After the last post, I went back to my hostel and passed out for a couple hours. Then I woke up around 9, and set out to look for somewhere to get a cheap and easy dinner. I was looking at the menu of the restaurant right next door to my hostel, and the waiter there came over and tried talking me into it. I told him it was more expensive than I was in the mood for, and he was like, "just come, sit down. we'll take care of you." (I'm thinking he could tell how exhausted and overwhelmed I was feeling and took pity on me!) Anyway, he proceeded to bring me a big salad, a glass of wine, a basket of bread and cheese, and a piece of bruschetta that was the best thing I've eaten in Italy by far. After I was done, I asked him how much is cost, and he was trying to tell me it was free. I wouldn't let him do that, so he told me to give him 3 euro, and I did, so that was a great cheap meal! Yesterday morning, I set out early with 2 Mexicans and a Canadian from my hostel to go to the Vatican museum and the sistine chapel. By the time we got there, the line was just ridiculous. (as in, farther than we could see past the "2 hours from this point" sign) So, the Mexicans decided to give up and come back later, but, using a little slight of hand/trickery, me and the Canadian snuck our way into the front of the line without anyone noticing and only waited about 6 minutes. And we also found out that you can plug normal headphones into the audioguide and split it, so we could both listen at the same time while only paying for 1 audio guide. The museum was awesome, and the sistine chapel even awesomer. Then I came back to take a nap (sensing a theme in rome?), and then headed out to the Colloseum and did an audioguide in there for a while. After that, I walked forever to go on a sunset walking tour of the city that I'd signed up for with my hostel. This tour was what made me finally start loving rome! The guide was an archaeologist who was born and raised in Rome, and she was so enthusiastic and funny and excited, and she just got the whole group really involved. It finally made me understand what exactly I'd been looking at for the past couple days, and it was so great to actually here the stories behind what each figure in the statues in the fountain meant or whatever. The tour ended at the colloseum, which by this point was all lit up at night and absolutely beautiful. On the tour, I met these 2 girls who are in law school at university of North Dakota, but they were doing some EU law course in Oslo for the summer, so the 3 of us went out to a real Italian dinner after the tour. It turns out they're staying in a hostel right near me, so we went back to the place I'd gone to the night before. The waiter remembered me, and said we were the VIPs of the night and brought us free champagne and tiramisu! On the way home, me and the girls got suckered into buying fake fancy purses from the guys on the street all over, so I am now the official owner of a fake prada bag which I am absolultely in love with! The guy originally asked for 45 euro, but I talked it down to 15 (once I took out my wallet and showed him that was actually all the cash I had!), which is still probably more than it's actually worth but I LOVE it! Ok, off to try to cram everything in on my last day in Rome, before the Italy soccer game at 9 tonight! Happy 4th to everyone at home . . . eat a hotdog or something for me!