Europe Trip: Day 34, June 23rd

Lubna and I went into Roma on public transportation, she had to meet up with Rosi to work on a project due when she gets back from her trip to Milano. I stuck around for a little while and then went and had ice cream with two of her other friends, Maria and I don't know the other girls name. Maria and Lubna are going on a trip to Istanbul and the Turkish coast in August or September.

After the ice cream I split and headed towards the Vittorio Emanuelle monument. Getting inside it had become a quest for me. I had been thwarted many times by its ambiguous closing times, but this time low and behold it was open! I climbed up the steps and got a good view of Rome from the top, and on the side I found an entrance to a museum on the history of Italy. All the explanations were in Italian, but still it was interesting to see everything.

From the monument I tried to enter a cool looking church, but it was locked. In Italy they close the churches for lunch time, anywhere from noon to 4pm they can all be closed. It was after 3pm, which is when about half of them open up again -- apparently not that one. I made my way back to Via del Corso: the main street between Piazza Venezia (Vittorio Emanuelle monument) and Piazza di Popolo (Egyptian obelisk and many churches).

When I reached Piazza di Popolo (I had seen the Mormons here the previous week) I tried to enter a church that my San Francisco friends from the Catacombs had told me about, but once again it was closed. I saw some people walking up these stairs, and so I followed them to see where it went.

The stairs led to an viewpoint overlooking Piazza di Popolo and the rest of Roma. I stayed there for about half an hour, and then headed back down. When I reached the bottom I saw that the church was open -- finally some luck! There were several paintings, but since I didn't know their significance it wasn't as amazing as the guys from San Francisco had said.

Lubna's university isn't far from Piazza di Popolo, so I met her and we drove back with Francesca. I bought some pizzas and we ate back at their apartment -- they kept trying to pay for it, but my stubbornness finally won out. Then Alessandra came and picked us up to go to a concert (open air) in a park called Villa Ada. The music was more or less Arabic, with the leader vocalist singing songs in both Italian and Arabic. Funny enough there was a guest singer (or whatever you call that) named Lubna. Despite not being able to understand it, I enjoyed the music.

After the concert finished and the band went off stage, and after a couple encore songs, music kept playing from the speakers and people danced (including the four of us). My favorite was when out of nowhere this guy, who looked homeless, came out and was dancing like crazy. Then he disappeared and came back 10 minutes later drinking beer, so he may or may not have been drunk. I wish I had brought my camera, oh well...