domenica,domenica,domenica!!!!!! lazio v bologna!!!!!

well saturday and sunday were pretty lazy days. we spent most of saturday just walking around the city with dan as our ghetto tour guide. we saw the spanish steps, all different kinds of fountains, the pantheon, and a ton of different embassies. we did a little bit of shopping too, but nothing too outrageous. i thought that by this point in the trip that i would be getting sick of italian food. wrong. ive been eating pasta, pizza, fish and ham since i got here and it seems like each place is better than the last. so after tooling around the streets of rome and seeing a few of the sights we got back to the apartment for a little while to unwind before we went out. i cant remember the name of the area we went too but it was packed full of people, bars, and gelataria's. we started by going to a book store that turned into a place that only sold shots after a certain time. they made their shot glasses out of chocolate, filled half with rum, half with a chocolate liqueur, and topped with whip cream. they were rather tasty to say the least. we went to a few more bars and got to have a taste of fairly touristy nightlife in rome. it was a lot of fun to say the least.

sunday we spent doing nothing but being educated about international futbol, or soccer to you yanks. on the way to get tickets for the match we stopped through st. peter's square to see the pope give his weekly address to the people. its sort of like a weekly current

events speech. we got tickets to go to lazio vs bologna match that afternoon. lazio is a team based in rome and bologna is a team based in the city of the same name somewhere else in italy. they played in a league of all italian teams. to say the least it was quite the experience. this was not a particularly important match, but the fans that were there were crazy! they spent the whole time singing songs and chanting. i later found out that almost all of them were expletive laden rants aimed at the owner of lazio. to bad for us the game ended 0-0. we left the match and went to a bar down the street from dan's place to watch barcelona vs real madrid. i think after sunday ashley has a much greater appreciation for the intricacies of futbol.

monday was our first real day of doing touristy stuff in rome. we spent the whole day just seeing the vatican and st. peter's basilica. the vatican museum is a massive place filled with an unimaginable amount of artwork. its more than i could possibly describe right now. the one thing that does stick out is the sistine chapel. it was breathtaking to say the least. to think that one man spent 4 years on his back painting the ceiling of this room that is about 40ft wide and 100 ft long is mind boggling. now i

know that each time ive talked about in church in this blog ive said that it was the most amazing one i have ever seen. st peter's basilica is the most amazing church i have ever seen. it was massive, beautiful, and ornate. it was quite a site to see. tommorow i think we are going to go see the coliseum and a few other sites that are nearby it.