"Ask me anything, I'm neither Catholic or Prude."

Well thanks to EVERYONE for the advice to pay for a guided tour of the Vatican Museum. Jenna and I definitely felt that it was worth our euros. Ha, I actually finally stopped to ask the price from one of the many people offering tours because he was the best looking guy I'd seen the whole trip... haha... and it turned out he was originally from South Carolina, go figure. We didnàt have our student i.d. cards, but I guess our charm and good looks let us by on that one. Anyway, I asked if our tour guide would speak English as well as him (tip from Veronica and Kim) and he assured me that our guy was from England and had been doing the tours for years. SOOO, Michael, our tour guide, wove us through the crowds and gave us a spectacular show. He was very funny, and made it clear that he was not Catholic, and would not be offended by any questions or comments that we made. He has been doing these tours for 5 years... and his description of all the artwork in the Sistine Chapel was worth the euros on its own. I was upset we couldn't take pictures of the inside of the chapel - something about Japanese copyright because they did the restoration in the 80's ??? Hopefully our tour guide wasn't pulling our leg on that one because he seemed to do that a lot. When he was talking about the Vatican having its own radio station, he made a jab that the number one song has been Madonna's "Like a Virgin" with George Michael's "Faith" coming in a close 2nd.

So after spending about 3.5 hours doing that, we were hot and our feet hurt. We made it back to our hostel "camp" site and somehow missed the shuttle and were waiting for the next one for almost an hour. That seriously cut down on our pool and nap time. So after relaxing by the pool and having a dinner of pizza with just the sauce and some water, we went back to town in an attempt to find the Pantheon... and we were successful! It still baffles me that all of these monuments are just plopped in the middle of city buildings and busy streets. After marveling the "all seeing eye of heaven" in the Pantheon, we walked down the streets of Rome in search of some special gelato place that Jenna wanted to go to, and then sat on the steps by the Trevi Fountain to enjoy the atmosphere. Even though that area is so ridiculously packed with people, the fountain makes it very festive and a lot of fun.

Well we might try and make a pit stop in Pisa tomorrow before we make it to Florence. That way I can check out the leaning tower and really witness the geotechnical marvel that it is. I just keep thinking of Professor Dickenson's lecture on all of the settling issues with the soil and how everyone proposed to keep it from toppling over. Ha. I hope all the people who are reading this that had soils I and II with me are appreciating this... nerd alert.

There are others waiting for the internet, so I might try and add pictures tomorrow morning. I know I keep saying that... but this time I'm really going to make an effort.

angela