You'd think an all-night booze-a-thon would make us want to go to sleep; not with the new Pope calling!

I studied abroad in England last semester and every weekend we would travel around the UK or Europe. Our last trip of the year was to Italy and about fifty students from my program were all staying at the same hotel. One night in Rome, a group of about ten of us decided to do as the Romans do: go on a pub crawl!

The night was a blast. My friend and I even won a drinking contest at the first bar, so we got two free shots at all the remaining bars. Along the way to one bar, the pub-crawl leader picked up the ugliest and smelliest coat ever. This jewel of a coat, found on the sidewalk, was probably some homeless man’s. Didn’t matter to me; I had to have it. And later that night, I convinced him to let me have the coat.

When the crawl was over around two, we all started back to our hotel. Somehow along the way, one of my pals and I got separated from the others. Having been in the city for two days, we thought we knew our way back. Well a 10-minute walk turned into an hour before we finally stumbled into the lobby of our hotel.

At the same time, a group of four other students we knew were getting ready to leave to go wait outside the Vatican for the new pope’s (Benedict) first mass. Still drunk at 3am, we decided to tag along. And I’m not even catholic! They said that they were leaving in two minutes, so we needed to change fast. Since everyone in my room was sleeping and I did not have much time, my clothes options were limited.

Did I change out of my jeans? My free pub crawl t-shirt? Did I at least leave my smelly homeless man’s coat? Nope, I just changed out of my flip-flops into dress shoes. Since public transportation was shut down, and we are to cheap to get a cab, we walked forty-five minutes across Rome. The time went fast as we told and retold all of our stories from that night to our sober friends. We got to the entrance to the Vatican but they were not letting people in until 5am. We decided to play Euchre on the street to pass the time.

There were only about a hundred people there when we got there, but an hour later there was at least a thousand. We then had to stand for two hours waiting for them to let us go past the ropes and sit down. This drawn out process at least sobered the two of us a good bit. By the time they let us in, there were tens of thousands of people waiting. We managed to stick together and get tenth row seats! Keep in mind there were about two hundred rows of seats and lots of standing room—a total of approximately 500,000 people. We then had three hours until the mass started. Despite the singing and chanting for the new pope in about twenty different languages, we slept sitting up in our seats until it started.

This event was a perfect ending to my semester abroad. The picture we took is priceless—standing there with the crowd of people in my ugly coat and day old makeup at the Vatican. [Editor's Note: send us the pic and we'll post it!]

We didn’t make it back to our hotel until 5pm that day. How neither of us had to go the bathroom the entire time (there would have been no way to go) must have been a pope’s miracle. The Mass was actually very impressive, and I am so glad that we went. After all, not many people have the chance to go on a pub-crawl and a pope crawl in one day!