Día Uno en Roma

(An open-air market in Roma, Italia)

Well, hello there. As you may have noticed, I am behind on my blogging. Because I didn't have internet access and/or time in Rome and London, I have over a week of fun-filled activities to catch you up on. This may take a while.

Thursday, December 10th

I set my alarm for 3 am because I needed to walk to Lizzie's residencia by 4:45. Unfortunately, I woke up at about 3:45, as I think Morning Gigi has begun to take revenge on the alarm clock. I woke up thinking it was already 4:45 and that the alarm was Lizzie calling me to ask where I was. I was calling Lizzie to apologize when I realized that in fact, I still had an hour before I needed to meet her. I still needed to hurry, though, and had to skip breakfast to make it to Lizzie's on time (which did not improve Morning Gigi's mood). I headed down Paseo de Castellana, passing only one person along the way and turning off only one street lamp (for those of you who don't know - street lamps have a mysterious habit of turning off when I walk under them - it happens a few times each week. Unnerving, I know). I only got lost once and after waiting outside the wrong house for a few minutes, Lizzie appeared out of another door and we hopped in the waiting taxi to the airport.

By the time we got to the airport, the security check-in was open and we got in line. I got through with no problem, but Lizzie's boots kept setting off the alarms. She had to take them off and got back in the end of the line (we were too tired to realize that she could have just walked through the metal detectors again, and not go all the way back to the end of the line - but no worries - we had time to kill). After touring the duty-free stores for a few minutes, we sat down at one of the restaurants for breakfast (a cheese baguette and milk) and a planning session. Then we ran over to the gate and got in the passport/ticket line, with me still clutching my half-eaten baguette. As we were waiting, Lizzie nearly fell over. She had on her huge travel backpack and leaned against an open door which she thought was a wall. She nearly fell through and would have landed on her backpack with her feet in the air - turtle style.

We finally got on the plane and I got a much-needed hour of sleep. We circled the Italian coast, which was really pretty, and landed in Rome. We were wandering through the airport, looking for an exit, when we saw what looked like a promising passport check gate. We got in line, and when we got to the desk and showed the woman our passports, the woman asked us where we were going. We replied that we were going to Rome, and she said, "You're already in Rome. That's the door over there." Oh. So we walked through that door and eventually found the train that would take us to the center of the city. We bought our tickets, which said in about 17 different places that we needed to validate the ticket before use. I suggested to Lizzie that maybe we should investigate this validation process, which seemed to have something to do with the yellow machines that were everywhere. But the ticket was smaller than the machine's slot, and Lizzie didn't want to stick our tickets in and lose them, so she decided we could just get on the train. I did not like this idea, but didn't want to lose my ticket either. The train left and we saw the ticket-man coming up our aisle, checking everyone's tickets. I was terrified - one of my fears in life is the mafia, and my general avoidance strategy has always been to never make an Italian angry. That was about to come to an end. He took our tickets, looked at them, looked at us, and waved them around while saying something in Italian. He then walked away, mumbling in Italian, while my stomach continued to flip.

We got off the train and walked for about five minutes to our hostel. We checked in and went up to our room. It wasn't anything exciting, but the window looked out onto an authentic Italian courtyard, which was nice. We were starved by this point, and walked back out onto the street, looking for a restaurant. We found one and sat down and started perusing the menu. So many pastas, so little time! I decided on gnocchi with meat sauce and Lizzie got a pizza with eggplant. Other items I was choosing between were rigatoni with cheese and chestnuts and a strawberry risotto (which seemed curious enough to be good). We shared a strawberry parfait for dessert and realized we had been at the restaurant for over two hours. The waiter was really friendly and funny and the restaurant was authentic - we were the only ones speaking English. We then walked back to the hostel to have the front desk people look over our plans and help us decide what we should do that day. The woman at the hostel eliminated almost everything on our schedule, saying things were too far, closed, or boring. But she did help us create a new plan, and sent us on our way. We also signed up for the night tour of Rome, which we would do later that night.

