The coincidences keep getting freakier

We checked out the square at the Vatican on Wednesday but narrowly missed the Pope speak, which I hear was quite a spectacle. After that we headed over to a walking tour of the city by Chris, a great tour guide originally from Ohio. He walked us through some sites and gave us a bit of a history lesson on the Roman empire. Lots of very interesting stuff, and made me kind of miss history classes back in high school.

Once the tour was finished we headed back to the hostel and grabbed dinner at a gourmet pizza place nextdoor. Soon enough it was 8:15, which was the meeting time for the pub crawl. I don't remember all the details of the night, but the wacky pictures of me on Dave's camera suggest that I had a good time along with everybody else.

Yesterday a majority of those who went on the pub crawl was in recovery mode, and it was a gloomy day, so we decided to just chill out at the hostel and cook some snags in celebration of Australia Day. Alas, we couldn't find any Aussie beer (that wasn't Fosters) so we just settled for some Carlsberg to go with the meals.

That night we went for a walk over to the Fountain of Trevi, which was very beautiful at night, apart from the scumbags fishing for coins from the fountain. On the walk back we were talking to an Aussie chick from Adelaide (I think her name was Jemma, but I can't be 100% sure). Out of sheer coincidence, it turned out that she was very good friends with our friend Rebecca, who studied in Adelaide.

When we got back to the hostel we played some drinking games with the staff and the other backpackers. Drinking games are fun. I then ducked out with a few of them to a late-night pizzeria and had a good chat. I promptly fell asleep after getting back to the hostel and got some short sleep for an early start.

This morning we checked out the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Basilica. I personally thought St. Peter's was far better than the Sistine Chapel, though I like sculptures better than paintings. We climbed the dome at St. Peter's, which gave some great views of the city. It started to rain after this so we rushed over to check out the Spanish Steps before calling it a day in terms of sightseeing.

Tomorrow morning we head over to Bologna to visit Alex, which we're looking forward to.