Woke up early for a good, relaxed shot at the breakfast buffet. I invented a new drink, which we’re calling a “Charles”. (But not until Saturday, 2-23. That morning, I was just calling it “the best latte ever”.)

Something about the best laid plans…

Turns out our studio professor got the urge to text a few people the night before around 9 or 10. While the rest of us slept soundly, a few rested on the knowledge that we were meeting with the prof earlier than originally planned. Woo hoo. (I found this out in the middle of my relaxed breakfast. Talk about a downer.)

So we scramble about to get everyone together, trying our dernedest to not be late. We miss the first wave of students exiting the hotel. We’re stalled for just a bit longer with a few last minute details. We’re the second and final wave of students, trekking to the Metro with a certain air of failure.

The Metro doors open, and we get on, ready to be squeezed together all unconfortable like. A few seconds later…

…our prof enters through the same doors.

Score one, us.

We arrive perfectly on time. (Ha HA!)

We exit the Metro and its corresponding station and walk a ways to the Piazza del Popolo. (Interesting word, I know.) If there’s one thing we need more of in the U.S., it’s piazzas. (Not pizzas, piazzas. Wide open spaces. Uncluttered. Nifty cool.) There’s a great obelisk in the center (I don’t know if I’ve adressed this at all, so I will now. The Romans jacked a bunch of Egyptian obelisks and used them to landmark the city. They’re fantastic. Moving on.) and plenty of statues adorning the perimiter.

We gawk a bit. Then Peter (the prof) pointed us in the direction of a church on the corner. We enter. They’re having mass. Technically, we’re not even supposed to be in there when mass is doing its thing. We look a little, then feel awkward and cheese it.

I spot a caffe directly across the way. I drop in and get a Coke and a Kinder Egg. (I know I’ve explained that before.) I open it, and find a rat stencil. (Srsly. A rat. On a stencil. Fan. Tastic.) Jessica watches, and laughs at me. Then, she decides it would be even better to by another Kinder Egg (which we’ve decided will always be better than whatever I get) and rub it in my face. She does, and does. (It was a decoder, for crying out loud. Spy gear > stencil rat. Duh.)

Peter gathers us up again and we head up. One one end of the ellipse of a piazza is a set of stairs leading several stories above the level of the piazza. There we encounter a fantastic view of (maybe) half of Rome.

After amdiring the city layout and snapping plenty of pictures, we head further away from the piazza into a grand park area. We pass ROWS upon ROWS upon FRIKIN ROWS of BUSTS. I’ve never seen so many statue heads just chillin’ out in the middle of nowhere. I would’ve photo’d every dern last one of them, but Peter was on some kind of mission. Boo.

The park area starts as a very structured, gridbased design, then eventually becomes much more meandering and naturalish. Interesting, I know.

We make it to the Villa Guiliana, our designated destination. We compile enough cash to get in, and then Peter spiels a bit. Then, lo and behold, he declares us free. (This freaked us all a bit. So far, our tour guides were horrifically possesive.)

The hands off approach worked wonders on our morale. We sketched and photo’d and generally enjoyed ourselves until we had to leave. The place had interesting landscape and architectural features, and also sported an Etruscan artifact collection. Schnazzy indeed.

We regroup, and Peter fearlessly leads us into the wild Rome yonder.

A few terribly implimented cliches later, we show up at Renzo Piano’s crazy UFOish auditoriums. These things are totally crazy looking. We had an appointment (of course) to go inside each of the three auditoriums. (The auditoriums are like Goldilocks’ bears. Baby, Momma, Daddy.) The baby auditorium is still enough to make you interested, very classy and quite spiffed out. The momma auda is a step up on the size scale, and a bit more impressive. Then comes the daddy auditorium. Daddy is HUGE and STYLISH. Google that mess. It’s fantastic. Many pictures were snapped.

Jessica talked with the maintenance guys there, and they let her play the piano for a while.

Or not. Hard to remember exactly.

After the tour, we were free for the day. We have lunch there at the auditorium complex. (The staff seems a bit snobby, and earns our immediate dislike. We don’t stay long.) We readybreak with the intention of getting to the inside of the Colosseum.

We get sidetracked for a minute in the bookstore near the auditorium complex. (By “a minute” I mean “some 30 minutes or more”.) We pry ourselves away from music and comics and head back to the Metro station.

We’re (semi)hurrying at this point, because we think the Colosseum closes sometime soon. Upon exiting at the correct stop, we run into a few friends who tell us the following great new bulletins:

• It’s raining.
• The Colosseum is closed.

Awesome, I know.

So we’re forced to scratch that plan. Bummer. No Colosseum interior for us. But the exterior is just as grand as ever. We stop for a few more pictures (The rain lasted not long at all.) and get pestered by a few guys touting a club-hopping party later that night. We cheese it and try to find something else intersting to see. We end up going exactly the wrong way (We don’t realize this until the next day, of course.) and killing plenty of time just walking.

Now, earlier in the week, we had seen signs for a Hard Rock Cafe somewhere in Rome. Everyone is highly intrigued. So the plan is to meet there around 6:30 and Rock it up.

The only hole in this plan is: NO ONE KNOWS WHERE IT IS.

I remember where I saw the sign, but that’s about it. So we Metro from the Colosseum to St. Peter’s. (Kind of a ways, if you don’t know.) We walk to St. Peter’s Square (Ellipse), and down the main street where I saw the sign. It’s still there, thank goodness.

Of course, all it gives is an address.

Well sure, why not. I drop in one of the nearby shops to ask for directions. The very happy and jovial lady tells me this, and I quote: “You have to take a bus. *shut door in face* “

Hrm. Helpfulmuch. Jess phones a friend for the answer, but comes up short. We comb the map for the street name, and eventually find it. Where is it? Back where we started, more or less.

ReMetro.

We tell everyone else how to get there, and beat them arriving. Our names are written down, we browse the gift shop. A hoodie catches my eye. Our buzzer goes off, we’re seated.

At this point, we’re all but drooling all over the table. (Attractive, I know.) We get Pepsi and order nachos. (SAH-WEET.)

We relax quite a bit, and watch as the others make their way in.

Main course: Cheeseburgers.

Talk about awesome. It was nice to feel a little closer to home than usual.

There were a few quibbles we had:

• Crazy Drunk Guy and His Two Innocent Bystander Kids - He was a little rowdy, “conversing” with the table next to him (the couple there were obviously terrified) and claiming the supremacy of Rome. (and himself, on a few occasions) We assume it was one of the kids’ birthday. Felt bad, but everyone was just waiting for him to sober up enough to go home.
• Crap Waiter - This guy must have been on his way out or something. It’s like he was just trying to keep his tables full. We spent some 3ish hours at dinner, and his lack of service attributed greatly to that timeframe. We had to ASK for refills, and we only got one. We never saw the guy, except at other tables. We were miffed, sure.

And that’s it. The food was great, and I ended up buying the hoodie that caught my eye. I was a happy camper.

We pack up and leave the restaurant, headed for the Metro. (It’s set to close in an hour, we think.) We reach the steps and notice a fantastic metal gate blocking our path.

Awesome. Stranded in Rome. I suggest we can just hoof it. No one seems to like that idea. We find a bus stop…

…and stare at it for 30 minutes, trying to match just one of the stops listed with something on the crap map we have. We fail.

Back to the original plan: walking.

But lo, another bus stop as we round the corner!

This one has stops that sound familiar. We wait a minute, and it shows up. Awesome.

And there you have it. We arrive back at the hotel, clear our memory cards, and cheese it to bed.

Mission accomplished.

END THURSDAY.