Roma

So a mere three weeks after the adventure, here I am to write about Roma, a trip I actually didn't take by myself! My friend Emily and I flew out early Friday morning to Rome Ciampino, the smallest airport I had ever seen (until I went to Morocco). Emily is a big foodie so she had big plans for us in Rome.

We first took an airport shuttle to Termini, the big transit station in Rome, which was less than 10 minutes from our hostel. We got to the hostel and found out we had been upgraded to a 6-bed ensuite room (instead of a 12-bed with a bathroom across the hall) and couldn't have been happier, considering we only paid 10 euros a night, the cheapest (and it turns out best) hostel either of us had found in our travels. After settling our stuff in our room, we headed out to explore Rome, heading in the general direction of one of the best coffee places in Rome on Emily's list of places we had to eat.

First stop: gelato across the street from our hostel to enjoy on the walk. I had straitacella and coffee, both incredibly delicious. The weather could not have been better, cloudless and in the 60s, perfect for enjoying a walk with ice cream. I think we got a little lost as the map the hostel gave us wasn't great, but we enjoyed wandering around and seeing old things. We ran into the Trevi Fountain at one point.

Eventually we made it to San Eustacio, and it is indeed an amazing coffee place, and pretty cheap too. I had a really good cappuccino, to be Italian. We decided we would come back again another day and headed out to walk more. Now we were in search of real food, and as we wandered around looking at shops and wanting to buy all the clothes we saw in every window we headed towards a pizza place on Emily's list in Trastavere across the river. We got there and it was closed, not opening until later, so we backtracked and went to a place we had passed along the way that seemed cheap and looked delicious.

Pizza in Rome isn't like pizza in America - it's made with an impossibly thin crust that gets very crispy at the edges and I think they're always baked in a brick oven over a wood fire. I don't remember exactly what we had, but it had mushrooms and it was really delicious. By the time we finished eating around 5:30 (I don't know what meal that is) it was pretty much dark out. We went to one of the best gelato places in Rome (on Emily's list), San Crispino, where I got chocolate rum and caramel. It was massive and really creamy. Better than the place across the street from us but as it turns out we would still find better.  With our gelato we wandered back past the Trevi fountain at night, and then to the Pantheon. (I still get the Pantheon and the Parthenon mixed up, sorry.)

The Pantheon is kind of strange to me because it was Roman but then became Christian, so the mix of architecture and art doesn't really make sense. It was fascinating though, and actually pretty quiet despite all the people. I was grateful to get to be in yet another holy place, especially one so old.

Now tired from all our walking, Emily and I headed back to the hostel and caught the end of "happy day" at the hostel bar, which is from noon to nine. We had a drink, did a little research on the hostel computer and our rented iPads (which you get for 30 minutes free each day, and very cheaply after that). After figuring out a plan for Saturday, we got dinner at a restaurant near the hostel that was on Emily's list. Finally I got to have pasta with cream sauce! So happy. We got back to the hostel and decided to go to bed early, around 11 or something, since we had had an early morning and wanted to be ready for a full day the next day.

In our room we met Matt, who it turned out was our age and also living in Madrid doing an internship as part of his international relations major. He lived only about 10 minutes from my apartment in Madrid, and after we chatted for a while I invited him to our Thanksgiving dinner extravaganza (and he came! But we'll get to Thanksgiving later). He was also on the same flight back to Madrid as us and, like us, hadn't reserved the hostel for the night since the flight was so early, so he joined our party of staying up Sunday night.

Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast in the hostel - french toast with honey and bananas! And orange juice! And espresso! I was so happy for french toast... I had been thinking about it since September when all the NYU kids were posting about the new IHOP in the East Village, and hadn't had any in Paris since I ate in the hostel every morning. It was so delicious. Happily fed, we headed off to the Vatican.

Getting to the Vatican required navigating Rome's pitiful metro system. By system I mean two lines that form sort of an X over the city. They're working on building a third line, but it's going very slowly because it's Rome so every time they dig anywhere they find more ruins. None of the stops really get you directly to anywhere, they just get you sort of in the vicinity. It's also pretty dark, dirty, and crowded and makes the NYC subway look like the greatest public transit there is. In any case we got to  Vatican City and got in line to enter St. Peter's Basilica, which is free and therefore has a long (though fast-moving) line.

The Basilica was amazing. It's humongous and so ornate everywhere, including the floor. I am constantly awed by the scale of these buildings. I don't really know how to put it into words but I will get pictures up eventually. After the Basilica we went to the Vatican museums and saw tons of art. The museums are massive and a little overwhelming. We bought an audioguide to help us focus a bit as we looked at everything, and after a very long time finally made it to the centerpiece: the Sistine Chapel.

Actually the Sistine Chapel was one of the most anticlimactic experiences of my life. It was dark, people were talking, it was crowded, guards were yelling at people to stop talking, so it was hard to see, hard to hear, and hard to just enjoy the space. We listened to a few of the audio guide explanations, stared at the ceiling a bit, and then left.

