Roma II: British accents at an Italian fountain

********Saturday********

With 15+ people (Alex and Coreen left today and were replaced by Nick, Hannah and Katie), coordination can be difficult. Most of the group went to see the Vatican. Hailey, Seul, Kally, Christine and I skipped it, knowing we'd be taking a trip there with the Renn class in a few weeks. Kally and Christine had left early to take advantage of the last days of sale season. Seul, Hailey and I woke up around noon (thinking it was 10:00–whoops), got some lunch, got some gelato, and headed out in search of the Pantheon. *Insert 20 minute walk that took us two hours the night before here.*

When we got there, we arrived on the back side of the building. I was still completely in awe, though all we could see was the gigantic backside of the dome and old remains of shattered columns. The front of the building literally made my jaw drop. It seemed impossible at first to take in the entire front of the building at once, it was just so immense. I marveled at the columns carved more than a thousand years ago and still supporting the huge building.

We didn't arrive until around 14:30, so we missed the time of day when the sun is directly overhead and light shines in completely through the hole in the roof. There was still a good deal of light pouring in, and the inside of the building was so awing in the natural light. Raphael is also buried there, under one of many statues of Mother Mary I've seen since I've been here. Seeing his tomb and knowing such a great artist was decaying mere feet away was pretty eerie.

We met up with Kally and Christine after we left. They were just arriving, so they went to look around inside and we went to look around for Carnivale masks. We must've gone into at least a dozen shops in search of the perfect, cheapest one. I knew I wanted one in dark blue and gold, but every one I came across that fit the description was either somehow broken or cost too much. We couldn't find the souvenir shop we'd stumbled across before, that we of course now remembered as having the absolute best selection of perfect masks. Hailey found hers first. Slightly deterred but still going, about three shops later I saw The One. The mask was just large enough to cover the top half of my face and my nose. The right side was hand-painted in dark blue, the left in gold. Hand-molded and painted gold wisps cover the face, and a rainbow trim outlines the entire body. And, as if to prove it was made for me, tiny lines of music notes painted in black ink cover above the right eye and on the right cheek. 15 euro very well spent.

Seul found the perfect cat-shaped mask later at the shop Kally and Christine had found near the hostel and bought their masks. When we met up with Kally and Christine again at the Fontana di Trivi (our third time there this weekend–keep count) we knew what we had to do. The gelato place we had stopped at right next to the fountain two weekends before was, of course, still open, and the place we had visited earlier in the day lacked the vital Nutella gelato for Seul. So I swore off gelato for the rest of the week after this, and had my second cup, qualifying it with the fact that I hadn't finished the first.

Not as much shopping was done to take advantage of sale season as we'd planned, but we did stop in a mini-department store-ish place with aisles and aisles of make up before stealing a bus back to the hostel.

Seul and I planned on looking for sneakers in the thousands of shoe stores near the hotel when we got back, since we'd both neglected to bring running shoes and were (still are) desperately in need of a good run. Random side note: No one runs in Viterbo. I've seen two people running since I've been here and they were both USAC kids. And even one of them told me she's only seen one other person running around town. And yet, they're all in shape. Weird.

So Hailey went back to the hotel while Christine, Seul and I went to find Seul her mask. After we left the souvenir shop, a huge crowd of people had formed and music was pumping outside of Santa Maria di Gradi, so we went to see what it was. A giant mass of people surrounded a group of men in the center where we couldn't tell what was going on and weren't sure if we'd be safe if we got close enough to look. I held up my camera and tried to take some pictures over the crowd. In the middle, it looked like a group of men in red jerseys kicking around a ball in a makeshift soccer game, which would explain the sporadic cheering. Just when we figured it must be for the soccer game that weekend and were about to head back towards the shoe stores, another huge throng of people thrust into the street, seemingly out of nowhere. There held up a banner in arabic that I couldn't read and were chanting something. Some kind of protest, we surmised. I should get the hell out of there, I surmised.

We sought temporary shelter inside a cafe and when we decided the parade wasn't too rowdy, we power walked our way through and back to the hotel. We watched from the safety of our hotel room, which, conveniently, had a view right onto the street.

None of us are still completely sure what the protest was about, though I've now heard everything from fighting fascism and racism to protesting surveillance to protecting children. Christine dubbed it "Hate Everything Day" and I'm most inclined to go with that.

Once the parade left our area, or, at least, was far enough away that we could no longer hear it, we met up across the street where we saw Hanah and Katie had arrived and some of the others were drinking their before-dinner prosecco. We all metroed to Spagna in a giant group again, but unlike the pub crawl we had done en masse the night before, that was the last time we were all together that night.

Lauren, Hailey, Seul, Hanah and were ready for some dinner and went to fill our stomachs with some Italian food while the others ate themselves some Indian food. We planned on meeting up with them after, but the night had other plans. When we finished our dinner, the others were still at their ristorante, where they would continue to be until after 22:30. So we headed to the Despar, got some vino e cioccolato, and headed for Fontana di Trivi visit number four.

We spoke in British accents and drank our bottles by the Trivi for quite some time without noticing how frigid it was. When the others finally called us and said they were done with dinner and would be embarking on their own pub crawl this evening, we nixed the plan to meet up, opting instead to keep up our night of chilling by the lit-up sites of ancient Roma.

It was a great time. Turns out the final ancient Roma landmark we were to hit up was McDonald's. Those girls I was with seriously craved some American food and inhaled three large and one small fries. I continued my ban on fast food and didn't eat any of it, although I did drink a Fanta that my stomach later seriously regretted. Chalk up carbonated drinks as another food/beverage I've sworn off (again) for (at least) the week.

I think it was my first weekend night where I was back in the place of sleep before 1 a.m., but it was one of the most fun nights, too. We all passed out to be up by 09 the next day to take advantage of free breakfast before check out.