The never ending week of Rome

Yesterday, after my nice nap and blog time, the group of us that had wanted to go out to eat split up with the idea that we would meet up again at 6:45 by the trevi fountain, and then from there walk together to our restaurant for our reservations at 7.

Instead, what happened was Megan and I frantically running around rome trying to find the bus, and finally giving up. Then we just dashed from street to street with occasional help from the policia. We ended up being 10 minutes late, but the other girls in our group found us and we got to the restaurant a few minutes late.

It ended up being one not entirely fond of Americans, but by the end of the night they warmed up to us. I had a four cheese spaghetti, which ended up being the macaroni and cheese of the Italian spaghetti gods. Fantastic. I had a little of their red wine, but my head was hurting so I stayed away from the alcohol.

Then we went and took pictures at the fountain, which hopefully I'll be able to upload soon, and stopped at the gelato store so one of the girls could see her italian fling while we creeped on how adorable they were. Back at the hotel our desk guy was telling us about Italians love passionately, and just one rose is never good enough; you always get the expensive bouquet, and pamper your woman. It made me miss Doug a little, but even from a continent away he treats me like a princess.

I came back and skyped mom and dad to say happy birthday to him, and watched a little of the Cosby show in Italian before going to bed. Needless to say, I didnt really pick anything up from up, but I tried.

Today started with a mass at 11 in Santa Maria Maggiore. Our daylight savings time was tonight, so we moved forward putting us at a 6 hours difference now instead of 5, which womps. But by the time I'm In London it'll be 5 again, and thats only about 3 weeks away. But the moral of the story is, it's hard to wake up on time, but I did. I think maybe I need to retnk this whole religious pilgrimage thing though; while the music is so pretty, the service doesn't do much for me when I don't speak the language.

We wandered back to the hotel, and then I switched into a different group that went off to look for food. We went to a place for take out that we had gone a fe times before, but this morning they were not excited to see the American tourists in their shop. They more or less threw cold pizza at us and charged extra from the day before, so it was a less than friendly experience and now im feeling a little gross.

Apparently there is a huge mall somewhere outside of Rome, so we were going to adventure to find it (Alex, Kaitlin, and Dominique). We took the metro way out of the city, and then stood around this downtown area for a while and looked at bus routes. Either the mall doesn't exist, or our directions were lacking, but either way we ended up just turning around and going back to Rome. There was a beautiful park, and it seemed pretty residential, so it was nice to see everyday life, at least.

I went to h&m and got two tops, nothing special. On my way back to the hotel I found St Paul in the wall, which is the Anglican church that was hiding not even a block away. A little bummed I missed it, but the service this morning was nice too. Can't wait to get to England where hopefully I'll trip over episcopal churches everywhere.

About laundry...I wish there were video, but I am officially knowledgeable in the art of washing clothes in the bathroom sink. It helps that we have a b'day (how do you spell that? I feel like this whole trip is on big spelling test nightmare), and a little extra floor room. I didn't do all of it, but I got the important stuff, and I felt accomplished by the end of it.

Did a few journals...hung out in the lobby...and then met up with Megan, for gelato time. Only what would have been a 15 minute walk turned into an hour, because of one stupid wrong turn. Luckily we got to enjoy some live music and do some window shopping, but the cold and the rain that finally caught up with us was making it a lot less fun to be lost than it normally is. We also had a man try to get us to sign up for a bar crawl, and when we ignored him he yelled down the street that we were dressed like idiots. His words, not mine. So the mood was just down. We did find our way back though, and got some gelato the size of my head. Straticella is my favorite. On the way back in the dark we either stepped in pee or vomit, (we didn't want to look) so we washed our feet in one of the springs (picture a fire hydrant, but a drinking fountain) by our hotel. I just got out of the shower, so I'm feeling a little better, but all in all, I'm done with Rome. Tomorrow we leave for Florence, and I can't wait!