Ummm, a little bit about our time in Rome two months after the fact.

While I realize updating our time in Rome at this point is leaning towards the self-serving side of things, I had to do it.....mostly because I miss the idea of our trip and I guess this takes me back in some way. Weakly esoteric I know, but here she goes.

We arrived in Rome with the heavy hearted knowledge that this was our final destination (well kinda) before heading back to the confines of California. When we arrived, our first contact with a Roman "local" was actually with a girl from the United States as she invited us to take part in "Rome's hottest pub crawl". As silly as it sounds, we actually wanted to partake in a Euro pub crawl but just never got to it to fit into our travels to that point. After we assured the young lady that we would in fact be in front of the Spanish Steps the next day at 9pm, we headed to procure our apartment. We arrived a few minutes early to the apartment, which gave us time to revel in the absolute awesomeness of the location. We were ON Via Del Corso, within a 5 minute walk of the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona and the Trevi Fountain. It was fantastic. By the time we had fully grasped that fact though, the gentleman that was supposed to meet us was 15 minutes late. We gave it a bit of time to account for the inevitable Italian account of "on time", but after 45 minutes we realized there must have been a problem. The buzz of our fantastic location begand to fade. After a few phone calls, we finally got through to the apartment leasing company, who in turn were able to get ahold of the now infamous (in our hearts) Simone. Five minutes later Simone arrived, sweat on brow and full of apologies. So we had our apartment, with air conditioning, and made sure to let Simone know that we HAD to leave at 7:00am on the day of our departure (that's called a set-up) and it was now time to do it up in the city of romance.

After we got settled in, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading to the Spanish Steps in anticipation of our experience as a part of the finest pub crawl in all of Rome, which would put it in line to be the finest in the whole of Italy. As we arrived early, we were privvy to the absolute deluge of people that crowded the steps over the following hour. In that time, we made a few "pub crawl only" friends and sipped on a few beers purchased from gentlemen darting through the crowd with grocery bags stocked with beer that I could only assume merits a comparison to Schlitz, though I don't think this beer made Italy famous. We finally got the call from a woman in an oh so official STAFF shirt to let the 300 of us know that the crawl was about to start. I realize this was a long introduction to a pub crawl, but that's only because there isn't much more to say. There were a few perks in the way of pizza and free drinks, but other than that it was an absolute disappointment. Kaylin and I both felt like the only people not on some form of a high school or college graduation singles fest. Not to demean the process completely, but I guess we should have known better. Also, Kaylin totally did a John Travolta knee slide a la Saturday Night Fever down a flight of marble stairs. She went unscathed, though, and it is something we can now laugh at.