It's 7:30 in the morning. I just sat down with my first cup of coffee for the day.
I still haven't made the transition from Greenwich Mean Time to Eastern Standard Time. Yesterday, I woke up at four am, which was ten am Italy time. At least I'm getting closer to getting back on keel: I went to sleep at 10:30 pm last night instead of 6 PM the night before. Maybe in a day or so I'll be on a normal sleep schedule again.
So, my trip to Italy...where do I begin?
Well, we flew out of OHare. It really didn't even seem real until I was on that aircraft. We flew Sabena, which is a decent airline and I would take them again if it weren't for the fact that they only go as far as Brussels and you have to transfer. We left Chicago at 5 PM, which meant that with the time difference, we arrived in Brussels at 8 AM. After an eight hour flight, the last thing you want is to have to transfer to another airline. The Brussels airport is kind of annoying and disjointed, and some of the terminals don't have air conditioning so between my lack of sleep and the weather, I felt like I was going to pass out. Also, the Brussels airport is a big mall designed for American tourists. It's filled with every chain that you see in every suburb. It was kind of depressing.
We transferred to Virgin for the flight from Brussels to Rome. When I boarded, I discovered that my bag--which had been weighed in Sabena and was deemed acceptable--was not allowed on board. I had to check it. Apparently, only those travelling on business class can bring a bag. If you're flying "economy" then you can't bring anything bigger than a purse on board. This might not have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that the flight was half empty, so it wasn't even a weight issue. It was an arbitrary requirement. I was displeased. When we got on the plane, I found out I couldn't use my portable cd player for the whole trip. Now, obviously I realize I can't use it during take off and landing, but usually once we're at crusing altitude, it isn't a problem. Even more ironically is that you can use a laptop once airborne. Don't ask me. Suffice to say, I was less than thrilled by Virgin. And the bad techno music they played on the plane didn't help much. But, eventually the music stopped and I was able to nap for a few minutes before we arrived in Rome.
The airport in Rome was a complete maze. It took us a long time to find the baggage claim. When I found my bag, Rob noticed that I had a customs sticker on it (i.e. I would have to go through customs.) So we found a guy in customs who just shrugged it off and told me not to worry about it. Well, that was easy enough. So we proceeded to get our train tickets to termini, which our hotel was near.
We just barely caught the train. We sat next to this really nice older Welsh couple who we talked to for a few minutes, though we were very short on conversation due to our extreme exhaustion. We watched Rome come into view. There were lots of old villas, with clothing hanging out to dry and flags waving proudly. The liveliness of the city came into closer view, until we got to our destination. We then prepared to find our hotel.
Our hotel was on via Gioberti. We had mapped it, and it was only a few blocks. So we went in search of via Gioberti. A cab driver saw us and asked what we were looking for. We told him. He offered to take us there for 50,000 lire. That came out, roughly, to $25. for what was three blocks. Gee, thanks a lot. We told him we would walk. He pretended to be amazed and said it was really far. We told him we would take our chances, and a block later found via gioberti. As predicted, the hotel was only a block or so down.
We checked into the hotel, and hooked up with my father. We then took a much needed nap. A few hours later, we got up and went to dinner. It was a little place right across the street. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was the first meal not on an airplane in several hours. Afterwards, I sipped my cappucino as we let our food digest and stared out at Rome. One thing about those little street side trotterias near Termini: they'er major tourist traps, so you have to run off pushy accordian players who just start playing at your table then troll for tips. The best thing to do is pretend they're not there. After that, we decided to walk off dinner for a bit, by way of a pit stop in my hotel room. I had tried to use the bathroom at the cafe, but it was this weird urinal thing which kind of scared me. So, after we stopped, we decided to walk around. I was awed by the gorgeous sites, and got some good ideas for paintings. My Dad wanted to find the Colloseum, so we started walking around for a bit. By this time, it was getting dark and the streets were emptying out. It was beautiful. There was Italian graffitti everywhere, and the city itself was astounding. In Rome, there are these gaunt alleycats that hang out en masse in the ruins after dark. They appear to feast on rats and pigeons and are quite fearless. After awhile, we weren't finding the Colloseum and were very tired, so we decided to wait until morning.
The next morning, we went again in search of the Colloseum by way of doing some shopping. I picked up a dress along the way. As we found our way to the Colloseum, I was utterly exhausted. I saw some horse and buggy tours going on. Rob and I have often talked about taking such a tour, so I suggested we check it out. It was a nice reprieve from walking for a bit. So, we got the horse and buggy tour. We saw the circus maximus, where napoleon had lived, where mussolini had lived,and a bunch of other cool spots. After a little bit, the guy stopped the tour but said he could continue it for a price. This was really kind of far from where he dropped us off. We said thanks but no thanks, and had gotten off. We ventured back toward the hotel, stopping for a bit at a gelateria to cool off. On the way back, I found another dress shop. The woman who worked there kept peeking into the dressing room giving her opinion of the dresses I tried on. I bought a couple then we went back to the hotel and took a nap for a bit. Afterwards, we found our way to another restaurant. It was much better than the one from the night before. I had a fettucine and salmon in a light cream sauce, which was very tasty.
As we sat in the restaurant, we observed the other Americans dining there, and realized why we Americans have such a bad reputation. The streets were filled with tourists, gaggles of Americans holding on tightly to eachother with one hand, and holding onto their tourist guides in the other hand. You could tell by the look in their eyes that they had believed every horror story about pickpockets in Rome and were afraid to wander from their large group. At the restaurant, there was a mother/daughter team that looked straight out of Iowa, who talked to the waiter like they were ordering at the Olive Garden.
We went back to the hotel, and decided to kill some time in the hotel bar. The bartender was a really fun guy who kept trying to teach Rob Italian, and teased me about my dia de los muertos tattoo.
When the bar closed up, we went to bed, but I had insomnia, so at one point I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours.
The next day, I woke up and felt like hell. I forced myself to breakfast and then went to back to bed while Rob and my Dad walked around Rome for a bit. Rob wanted to find Dario Argento's store, Profundo Rosso. My Dad mentioned a tourist bus that it looked like it would go right by there. It was Sunday, so I was skeptical about whether or not it would actually be open. We went to termini to catch the bus, stopping briefly for coffee before we went.
The bus dropped us off in Vatican City. We wandered toward where Profundo Rosso would be. We walked a bit. Then we wandered more. No Profundo Rosso yet. We wandered more. After awhile of wandering we at least found the street the store was on. Rob marvelled at how gorgeous this area was. It was very non touristy, though filled with some very cool shops and restaurants and gelaterias. We couldn't go to most of the shops though, as it was Sunday and they were closed. We finally found Profundo Rosso. Like many other places in Rome, it was covered with graffitti. (I suspected there was a lot of political unrest in Rome, based on the graffitti. I would later learn that was not the case, it was all very passionate opinions about Italy soccer teams.) Profundo Rosso was closed, unfortunately. We stopped at a gelateria, as we were quite hot and exhausted, before we headed back. My Dad wanted to take the bus again, as it hit all the tourist spots, so we trekked back and got the winding tour of Rome's various sites. We got back, and ate dinner at the same place as the night before, then wandered back to our rooms.
Rob and I were exhausted, so we both conked out by 8 pm. Around 4 AM, we woke up, unable to sleep. We stayed up and watched Italian television for awhile, then went back to sleep.
The next day, we caught the Eurail into Naples. I'll have the lowdown on Naples in a forthcoming segment. This is enough of a travel report for one entry.