Marianna's European Adventures: Roma days 3-5

So we had daylight savings yesterday here in Ireland. It was very disorienting as no one was sure if their electronics had automatically updated themselves or not. As a result there was a period of time in the morning of trying to figure out the correct time. My electronics have creepily picked up on the fact that they are in Ireland and corrected themselves. I am seriously disturbed by this. Also, because of daylight savings it's now fairly light out until after 8 PM. Which is freaking amazing.

Back to Rome!

Monday

Today was fairly low key. Liz and I did some more sightseeing, checking out the Renoir exhibit at the Capitolene Museum, very nice. The museum had a lot of information on modern Italian history, including an incredibly informative video on the education system of Italy in the early 20th century. Oh yes, we watched all of it...and it was long.

The museum is part of the Vittorio Emanuelle monument, which is MASSIVE, so we explored that as well. Think Lincoln Memorial on steroids.

We then set out to visit Foro Italico, which Liz's MTV Europe guide called "totally dope". Foro Italico is a facist era sports complex/Rome's main sports complex these days. Unfortunately we're bad at following directions and ended up....in the middle of no where. We took "train 2" instead of "tram 2", whoops. We saw a little market and walked towards it. As we walked along we noticed that they only sold flowers...odd...oh and gravestones...oh....we were at a cemetery. Might as well go inside! Glad we did, absolutely gorgeous cemetery. Umbrella pine tress gave cool shade to a sprawling park like setting overlooking Italian farmland with the mountains in the distance. Cool. The day was finished with a trip to the gellato shop and people watching at the Trevi Fountain. Good times.

Tuesday

VATICAN DAY! We made sure to get up extra early in order to get into the Vatican quickly. We got there at around 8:30 and still had a 45 minute wait just to get tickets to the museum. Once inside we began the trip to the Sistine Chapel. The museum is ironically the closest thing I can imagine to hell. Imagine being jam packed with every tourist in the world (it didn't help that it was Holy Week) walking down a never ending series of hallways. I'm serious, it took a good hour just to navigate the hallways to the Chapel, and we didn't stop to look at any of the exhibits. To pass the time Liz and I pretended we were on MTV Cribs: Pope Edition. We're going to hell. We did stop and have a blasphemous laugh when we realized that one of the tapestries in the tapestry room looked like a paparazzi shot of Jesus. He had a surprised look on his face....maybe you had to be there.

The Sistine Chapel was impressive, I cannot deny that. One of those places where you just sort of stand there and marvel that someone took the time to do that. In our fast paced 21st century world, the idea that people would take the time to paint such a room is an impressive thought.

We left the museum and went to the "Tomb of the Popes" sweeet. I was enjoying a leisurely stroll through the tombs of dead popes when all of a sudden I hit a wall of people and a man yelling "NO PICTURES" ah, helllllllo JPII! Scored some grandma points there, I think. He has a very nice area, decorated with flowers...I wonder if the other popes are jealous, they don't have flowers.

We wandered around Vatican City for awhile after that. We even found a movie being filmed! I've always wanted to stumble onto a movie set. Towards mid-afternoon we were tired so we went back to our hostel for a siesta. We were awoken two hours later by hostel guy bringing in our two new roommates (Fernando had left earlier in the morning, much to our disappointment). I stared at them groggy eyed and they introduced themselves. I immediately forgot their names and instead named them Nick and Steve. Nick looked right off of an episode of the Real World...in fact I'm still pretty sure he was on the Real World at one point. Steve was his quiet little buddy. They were both grad students from Florida taking two months off the explore Europe. Cool, I could deal with that. Liz and I left to go pick up dinner but ended up returning to crash at the hostel shortly after. We are the epitome of lame.

Wednesday-SOCCER DAY!

We were awoken at seven in the morning by Nick yelling "15 minutes dude, 15 minutes" at Steve. We would learn over the next few days that they enjoyed their schedules and had chosen today to visit the Vatican. Nick had no time for laziness. They would sadly find out later that the Vatican was closed for no apparent reason. Ha.

Anyway, this blog is about me. Liz and I got up a few hours later and tried to go to Foro Italico again. This time we found it, but it was closed because there was a "match" of unknown sport that night. More on this later. So instead we took our picnic lunch that we had packed down to the banks of the Tiber. Excellent decision. It was sunny and about 70 degrees out, perfect. I even got a sunburn! We began to walk back to center city Rome along the Tiber....or so we though. The mountains in the distance began to get closer and we realized that we were walking away from the city. Nuts. So we walked back and caught the tram.

We then met our friend Sarah because we would be going to a SOCCER GAME THAT NIGHT!

Now the soccer game really deserves it's own entry, but I'm too excited and couldn't wait any longer to talk about it.

Together we left Sarah's apartment and went towards the stadium, to our surprise it was AT THE FORO ITALICO! That was the "match" that was going on and the reason we couldn't go inside. Oh well, we still got to go! The match was between Roma and Lazio, the two major teams of Rome. Think Yankees-Mets...on steroids, crack and any other illicit mind altering substance you can think of. We arrive at the stadium and the first thing i notice is that we are 3 of roughly 7 girls attending the game. hmmmmmm. We enter the stadium and are hit with a wall of sound. We're sitting on the Roma side, not in the crazy people section, but just to the right of them. Still pretty rowdy. Everyone's singing and having a good time, flags are waving, its pretty cool. An announcement is made over the intercom, I ask Sarah, who speaks Italian, what was said. She says she couldn't make it out but it was something about fireworks, we assume "Please don't set off fireworks". WRONG! about 15 minutes before kickoff the crowds really get going. Smoke machines, fireworks and other totally unsafe devices are set off in the stands, people are yelling and dancing. It's AWESOME. Perhaps the funniest thing was once the game started everyone sat down. Apparently its not cool to stand during a soccer match, total soccer faux pas. Roma scored the first goal and there is no way I could ever convey the amount of energy that went through the room at that point. It was absolutely amazing...and it was only one goal! The game was a great one to go to, the teams were tied 2-2 in the final seconds. Regulation time had ended and we were in penalty minutes when Lazio tipped a goal in. The entire stadium went silent. Both Roma and Lazio fans didn't know what to do. I'm not sure if you've ever been in a stadium with 60,000 or so silent people....but it is the most terrifying thing ever. You don't know whats going to happen. These people are so emotionally charged that they could crack at any minute. As the Lazio section burst into cheers after about 3 seconds, the Roma fans, every single one of them, stood up in silence and without saying a word walked out of the stadium. Silence. I kept looking straight ahead, eye on the tram, don't slow down, don't make eye contact. Most terrifying, yet exhilerating 5 minute walk of my life.

The bus ride home that followed was awful, taking about an hour of being crammed against a window. When I got off I was literally carried off of the bus by the crowd, my feet didn't touch the ground. After checking to make sure my wallet, camera and kidneys were still there, we ascended Mount Sandy and settled in for the night. Someone had left American gossip magazines in the hallway so we set about reading those. Nick and Steve arrived shortly after, having also gone to the game. I learned that Steves real name was Drew...I continued to call him Steve. I feel asleep reliving the greatest sporting event I have ever witnessed live, chuckling to myself at the realization that I really do enjoy the idea of soccer.