When in Rome...

Rome. The capital of civilization for over 1,000 years. The center of Catholicism. And apparently, the only place in Europe that has MLB on big screen TV's. After a mid morning departure from Florence, we got to Rome somewhere around 3:00 yesterday. The weather has been amazing thus far, for almost all of the days from Nice onwards, which has been really great. Plenty of sun. Found our B&B near the train station, hit the town. Just sort of spent the day wandering around. Found the Spanish Steps, was almost crushed in a stampede of Chanel and Dior clad Roman youths. Sat around in various piazzas, walked along the Tiber, tried to take artsy photos with St. Peter's against the setting sun, whatever. We (being myself, Hilary, and Kevin) had been attempting to find a pizzeria recommended by Rick Steves, which led us on somewhat of a wild goose chase around the city centre, only to find it closed. So we ate in a different place and were planning on walking to the Trevi Fountain, then retiring to our B&B to watch Italian TV, become anti-social with our iPods, or something to that effect.

Not to happen.

We stumbled across an Irish pub, which could be any random Irish pub in a non Irish city, except for the words APRIL 9TH- 1:00 A.M.- NY YANKEES vs. MINNESOTA. This could only mean one thing. We were surely destined to see the Twins. Being only 9:00 P.M. at the time of sighting, we had a while to wait. Fortunately for us, we had stumbled into (self proclaimingly) Rome's "expatriate hotspot." So anyways, that's pretty much we did all night. Caught the end of the Phillies/Mets game, most of the Rockies/Dodgers game, and then had to suffer through one inning of Sidney Ponson's crap pitching in the Twins/Yankees game. But still, it was amazing. All 3 of us had a good time I think. Kevin and I had our first experiences with the infamous "Black and Tan." And besides seeing live baseball, we had good talks about the flat, coming back to the US, travel, yada, yada, yada.

After I was sated watching one inning of the Twins, we attempted to find our way back to our B&B at 2:00 in the morning. Taking a few wrong turns and getting twisted around a bit, we run into the Colosseum. We were all in agreement that it isn't what you would typically find wandering around Luther in the wee hours of the morning.

Slept till 11:00 today, got some groceries, am here at the internet cafe, now we're going to hit up ancient Roman sights. St. Peter's and the Vatican tomorrow. Welcome to Rome.