ROMA: Night One

As much as I love my Italians, I do not understand their love of the strike. All last week I was completely stressed out because as I was trying to plan my trip to Rome, I kept hearing rumblings of a train/autobus/and taxi strike in Italy that would take place from Thursday night to Friday night. Don't you think a country with a failing economy should let tourists in to spend their life savings? I am just saying Italy... this isn't rocket science.

So since we wouldn't be able to travel there until Saturday morning, I had to throw on my best charm and convince our teacher to cancel Italian class on Friday so we could have adequate time to explore (sorry Madga!) Obviously, this plan worked... but we didn't figure out until the night before we left. This lovely night also happened to be the night before our Consumer Behavior midterm and Italian quiz. Which means that Val and I were scrambling looking for a hostel/hotel/apartment that would be affordable for a weekend. We found an affordable apartment that we could rent for the weekend owned by a man named Luca. So the game plan was to study as much as possible, write a 7 page paper, pack for a 4 day weekend, go to class from 9-12, and then catch a train to Rome at 1:55 that afternoon. I went to sleep at 2 in the morning and woke up at 6 to finally finish my paper and add some finishing touches to my weekend pack. It was a little crazy, but the minute we got on the train to freaking ROMA I was so grateful I got to have an extra day traveling. We arrived in Rome around 7:45 at night and began the short walk to our apartment.  Although we were only a 3 minute walk from the train station something was different about the location we were in.

1) it was sketchy (this is the same in any language/country just follow your intuition)

2) There were a surprising amount of Asian symbols displayed

Everyone who stayed in our apartment! (thanks Luca)

Kara, me, Val, and Abby with our box of cooking wine.

When we got to the building Luca was nowhere to be found. We buzzed every buzzer and called out, but it's best not to draw attention in the area we were in (even though there were Asian and Polynesian people in an out of the building like it was selling delivery food.) Finally, we found his number on an email and attempted to call him, which led us to a woman who said," Yes, he come now he on his way." Which leads me to twenty minutes later (an hour from when we arrived) when Luca showed up to let us in.

 I fondly like to refer to our apartment as the IKEA palace. Everything from the beds to the giant letters that would stare at me from the bottom of my drinking glass was labeled with my dear Swiss brand. Luca even assembled a bed right in front of our eyes from there in record-breaking time. After he left us with coffee, tea, and some breakfast snacks (we were technically staying in a "bed and breakfast*") we went to the restaurant that he referred.

* There was a gas stove in the apartment with no way of lighting it so the hot coffee and tea became a huge tease, however, Luca did leave us an abundance of milk and these dinner rolls with chocolate chips in them. The concept sounds bizarre, but they were so good dipped in milk!

Goofin

Yippee I am in ROMAAA

The ladies... it was so awesome to be there at night.

When we got to the restaurant they offered a tourist menu for a flat rate with bruschetta, suppli (an amazing fried risotto ball which I had never heard of), your choice of pizza or pasta (I went with fungi or mushroom pizza), and your choice of a beer, water, or coke. It hit the spot after six hours on the train and waiting an hour outside for Luca. After that we went on a mission to see some landmarks at night. We walked for 15 minutes in the cold (note: it was still January even though I was in Italy) until we found the all mighty Coliseum. I highly recommend seeing every major touristy landmark at night, during the day, and at sunset. There is something about the lighting during the different times of the day that gives you a different perspective and appreciation each time you visit. The Coliseum was basically vacant around it (insert magical effects here.) So, we took advantage of this by running around and taking silly pictures of our first surreal moment in the city we've learned and dreamed of our whole lives. Also, for those of you who are interested there is a Gay bar across the street from the Coliseum... just a fun fact.

After completely exhausting ourselves we all went home to get a good nights sleep. I know it's not very exciting but, the next day we had planned to tour Vatican City. Even though I am not a practicing Catholic it would be so so wrong to be hangover in such a sacred place. Don't worry; I still brought some cooking wine for another night. :)

More to come and nom... gelato style.