Day 71 (5/31/11)

After a wonderful night’s sleep I woke up and proceeded to work on finishing off any food I had left (four eggs with a friends salami and the last of my cheese and some yogurt) before heading out to finish off any shopping that needed to be done. My first stop was out to the Vatican (the Piazza was turned into a parking lot today!) before heading back into the center of town to wander around for some splat-balls. I finally found one and was able to haggle him down from ten euros to two (he seemed desperate enough that I regret not trying for one). From there I walked back to the school before stopping to pick up some gummies.
Today was our last day at the Iowa State studio so we had to clean up and take pictures of our models (since we had to leave them) as well as give our keys back and get our deposits. Once all that mess was over we came home, got a final suppli from the kebab restaurant downstairs, and packed for a few hours. We decided that one last small group dinner to Pizza Ai Marmi, a famous pizza place right here in Trastevere. My buddy Brian and I split a suppli, fried zucchini flower, fried cod, and a sausage pizza. The food was absolutely fantastic but the best part of the meal was a street performer that came and did magic tricks for a while. He made a bunch of stuff like his tie and a string stand straight, swallowed a sword, pretended to chop his arm off, poured coke into a floating glass, and for his finale, took his toupe off.
Once we were finished we came home and palled around for a while to procrastinate cleaning our apartment for checkout tomorrow. We finally did get around to that (it took us until four in the morning!), and although it was sad to be finishing our last night here in Rome, it has been such a wonderful trip that I will be ok to leave. After a quick shower and some last minute packing it was time for bed for the last time!