"Every Time is Bueno Time"

Today I had my first experience with "Lo Sciopero." Apparently they are very popular in Italy. Sort of like soccer - a national past time. Today's strike wasn't announced until late last night so I didn't know about it when I left this morning. Usually our bus comes ever 35 minutes so I could have been waiting for a long time but I only waited about 15 minutes before deciding to walk. Usually while waiting I see a lot of other buses pass by but today I noticed that there weren't any. I ended up walking but sort of stopped at each stop and looked to see if a bus was coming. I saw one bus the whole time I was walking, but once I got across the river there were more. It was a really beautiful walk and I may try to just walk to class on days I don't have things early in the morning. 

After my internship advising meeting, I went with some friends to St. Peter's. We were just going to walk around and get some gelato but we saw that there wasn't any line to go in so we figured "perché no?" and then there wasn't any line to go to the top of the cupola so again, "perché no?" 551 steps later, we got to see the most spectacular view of Rome. The one thing is that when you are on the top of St. Peter's you can't see St. Peter's so it kind of seemed like something was missing. You could see the Piazza though which was really neat (and we noticed that by now there was a huge line!). There is also a surprising amount of green space in Rome that you don't ever notice. You can also see inside the Vatican walls from up there. I didn't know that when you walked up you get to also go inside the dome and see into the Basilica. When I was down in the Basilica before I didn't even notice that there were people up in the dome. The steps were, of course, steep, tiny, twisting, and tiring. The final 10 or 15 were so vertical that there was a rope hanging from the ceiling rather than a banister! After that we went and mailed some postcards from the Vatican Post Office. Apparently part of it is under construction so it is temporarily in a trailer in the piazza. All in all it was an amazing way to "kill some time." I think it is incredible that I get to do something like that between classes! How did I get that lucky? Unlucky part is that my blisters are gigantic. It looks like some sort of vicious jellyfish is feeding on my ankle. 

Also I saw the gladiator today. Kim wasn't with me though so I didn't go get a picture. He was wearing birkenstocks and socks. It did have a certain gladiator vibe to it though. He isn't quite as legit as the gladiators by the pantheon. I have yet to go to the Colosseum, but I bet they have some awesome ones there.

Went to this really cute gelateria after class today. They had all these really cool and different flavors. One of the usual ones (that they were out of today) is fragola frizzante -- fizzy strawberry. I will definitely have to go back for that one.