By the time we finished at the Vatican it was time find lunch before our 5:30 walking tour that was starting from the Spanish steps. We got pizza at a place near Plaza Spagna and then wandered around a bit in search of gelato but instead only found all the most expensive stores in Rome - Gucci and Prada, Armani, etc. Slightly disappointed, we caught our tour which seemed to have started a little early, and walked around old Rome. Our tour took us to the Pantheon, where we were given some time to look around, and since Emily and I had already been there, we ducked out to grab gelato at a place on her list that was just around the corner. Tiramisu and hazlenut... A wonderful treat to enjoy during the rest of our walking tour.

After the tour we were pretty cold and headed back to San Eustacio for more coffee to warm up. We did a little exploring of sights at night, including a couple pretty fountains, checked on opera tickets for Sunday night, and then headed back to the hostel. We had missed happy day, but used our free welcome drink tokens to get a drink and sat and chatted with Matt for a while before going back to the pizza place that had been closed for a late night dinner. We got seats right by the oven and got to watch the pizzas cook. We also accidentally ordered a litre of wine though we thought we asked for a half. So dinner became a matter of will. After that though we successfully caught a bus back to the hostel and went to sleep.

We had to get up relatively early on Sunday to check out and then we left our stuff in their luggage area for the day. We had breakfast with Matt and then made plans to meet up later since we wanted to visit the Coliseum and he had already been.

The Coliseum is really big. And it's across the street from some apartment buildings and things, so you could essentially have a view of the Coliseum from your bedroom window, if you were rich, I'm guessing. The line to get in was ridiculously long and we didn't think we really had time to wait in it but found out if you got a tour or an audioguide you could skip the line. So we paid a little extra for a tour and went right in. It was pretty impressive to see how much of such an old structure is left. Our guided tour was okay, but a little hard to hear even though we had a walkie talkie system thing.

Once we finished the tour we left the Coliseum and headed to the Roman Forum, which turned out to be just a giant park of more ruins. For some reason I had thought it was a building of some kind. I blame the set of ITC's production of A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum. It was kind of interesting, but after a while old ruins start to all look alike: old and ruined.

Ruins were followed by more gelato, though I don't remember where... Then we walked to the Jewish quarter to get lunch but the restaurant we were trying to go to was closed. Everywhere looked good though so we sat down outside and a different place. The area was really cool because we got there around late lunch time, and everyone seemed to be out in the street eating and talking. Plus Italians are really smiley so it just seemed like a happy place to be. And then our food came. The best creamy pesto pasta ever. (This was following little fried mozzarella balls that were also really good.) Emily and I were both quite happy as we sat and ate and watched everyone in the street.

We walked around some more and finally found the other gelato place we were looking for - Gelateria del Teatro, which of course turned out to be the best place. I had mint straitacella, their flavor of the month, with really fresh mint, and sage raspberry. Together they were even better, and all so fresh. We definitely wished we had found that one earlier, but we barely found it at all! It's so small and tucked away. Worth the search though.

After gelato we went back to the hostel to relax for a short bit. We had a drink and met up with Matt, who then headed off to a fútbol (soccer) game. Emily and I went off to the opera. I really wanted to see opera in Italy, and Emily was down since she'd never been. We saw The Magic Flute by Mozart. I was excited because it was directed by Peter Brook, a very famous British director who wrote a very important very dull book called The Empty Space that I had to read before I started studio. I think Brook used to be avant garde but now he's just boring. There was nothing in the production (that was only an hour and a half long) to keep me interested. Plus they spoke in French, sang in German, and the subtitles were in Italian, so I was super lost. But I've now seen opera in Italy and I've seen a Peter Brook production, so I don't need to do that again.

And then commenced the waiting part of the evening. We returned to the hostel, picking up pizza to go along the way, and hung out in the bar area, where Matt eventually rejoined us. After a while we made friends with some other Americans, Kirk, his brother Joel, and their new friend Christian. I had been sort of spying on Kirk for a while because he had been talking about dialects and accents and nerdy IPA/voice and speech stuff. And he looked like a young Bon Jovi. Then I found out he's really into Jesus and since then Emily and I have been lovingly referring to him as Bon Jesus.

We passed the evening with the boys and finally around 4 am the three of us (Emily, Matt, and I) walked to the bus station to get the shuttle back to the airport. The system from the airport had been great but was a mess at the bus station, and instead of getting on the first bus at 4:30 we ended up on the second one at 5. By the time we got to the airport we were pretty tight on time for our 6:15 flight and of course encountered the only security lines I've experienced ever on any flight to anywhere in Europe. We figured out we could skip the line since it our flight was soon though, and Emily and I did. I tapped Matt to come with us, but he waited in line a little longer and ended up a little further behind. We got through security and tried to wait for Matt, but one of the men at the gate practically pushed us out the door to the bus that would take us to the plane. Matt didn't get on our bus and we watched the aisle for him to board the plane, but never saw him. Yep. Matt missed the plane. We were very sad and checked in with him as soon as we could back in Madrid. Stupid RyanAir.

From the airport we both went home to sleep a few hours before class. And that is the end of the Roma saga. Viva Italia! (Pictures coming soon.)