Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012: Siena, Italy

I don't particularly feel like writing a whole lot today or uploading tons of pictures, but I will do a little of both those things. Please don't expect this to be very organized. 

As I mentioned a while ago I went to a soccer, or calcio, game last Thursday. Here are some highlights:

Obviously Italians really like their soccer, but I've learned this isn't true for all Italians (for example, Giuseppe always changes the channel when it comes on). That being said, the crowd was certainly fun to watch. Siena duked it out with Bologna whose fans, when their team was being introduced, set off a flare. What?? That's something I've never seen before.

Secondly, the Siena team had lots of cheers and songs in which there was no way for me to participate. But they all sang and bobbed along happily rooting for their team and I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Aside from really loving soccer, Italians are also stereotypically body-language based, meaning they use a lot of gestures when they speak. A classic one I saw at the game was thrusting their arm forward with their hand shaking while they yelled something unidentifiable. I think I'll take that one back home with me.

Also, Siena won. And I got to yell like crazy with the rest of the fans.

Here are some pictures from Rome. Since I already wrote about (most) of these, I'll just put captions on them.

St. Peter's Basilica

It's hard to tell, but that's the Pietà.

Delicious and wonderful Giolitti

The Coliseum at night

Trevi Fountain. I know I look real good.

Okay, this picture warrants a story. Monday was my last day in Rome and Amber and I kind of wanted to just be casual, so we went shopping. I actually didn't buy anything (go me!) but it was still fun, as shopping always is. After we decided just to stroll back to the B&B where we said we'd be ready to check-out at 3 pm. On the way back we found this palm/tarot card reader. I've always been sorely tempted by those ghetto houses with palm reading signs on them, and apparently Amber also had it on her bucket list, so had our fortunes read. The guy was kind of hard to understand, not only because English was his second language, but he would also vaguely toss out words like "energy". He told me I'd be really successful and all the boys love me, so I can't complain too much. I'd give anyone 5 euro to say things like that to me.