Friends from FIU and a Pick-Pocket!

This weekend we made some new friends from Miami. We were out at the "nightlife" areas with our trusty tour guide and friend, Luca, mingling with the local Genovese. It was Friday night and the weekend after exams for Genoa University. Everybody under 35 was out and about (and I mean EVERYBODY) and the streets were crowded like the gates at Death Valley just before kickoff. We had to push our way through the throngs of Italians just to get anywhere. The plan was to meet up with Luca because he had some new places to show us. At one point, we all convened at this one little open area (that was kind of elevated), to wait for everybody to arrive, and we nabbed this photo:
So...you can image how long it took us to travel from the spot the picture was taken to the opposite end of the square to find a bathroom when Lindsey and Leslee said they had to "go". We pushed and shoved through the crowd trying to stay together. Once we reached the opposite side, we discovered that the place we were aiming for actually didn't have a bathroom. Yeah. While we were standing there we overhead another group say something about looking for a bathroom...but they were speaking in English. So, Lindsey moseyed over to them and introduced herself. We all got really excited when we found out we were "fellow Americans". They were here for the semester from Florida International University in Miami, FL for European studies. We all decided to continue our search for a bathroom together. They knew of a bar about halfway back that had a bathroom so we followed them to it. 

   On the way back through the crowd, an old guy was pushing through the crowd along side of us. I thought it was strange that this older guy was out and about, alone in the midst of all the youngsters so, naturally, I assumed he was a perv. He was a little too close to Lindsey for my comfort so I reached around her while we walked so that he couldn't "brush up against her". He looked down at my arm and then moved up the line, all the while we were all pushing through the crowd towards the place with the bathroom. Sketchball guy ended up between Alexis and Andrea (two of our new friends from Miami) and then, out of nowhere, turned around and went back the other way. As soon as we arrived at the door, we found out what this guy had been trying to do. Andrea reached into her jacket pocket to discover her cell phone had been snatched. I felt so bad for her and Alexis and I were royally ticked off that this had happened right in front of us and he got away with it. Luckily, no one else got "hit" by the stinkin' pickpocket. (I keep my wallet inside my zipped-up jacket pocket). Next time though, we will be a little more street smart in a crowd like that. (The South Carolina in me wanted to push back through the crowd to find this guy but they convinced me that it would take all night, and he was probably already long-gone by now)....

The rest of the evening was spent consuming Gelato and visiting a place called the "Beautiful Loser" which sported a disco dance ball in the main room and three "themed" rooms in the basement: a red room, a blue room, and a yellow room. The interior design of these spaces was very interesting. We had a good time with our new friends (see Lindsey's Blog for a picture of the group) and they got along well with Luca (he speaks fluent spanish and a couple of our Miami friends are native South Americans). We exchanged cell phone numbers and hung out again on Saturday night....