Day 23

Today we did one thing and one thing only. We went to the Italian Bethel. Tyler also did laundry in the morning, but I'm sure you don't want the details of that. I on the other hand did not do laundry because I like wearing smelly clothes. (Actually, my clothes aren't that bad, but it seems like a waste to wash clothes when we have only 5 days left.)

Why did we only see the Bethel today? Well, from our hostel in Lido di Ostia to the nearest metro line in Rome (Piramide), it's a train ride that takes 40 minutes. Then another 5 -10 minutes on the metro to the Termini station. Then another 5 - 10 minute walk to where the buses are kept. Then another 15 minutes on Bus #90. Then another 20 minutes waiting for Bus #86. Then another 15 minutes on Bus #86. Finally we reached our destination, but wait we still had to walk a kilometre. Unforunately, we ended up walking 20 minutes in the wrong direction, so it took us longer than expected. As we approached the address, I asked Tyler where he obtained said address. He said that he got it from the Contact Us section of his Bible. I began to get worried that we were just walking towards a mailbox or PO Box and not a bethel after all. Finally we reached our destination. We saw palm trees and nicely manicured lawns. We saw fountains and olive trees. And yes the Bethel was there too. We had left our hostel in Lido at 12PM and arrived at the Bethel at 3PM. They certainly didn't make it easy to find.

We went inside the Bethel just in time for a tour (they finish at 3:30PM). The guy at the reception was making fun of our Canadian accents and how we pronounced Ottawa and Toronto. You see, we pronounce Ottawa, Oddawa, and we pronounce Toronto, Toronno. He didn't know where we were from until we pronounced Ottawa, OTTawa (emphasis on the Ts). It's a pretty nice Bethel. Comparing land, the Canada bethel is bigger than the Italian one, but the Italian Bethel has 500 bethel-ites, while the Canada bethel has around 300 bethel-ites.

After the tour we made the long, arduous journey back to our hostel, where I'm typing right now. Tomorrow we plan to go to the beach (if it's not raining), followed by a trip to the Vatican for our meeting with the Pope. It should be exemplary. The weather here has been great so far. Today was 20-something degrees and sunny, as was yesterday. I can't really make fun of your weather in Ottawa as its still looks pretty warm, though rainy. I do see that in the long term forcast they're calling for snow showers on the 29th and for the next 4 days after. Unfortunately, we'll be back in Ottawa by then.

Ciao,

Jim