NUMBER ONE HOOLIGAN!!

This past weekend was our last weekend in Italy.  Our last weekend in Ascoli, no less.  To get ourselves distracted from this depressing fact, Kelsey and I went to Rome on Saturday to go to a soccer game.  It was AS Roma versus Atalanta.  My mother was apprehensive as I'm sure she had visions of me tipping over cars and looting gelato shops.  Unfortunately none of that occurred, but it was still an eventful and great night.

We got to the area around the stadium very early and decided to do some exploring.  I don't know what we expected, but a carnival was certainly not one of them.  And I need you all not to picture a nice, Six Flags or Kiddieland carnival.  No.  This was a carny carnival.  The first red flag was that we were a good five to seven years older than every other patron of this lawsuit playland.  We stocked up on tickets for three rides and went to the most popular ride first, without really looking at what the ride entailed.

If you look closely at this ride, you will see that it is a gigantic circular bench.  If you look even closer you might be able to notice that there are no seat belts or safety precautions.  The point of this ride is you sit down and hold onto the two bars lest you get thrown off of this swirling, jumping circle of mayhem.  Kelsey was laughing uncontrollably throughout the two minutes of terror, but I couldn't even move my face.  I was 100% focused on holding onto these bars.  I couldn't go like this.  Not surrounded by grungy Italian youths.  

Another note about this ride, our biceps still hurt from holding on so hard, and we went on this ride two days ago now.  Which is a sad commentary on our lives I suppose. 

The next rides were similar in that they were terrifying and completely illegal.  Seriously.  None of these rides would fly in the USA.  Here is a picture of a ride called "Jamaica's King". 

Just some family friendly carnival rides.  This ride was especially horrific because the operator was watching Kelsey and I scream in terror and pain whilst controlling the ride.  He loved it. 

After the carnival we got some food where we made some great friends!  They offered to help us sell our tickets so we could sit in the curve section (read: hooligans and bombs).  We declined.  Which is great because our seats were AMAZING!  There were a lot of Americans around us, and we had a great view of the hooligan debauchery in the curve section.

LOOK AT ALL THE DEBAUCHERY!!!  There were bombs, smoke bombs, chants, songs, it was seriously nuts.  Definitely not for the faint of heart.  Roma had a great game and got three goals and beat Atalanta 3-1.  At the end of the game they play this song over the loud speaker called "Grazie Roma" which I actually already knew!  

From here you can see the rough location of our seats.  We were at midfield a few rows back.  The field was pretty far from the first row though, which was weird.  We hit up the AS Roma store hard so we can represent our favorite soccer club when we're home.

Home.  I think the count is in single digits now which is INSANE.  NOT READY.

The face of multiple three hour bus rides in one weekend.