Scavi tour

Today has been very, very quiet. Got up, hung around, watched 3 episodes of Rome (I started on Sunday, and I'm 9 in so far: good stuff), and then headed down with Andy to do the Scavi tour under St. Peter's, subsidized by the nice people at ND. My mom wanted me to take a bunch of pictures when I did it, but we weren't allowed to. In terms of coolness factor, I'd give it about a six out of ten (it's a 2 star on the Michelin travel guide). What can I say, I'm a tough grader.

Notes of interest: on our way to try to get into the tour last week after the awful Vatican Museum scavi, we blew right by the area of the circus where Peter was killed. It's the area of the first Christian martyrs. Also, there is a little plaque where the obelisk was in the middle of the racetrack before they moved it to the center of the Piazza San Pietro. Kind of cool. You don't get to see the bones of St. Peter, though. Lame.

Perhaps the highlight of the tour was when our tour guide, a ND graduate/priest working in the Vatican now, was talking about how Romans would go out to grave sites with food and wine, and they would take out the wine and pour it over the grave sites. He then said, "you know, like some for my dead homies". Always good to hear a guy in priestly attire giving respect to the "dead homies".