I Missed the Colisseum and the Forum.

Yeah...I'm kinda an idiot. But I figure after 2000+ years, what's another few for it to wait? A night of partying with University students in San Lorenzo may not be as appealing in two decades. And I obviously wasn't missing the soccer game. So yeah, ah well.

Rome was pretty much a nonstop party. I didn't stay at the Yellow Hostel. This is significant because I thought I was going to, to the point where I asked them to find my reservation and I as surprised when they couldn't. Where I did stay, Hotel Alessandro's, was right around the corner, so I pretty much became a Yellow groupie after I met people on their nightly pub crawl. Seriously, one hostel had a bar with a patio that was always crowded and one didn't. Where would you hang out? (That is, except for the hour at my hostel with free pizza every night.)

Highlights were definitely walking around Rome at night with a bottle of wine and Dixie cups and the soccer game. Around 2:30AM on the uber-classy night, we sat down in front of the Colisseum, and I remember I kept saying "We're in front of the fucking Colisseum!" over and over. It was pretty damn cool.

The soccer game, my first ever, kicked ass. Roma beat Atalanta 2-1 trailing by a game on the last game of their regular season before all the different European tourneys. Unofortunately Inter Milan drew, so Roma ended the season a half game out. Though the top four go to the tourneys, so it's fine. It was the coolest thing to see when the scoreboard kept updating the other game and the stadium cheered or jeered in unison depending on the update. So much better atmosphere than most sporting events I've ever been to, maybe with the exception of college football. The two biggest cheers game whenever opponents of Inter or Lazio, their bitter, hated rivals scored. And it was particularly funny when Siena scored against Inter because the crowd, all listening to the game on the radio would cheer in unison right before the score update. In fact, they once all cheered with no score update, and I found out only later that night that Inter had missed a penalty kick.

Anyway, so far Rome has probably been my favorite city mostly because I had people to hang out with the whole time, and definitely had the most quality bonding time out of any of the stops. And I may get a local's tour of Montreal out of the whole deal. I'm holding you to that, Hugo, if you're reading. Also, you can't trip without finding another ruin or church, so there's that.