Blackouts and Barca!

Between spring break and our Northern Italy trip, not too much happened. Within the first week, we experienced a wonderful blackout in our apartment. Not fun...not fun at all. Amy, Maureen, and I had been cooking dinner and the power went out. As usual, we went to the circuit breaker, turned the power back on, and continued to cook. Halfway through our meal, the power went out again - with a loud pop. When Amy went to turn it back on, the switch wouldn't stay up and we could smell some suspicious scent. Confused and worried because we didn't really know what to do, I called Dave who wasn't in Rome at the time. He gave us the number to the person on call for the company that we rent from, but they did little to help us. After a few minutes, I decided to check and see where our electrical stove plugs in - and low and behold, the outlet was completely burnt and we found our problem. We were waiting for our landlord to come when I snapped these pictures. The only light that we had was coming from our small piazza at the foot of our apartment building.



About a week and a half later, we were graced with the presence of the Barcelona kids. I was excited to see Megs, Tom, and Bob along with everyone else. The first night that they were here, Adam and I took Meghan, Tom, Bob, Brian, Rob, Sean, and Victoria to L'Insalata Rica (one of my favorite places) for dinner before wandering through the city and heading to the Toga party that was being held that evening in the Campo Apartments.

This is a picture of Meghan and me outside of the Pantheon at night - so pretty! We headed over to the Campo Apartments with the intention of not actually taking part in the Toga aspect of the party. However, we realized that you can't have fun unless you take part in the activities. So here are a few pictures from the night.

Tom and I

Megan, Maureen, me, and Amy

Me and Megan

Will and his rather interesting version of a Toga...

The next day, we got to take a tour of the Renzo Piano Auditoriums and Zaha Hadid's MAXXI. It was a pretty cool morning. I love theater and it was awesome to see the three buildings and how Piano made it work.

Because I was so inspired, I made Maureen be in a
picture with me outside of one of the auditoriums.

From the auditoriums, we went to MAXXI (Museum of Art of the 21st Century). It is still under construction, so we had to wait a few minutes before we could go in. Duffy and John look so sad...

"LET US IN!"

'This is pretty sweet guys!'

That night, we had a group dinner with the Rome kids and the Barcelona kids. We went to Bafetto again - which seems to be one of our favorite places to go. The pizza there really is incredibly delicious. Afterwards, we went to the Abbey for a quick drink before rounding the evening down. Walking back to the apartment, I had Maureen and Meghan get in this picture with me at the fountain in Piazza Navona. It was awesome to see the Barca kids! I was very happy!