Roman Holiday

10:25 AM Padova – Happy Holidays everyone! Greetings from a chilly (46 degrees) Padova. I am currently in my room procrastinating, delaying going to the library to study for the rest of the day so I thought I’d update the story of my life for the past week. Last week started birthday season as 6 people here have birthdays in December. I was the one who was lucky enough to be able celebrate it in ROME :-P
We had a class in Rome on Sunday so we all took the train down Friday night to get a little extra time in the Eternal City. We arrived Friday night, checked into our hostel and went straight to the Spanish steps for a pub crawl to help bring in my 22nd year of life.
Let me say this, pub crawls = American crawl. There were about 50 people who went on the pub crawl with us and most of them were from the States. However we did manage to meet a handful of Canadians, and this one kid named Barry from South Africa. All and all it was a good time.
Saturday: Birthday in Rome. Grace and I made our way to the Vatican early in the morning to catch up with the rest of the group who stayed in a different hostel. Met up with Dave and Catherine there and the 4 of us wandered Rome with no place in particular to go. We had all been to Rome and had seen many of the main things so we decided to just do what we want and wander where we wanted. It was great, we ate near the Pantheon, walked through the Roman Forum and saw the Trevi fountain along the way.
During the entire day there was a big protest against the current Italian government – we saw thousands of people in the streets (the news said 2 million) waving flags of their respective parties and many supporting the old Prime Minister, Silvio Burlusconi . After seeing a bunch of people standing outside a building we found out he was going to be leaving from there shortly. Even though we were the obvious foreigners, Grace and I decided to stay and wait for him. We waited for 20 minutes with some guys with Uzis and another guy taken straight out of the Godfather and then he came out and gave a little wave. It was pretty cool to be that close to a former member of the G-8 who is still such a powerful man.
After that my awesome friends took me out to a great dinner in Trestevere and then we went to a couple other bars. It was a great time.
Sunday: Class. Went to a bunch of churches, saw the “cambia della guardia” (changing of the guard) at the President’s house as we were walking by, went to church (In Spanish) at the Gesú (out of which the Jesuit order was founded) and got home late Sunday night.
All in all it was a great weekend – Thanks to everyone, and Happy Birthday Kristy!