Ciao! This weekend a group of us went to a town called Ascoli Piceno. It was about a two and a half hour trip from Macerata, and we stayed over night in a youth hostel. We walked forEVER to get from the train station to the hostel, but the hostel was, I kid you not, in a medieval fortress, with a huge stone tower. (I got a million free postcards from there so if you want to see it, let me know) The six of us all shared a room and there was no one else there, so it was nice and comfortable. Ascoli is this ancient/medieval town with ALL these big fortressy castley towers all over the place. The bird's eye view of the place is really cool. There is one particularlky cool piazza there, called la Piazza del Popolo (plaza of the Pope) and it's big, full of cool cafes, shops, a big church (as always here,) and a huge clock tower with a statue of...some pope or other. It was raining a lot when we first got there, so it was all puddles and head scarfs and huddling under church stoops. We had dinner at this nice Trattoria (a nice dinner place in Italy that works in traditional course by course style) and then had gelato. At this point it had gotten dark, and the clock, in true Disneyland fashion had begun to change colour. It went, purple, pink, red, green, yellow, orange and blue and we were FASCINATED by it. Afterwards a few of us went to do Karaoke at this bar. I successfully ordered Jenny and I two Gin and Tonics with lemon. Which was less difficult than I anticipated because it translates to: gintonica con limone. Ah well. Anyway, it was huge. We patiently waited for our turn, the D.J.s flirting with us, talking about "le american girls" all the time on their microphones. But the rest of the people there (almost all Italians, except one crazy German man) kept stealing our spots and pushing ahead of us. It's a cultural thing. Here:no lines. Nobody waits orderly. It's every person for themselves. This can be particularly affronting to us, especially after we waited FOR EVER and never actually got to Karaoke. We wanted to sing Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, but we would have settled for anthing, we just wanted to sing. Ah well, it was worth it to hear a little old German man sing "New York, New York," in a faux rat pack big band voice. Soon, though. We WILL sing, oh yes, we will. The next day we drank cappuchini at a famous cafe, though none of us were quite sure what it was famous FOR. We ate at this lovely little restaurant (if you ever go to Ascoli, go to Blahblah Il Vagabundo. Delicious.) looked a massive pretty church and saw an ancient Roman theatre. The sad thing about the Roman ruins around here, is that for a long period of time, no one had any regard for historical value, so marble and stone were removed from old famous architecture and used to make new things. MAMMA MIA! So you have to do a lot of imagining in order to see the structure as it once was. It's interesting because next to it there's a medieval church, it's along a modern street, all overgrown with fauna, and in the middle of it, right in the center of all that theatrical history, is a Bobcat. A tractory like thing. Strange. But also really really neat. We saw ancient fortresses and encountered these young men and boys throwing huge flags in the air and catching them with their hands and feet. A truly fascinating art form (sport?) It didn't hurt that the young men were particularly attractive. It was a lovely time though we had to run to catch our last connection to Macerata. Today's agenda: Jesus Christ Superstar.