We've made it to Rome after a long trip: taking turns sleeping in Seatac, a multi hour layover in YYZ, and the regular flying times to get this deep into Europe. The journey here was a nice little adventure involving a soup that I'm told was a poutine, Sherlock Holmes and MI6, and being airport hobos wherever we could sleep. But after a day and a half of traveling, next time I may pay extra to fly more directly and leave the adventure in my destination.
Speaking of Rome and adventure, we had a pretty easy time in the airport: our bags came first, customs is non-existent (literally we talked to no one but they did stamp our passports, we got on the Leonardo express really easily and luckily did validate our ticket when we weren't sure we needed to - a conductor did check - phew!). So that was a bad segue way, the only adventure in the airport was almost being squished by a woman who has no right to load a luggage cart - it was the most ridiculous 6' stack of what looked like kayaks and snowboards on top of two tiny luggage carts acrobatically squished together to form a shelf for aforementioned stack.
The real adventure starts as we get to Termini station, all paranoid of being pickpocketed and that sort of misadventure, only to find out we don't actually have the address of the place we are going written down! Or at least not on anything we brought with us... Which is totally hilarious (not at the time) because I just emailed the address to my parents before we left - and I found out my phone doesn't store sent messages locally, so.... 20 minutes later of trying to find wifi and a probably pretty expensive roaming call later, we're on our way to the place which is 2.5 blocks from the station!! We knew it was close, but we didn't have the EXACT address.
So now we think we're good and on our way (did I mention it was raining?), we get to the building and find a broken buzzer... Roaming charges later... We're welcomed by our hosts Luca and Nicole - who are probably the best part of our day, super nice and talkative. They offer to make us tea and show us how to get to the Galleria Borghese.
After showing us to our room, we fight off the urge to pass out while unpacking and getting ready to go out. We finally head out to Termini station to catch a bus to find out we can't find the bus stop in this crazy massive bus loop. Did I mention it's raining?! In the distance I spot 910, grab Katherine's hand and we start running, dancing around puddles, trying not to slip on the slippery roadway, and laughing at this mess of trying to make our reservation appointment that is right now.
So we make the bus and find out we don't know how to validate our Roma pass, I say try, I'm pretty sure we failed as this yellow box is blinking red as we try swiping our cards. We successfully steal transit that we paid for only to experience the lengthy weirdness of a bus trying to drive through some tiny streets, looking out the fogged up windows trying to see if we missed our stop, while more and more people cram in, which is totally setting off my pickpocket spidey sense. But we did get off at the right stop after Katherine made a path to the door with an "excuse me" and pushing Romans and tourists left and right (it's a good thing, with my politeness we would have never made it off the bus!)
We get to the gallery and they still have our reservation! So I'm happy. Then we see the throngs of French teenagers on a school trip cramming every space and really classing up the joint with their youthful ah, let's call it exuberance. More shoving to check my bag... Waiting in line And we're in.
Finally! The first attraction! Then we find out amongst all the Rick Steve's audio guides we have, the gallery is not one of them. But it was alright because i had my own little audio guide telling me all about what she read and heard before the trip. :)
There were some pretty amazing marble sculptures there, but the tiredness and constant standing were taking a toll - I almost had a Cheebus Maximus (kath's new roman name) pass out on me as we found a seat.
More shoving through French school children to reclaim my bag from the checkin. By now it is raining even more! We have no umbrellas and no ponchos - but there are loads of brown skinned (no idea what ethnicity) guys hanging around sights and streetcorners with bags of umbrellas for sale - but I'm wary of this so I just keep telling them no.
Stellar planning continues: we don't know where to catch the bus back. So we decide to walk in the rain while checking every couple of blocks if we are heading the right way (trying to find cover to keep our maps and phone dry). It was pretty nice to look around on the way, but would this be so much better if it weren't raining!!
We end up looking for a restaurant Luca suggested, got a little lost but found it. This time it is a large group of English speaking teenagers and their parents clogging up the "Gallina Bianca" (white hen) and convincing us a table will not be found here. So we wander around trying to find a grocery store Luca mentioned near Santa Maria Maggiore which is a massive Basilica in the middle of the city. I got confused about which side we were on and it was hard and annoying to look up the map in the rain and trying to see the street signs. Soooo..... 30 minutes later of wet socks we give up and try to find another restaurant, and then we find out how confused I was and we are almost standing right outside the closed supermarket called Sma. I wish we had pictures of all this but it was difficult with the rain - rain played a big (annoying) factor in our first day!! Grrr....
At this point we are wet, tired, hungry, and pretty frustrated. We're actually really close to our b&b so we decide to eat anywhere we can on the way back. We found a nice looking pizzeria, but again there were lineups. As we've been walking we've been seeing signs for this:
(photo won't upload)
Which looks hilariously like something we see back home, so we end up eating fried chicken for our first real "Italian" meal. But at that point we didn't care and it was funny how similar it looked to Church's:
We make our way back to our home base, and Nicole greets us and offers to make us tea and dinner. We end up having tea and chatting for an hour or more which was really nice, and helped salvage a kind of crappy day.
So that was day 1! Tomorrow: the Vatican.
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