Day 8

I decided to have another chill morning today. The only productive thing I did was print out the required reading I need to do for my City of Rome class this week in the computer lab.

We had lunch nearby at a little place called Portofino. The selection of food is small, but the sandwiches we got were quite good. It actually looks like their specialties are fun drinks and desserts, so we'll probably be going back another day at nighttime.

Many of us from both the DTW and Rome semester programs signed up to go to Castel Sant'Angelo this afternoon. As usual, I'm really glad I went! It's really a marvelous structure, and had so many little passageways and rooms and things inside of it. The views of the city from its terrace were breathtaking.

Near the end of our time at Castel Sant'Angelo, we found these old cannonballs (or at least I think that's what they were) that everyone was trying to lift. After starting to get into exercising with weights this summer, I thought maybe I could handle one of the cannonballs. I could not.

Classic-ly enough, Katie and I forgot that our first theology class had been cancelled for today. This little slip of the mind resulted in a relatively inactive afternoon following the trip to the Castel, which was probably not the worst thing. We ended up doing our reading for our other class like the good little students we are.

We had dinner at a restaurant near the Vatican called L'Isola di Pizza, which I believe means Pizza Island. It was kind of an unusual place, but they had a good variety of pizzas (we finally strayed from Margherita!), and I got a very delicious bellini. Hanging from the ceiling was an obnoxious, red "1968 Vespa" which really looked no different than the 10,000 21st Century Vespas we see every day here, but whatever. There was also a lot of garlic hanging from the ceiling, and a few of the servers kept going into this sketchy basement thing, so I think a vampire lives beneath the restaurant.

Tomorrow probably won't be too exciting either, so I apologize to those of you who actually read this...but I'm sure this weekend will have much more action!