frame, haha. I guess this white boy still got ups. This was probably one of the best nights on the entire trip and it was so simple yet fun. We eventually made it back to the hotel around 2:30 and went to bed at 4am.