I have a ton of tremendous pics from this weekend, but I'm in a huge hurry (have to be on a flight to Kazakhstan in just a few hours) so here's just a few. Basically - it was incredible. 250,000+ in the Circo Massimo to watch their Azzurri. Vadtoy went from glamorous the night before to incoherently screaming her head off, blowing her "Mister Football (yes, that's a brand name)" air horn as loud as possible and drinking cheap wine straight from the bottle. Basically, just like everyone else in that sea of humanity. I've never been anywhere with that many people for any reason, and certainly never been in a crowd that big that cared about something that much. The game as a whole was a disappointment, but the experience was unbelievable.
vadtoy back in the land of "her people" and enjoying it
God knows how many people in the past 2,000+ years have walked this way heading to see sports - but it's mind boggling to think of it.
90 minutes before kickoff. I could barely move by this point already
Closing in on kickoff ...
Pirlo!!
The Italian National Anthem ... that's the screen there, somewhere. No way to see anything through the flares.
We got up out of the crowd towards the end of the match ... this the crowd from the back (there's another 2 screens ahead of these). It was staggeringly enormous. LaGazzetta said around half a million, others closer to 250,000. It was well beyond the point where I could even begin to guess how many.
