Day 3: Italy

Kenny and I sleep okay but decide to sleep in a little more than expected. The lines at the Vatican can't be that long, right? Wrong. The line at the Vatican Museum has hundreds of people so we head over to St. Peter's Cathedral, which we think you can just walk into. Wrong. Another line. We step into the queue and ignore the people telling us they'll get us in through the back door for a fee. Good thing we did because, despite the line, we're inside the doors within 10 minutes. The Vatican has very efficient operations. Kenny and I pick a meeting spot in the back of the cathedral and then wander off on our own. St. Peter's is grand and large but I preferred the Pantheon. Still, I'm glad I came and the free admission makes it worth it. An hour or so later, I walk back to the meeting spot and start writing my Day 2 blog post on some napkins. Fifteen minutes later I try to text Kenny (my stepmom has insisted I carry a cell phone and I have yet to test it so I think this is a good test. Kenny's got his Blackberry). I wait another thirty minutes. No text, no Kenny.

I decide to climb the cupula on my own. I pay 5 euro to take the stairs as I want to prepare for Mt. Olympus. At the top of the stairs, I'm a bit winded but glad I saved a few euro and got some good exercise. Then I realize that everyone, including those who took the elevator, have to climb more stairs. We climb to the top of the dome within the church. That is okay. I'm a little disappointed. This is what I get for my 5 euro? I follow people up another set of stairs. For about 15 minutes I climb up stairs behind a woman who is a little too large and out of shape to be climbing (seeing St. Peters is a big driver, I guess). Finally, we reach the top and are in open air. The view is amazing. I can see Rome and within the Vatican walls. Totally excellent. I walk back down all the stairs and find Kenny at the meeting spot. I tell him that he absolutely has to walk up to the top. He leaves me with his Blackberry, which is very nice especially since he's about to be gone for an hour.

Once he's back, we head out to find food. We recognize that we're right by the Vatican, which means a lot of tourist restaurants. We find the best looking pizza we can and sit down. Then Kenny goes to a nearby gelato place even though I tell him the Lonely Planet says there's a great gelato place a few blocks away. As I suspected, it's not so great. Afterwards we head back to the Vatican Museum and have to walk by the recommended gelato place. Kenny says he's game for some more gelato so we order and this stuff is quite good. We get to the museum around 4:30 and it's closed for the day. Oops. We decide to return the next day. We walk back over to St. Peter's so that we can walk into town. There we run into our Mexican friends again!!! How wonderful because I want to exchange information with them. It turns out that they didn't make it to the Vatican early either because their alarm didn't go off. They said there was no line at 11:30 for the museum and that it's worth seeing. Sounds good. We also decide to head to the Colosseum in the morning. Maybe we'll bump into each other again there. We say goodbye and start heading south.

We walk for a long ways, wandering whenever we see something interesting. Kenny's looking for a purse for his girlfriend so we stop every once in a while in a shop and he takes pictures to send to her for approval. We stop and watch street performers in Piazza Navona and then I want to get to the river so that we can see the sunset. We pick up the pace and find ourselves a bridge to the Travestere neighborhood. On the bridge there's a band putting on a great show in pink and black. We stop and watch them for a while. I laugh when I learn their name: the Pink Puffers.

It's time for dinner, so after looking at several places (both Lonely Planet suggested and not), we decide to eat at one of the LP suggested restaurants since we've gotten good recommendations from there thus far. We want pasta but Pizzeria Ivo looks promising so we order pasta at the pizza place. My fettucine with mushrooms, tomato, and shrimp is excellent. Kenny's spaghetti and ham is dry, unfortunately. Luckily the ham is good. I'm thrilled to see all the Italians waiting for seats. We've picked a good place. We're feeling more awake than the day before so we decide to hang out and watch another street performer. Kenny buys a Nutella crepe for dessert. Luis, the Mexican, has said there's a bus nearby that we can take home so we try to find it.

After talking to numerous Italians, we hop on a full bus at Piazza Venezia sometime around 11 pm. The driver tells us he will show us where to get off. We are on the bus for a long time and many people are getting off, including some people who said they were going to Via Aurelia (where we want to go). We ask the bus driver and he says to continue because he's going to make a loop. So we continue. More people get off the bus and now we are starting to question what's going on. The driver assures us that we should continue.

All of a sudden we are at the last stop and there's just us and one other guy on the bus. We ask the driver what to do and he says to catch another bus from here. When will the bus come, we ask? Ten minutes he says. I walk over to the stop and it says there are no more buses there after midnight. It is now after midnight. We go back over to the now darkened bus and tell the bus driver this. He tells us "ten minutes" and drives away. Now we are alone in a strange neighborhood at the Stazione Monte Mario. We wait 10 minutes just in case the driver knows something we don't. No bus comes. What to do now? Luckily Kenny has Camping Roma's number in his phone so he calls them and gets two taxi numbers. Kenny thinks the automated voice tells him that a taxi has been dispatched and will come in 5 minutes. We wait for 10 and then call Camping back. Kenny asks if the woman will please call the taxi because she speaks Italian. The woman tries several taxis but none will pick us up because we are not at an official taxi stand nor do we have an address. Arghhh!

Every once in a while taxis with passengers drive by and we wave at them but they zoom by. I suggest that we should jump out at the next one that drives by when they have to slow down a bit for a turn. It's now 1 am and I decide to call the one person I know in Rome. She, understandably, does not answer the phone and I leave a message. I think maybe she will answer if our mutual friend calls her from the States so I call my stepmom to arrange this. Around this time, two off duty busses pull up and we jump on one to get help. The drivers are trying to tell us which buses to use to get back but they are telling us about buses that will not run until 5:30 am and we need to get back now. We are having trouble getting the point across when I have another idea. I suggest Kenny call the woman at Camping again and have her translate. Five minutes later we have a private bus and two drivers taking us back to Camping. Yay!!! Around 1:45 am, we arrive at the Camping gate. We offer the two drivers 40 euro (my 10 and Kenny's very generous 30) but they say something to us that I believe means, "Italians aren't like that." I'm so happy to be home that I want to hug the two men but I just thank them profusely.

We are so high on adrenaline by the time we get to our rocking room that I do some laundry by hand and Kenny uses his Blackberry. Finally, at 3 am, we go to bed. I don't even bother setting the alarm.

Lesson of the day: Sometimes Italians will pretend to know something when they don't. If a person doesn't immediately give you a clear answer then don't listen to what comes next.