(The Fontana di Trevi in Roma, Italia)
So after only three hours of sleep, I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. Once I was ready, I woke up Lizzie, packed all of my stuff, and then crawled back into bed for a nap until Lizzie was finished. We went downstairs to check-out and after they made me run back upstairs to bring down our sheets, we headed over to the hostel restaurant to get breakfast. Today, we shared the egg and bacon sandwiches and a bowl of granola, yogurt, and fruit, and after we finished, walked back to the open-air market we found on the first day to do some souvenir shopping. Because our flight wasn't until later in the day, we had time to kill and had planned to explore the Trastevere neighborhood all morning. We asked a shop owner for directions, and she told us we needed to walk to a bus stop, take a bus, and then take a tram - all of which sounded awfully confusing. So Lizzie and I decided just to hang around central Rome for the morning and see what other things we could find. As we were walking, it started to rain, and we were still trying to think of something to do when we passed a church that was advertising Korean services. The sign was in Korean and Lizzie was excited because she is also half Korean. So we went in and listened to a group singing Christmas carols in English. Then we stuck around for most of the rest of the service. Lizzie was happy because she got to sit down and I was happy because I got to sing, (even if it was only my desperate attempt at Italian).
We then walked back to the Trevi Fountain again, because I still needed to throw in a coin. One coin means you'll come back to Rome, two says you'll come back to Rome and fall in love, and three says you'll come back to Rome, fall in love, and get married. As my worst nightmare is to accidentally marry into the mafia, I only threw in one. While we were there, we saw a terribly attractive and well-dressed group of teenagers in front of the fountain and then saw that they were being professionally photographed. Turns out they were models on a photo shoot, which explains their attractiveness and well-dressed-ness.
We then strolled back to our hostel a different way and headed back towards the hostel, where we had planned on going to lunch at a restaurant for which we had a coupon. Unfortunately, it was closed (we tried here several other times, as well, and it was closed each time). So we went back to the restaurant we ate the first day. I got rotini in broccoli sauce and then we both got tartufo for dessert. This waiter was not as friendly as the first had been and we were also sitting right next to the drink fridge. Every time someone shut the door to the fridge, a puff of air would shoot at me. I am like a cat in the fact that I do not like when air/wind blows on me, so every time this happened, I would cringe.
When we finished, we walked back across the street to the hostel to pick up our bags from the luggage room. Sidenote: yesterday, Lizzie had bought a poster at one of the open-air markets, but this morning, had refused to put it in the luggage room because she didn't want anyone to take it. Therefore, she had been carrying this poster around for two days. It now had a smudge of Nutella in the corner and rain-tattered edges. But it is still a very nice picture.
So after we grabbed our stuff, we headed back to the train station and bought tickets back to the airport. This time we asked about verifying our tickets, and we we were told that was unnecessary. We got on the train when it came and slept for the half hour ride to the airport. We got through security with no problems and with plenty of time to spare. We went to one of the airport restaurants for dinner (again we were the only ones there) and I got pasta with shrimp (risky, I know). After we had spent about an hour at the restaurant we moved to our gate, but unfortunately, the airport had re-routed another flight to our terminal. Therefore, our flight back to Madrid got delayed for about an hour. In the meantime, Lizzie and I fell asleep at the gate and when I woke up, there was nobody in the waiting-area. It was still a half-hour until our flight as scheduled to leave, so I woke up Lizzie and she went to check to other gates while I stayed and watched our stuff. After she had left, a security man appeared at our gate and I asked him what had happened to our flight. He said it was moved to a different gate, so I grabbed all of our stuff, found Lizzie, and we got in line at the other gate.
Once we were on the plane, we again fell asleep and woke an hour and a half later, thinking we were already in Madrid. Nope. We hadn't even left Rome yet. Apparently there was some problem with the mechanics and the guy that had been working on fixing it broke something else, so they had to call in an engineer to fix that mistake. So we were delayed for another hour before we took off. We were supposed to arrive in Madrid at 10:30 pm and didn't get back until 1 am. I wouldn't have been worried, but my flight to London was that morning at 6:30 am and I needed to go back to Julia's, pack clean clothes, and grab my boarding pass to London. I had been planning on taking the metro to Julia's and back to the airport, but with the delay, the metro was already shut down for the night.
The only way for me to get home was to pay for a taxi both ways, which would be over 40 euro. I asked the man at the information desk if I could just show the airline my passport without a boarding pass, and he said that would cost 40 euro extra. So I asked if he could print it off for me and he said the only printers at the airport were at the currency exchange desks. When Lizzie and I found a currency exchange desk, they wasn't anyone there. So I decided to pay for the taxi, but the next problem was that I did not have any euros on me. So I found a public computer and transferred money into my account and then went to the ATM to withdraw money. Unfortunately, none of the ATMs would take my card and I panicked, thinking that Bank of America had shut my card down again. This worried me, because if I had no money, I couldn't very well go to London for three days.
So Lizzie lent me money to take the taxi home and thankfully, I was able to withdraw money from the ATM near Julia's apartment. I was also able to get in Julia's door (I had been remembering the time when she locked it and I ended up spending the night at Lizzie's) and pack a new set of clean clothes. Things were looking up.
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