So we headed towards central Rome to get ourselves oriented. We passed some old Roman ruins, about which I was pretty excited, (Lizzie tells me I have an obsession with Roman ruins, which I feel is completely understandable) and found an open air market. We looked through all the stands and had a nice long conversation with these two guys who were selling ties. We also asked them how to say all the important phrases in Italian, so they were quite helpful. We kept walking, stopping at a church and some fountains. We eventually found the Spanish Steps, and chilled there for a while. Apparently, for about a month in Rome, there are these bird swarms reminiscent of Hitchcock's Birds, but less violent. It has something to do with the weather, but thousands of birds meet up in Rome and fly in swarms around the city. So from the Spanish Steps, we had this great overview of the city, complete with the clouds of birds. We were approached by an Australian who was trying to get Lizzie and I to come to a pub crawl that night and then by a boy from Louisiana who had been trailing us for a while, (who I think was just lonely and heard some English-speakers). We looped back around towards Piazza Repubblica (the main square in Rome) and stopped for dinner on Via Nazionale. I got a pasta carbonara and Lizzie got a pizza with Italian ham (that was bigger than the plate on which it was served). Yay for Italian food!

We then waited in front of the church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, (which used to be a Roman bath-house/recreation center) for the night tour to start. The tour guide was already there, and introduced himself as Tad, who is also from the US. A few more people showed up, (two Australian guys and another American) and off we went. I really liked the tour (we saw the Fontana del Tritone, Fontana del Trevi, Spanish Steps, some obelisks - there are more in Rome than in all of Egypt, and the Hotel Bernini from The DaVinci Code, among other things), because Tad didn't just talk about the history, he talked about all sorts of interesting stuff, too. For example, at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, there is a statue of a ship, which was created because the French and Spanish embassies (both nearby), couldn't decide whether a French or Spanish monument should be built there, so they eventually agreed upon a ship, as the area flooded frequently (this was only one of the many arguments held between the French and Spanish embassies, who weren't the best of friends). At the top of the Spanish steps is a large obelisk, which was put in place using huge cranes. It was one man's job to make sure the whole thing was centered, and when he gave the command to drop the obelisk, he sneezed and grabbed the base of the obelisk to hold his balance. Unfortunately, the obelisk then dropped on his hand, which the workers had to cut off, and which is still stuck in the obelisk under a whole lot of plaster and detail work. Another story is at the Piazza Navona, where the famous 17th century sculptor/architect Bernini and his arch-nemesis Borromini were both given building contracts. Bernini was mad that Borromini got a contract for an entire church when all Bernini got was a contract for a fountain in the piazza. So the figures on his fountain are shielding their eyes so that they don't have to look at the atrocious church and also have their hands out as if to protect themselves from the church's fall. The only figure on the church is also built so that she doesn't need to look at the ugly fountain.

Our tour ended in the Piazza Navona, and Lizzie and I stopped in a bar for the bathroom, where it turns out that the bartender was Canadian - so we talked for a while. Then we headed back out to Piazza Navona and looked through all the stalls that were set up for a Christmas festival. Then we decided we wanted hot chocolate and actually found a place right on the man street. We sat down and ordered hot chocolate with limoncello (I was disappointed to find out that this establishment had ruined all of their hot chocolates by putting liquors in them). We got one right away, but after 10 minutes, they still hadn't given us the second drink. I went up to the counter and got the waitress' attention, but when she came over, I realized that I didn't know any of the relevant words in Italian. I stared at her and said, "No. . ." and she then said that she spoke English. But then I couldn't remember any of my English words, either, so that was a problem. Eventually I got the message across and she brought us our other hot chocolate. I don't know how you mess up hot chocolate, but these drinks were nasty. The chocolate tasted burnt and the limoncello didn't help anything. We paid and left without finishing.

We caught a bus back to the hostel, which was terrifying. Italian drivers are not inhibited by the fact that they are driving full-sized buses, so Lizzie and I were holding on for dear life. When we got back to our room at the hostel, we met two of the other kids in our room, Scott and Michelle, two American students that Lizzie knew from one of her classes at Carlos III. Go figure. By this point, we were exhausted and pretty much passed out right away.