30 Days of Memories: Day 30

It was very hard to get a picture of the Colosseum, as it is always swarming with people. It looks like a busy anthill with ants scurrying here and there.

We did a self-guided tour and I was awe-struck by the fact that I was standing in a stadium with so much history. Even with so many people around, I could help but feel touched by the events past. We opted not to do a guided tour, but now that they've opened the underground chambers and passages to tour groups, I will definitely be doing that next time around.

Rome was an exciting, beautiful place to visit, but my inner country girl will always feel more at peace in the wide open spaces like Tuscany or in the small villages surrounded by nature like Cinque Terre.

Italy, Day 4

02 Apr 06

I learned an important lesson... 7-8 hours is not nearly long enough for clothes to hang dry in a small bathroom in a humid country.  I get to wear damp clothes today!  Yipee!  It's kind of like putting on a damp bathing suit, only all over your body.  Thank God, Mrs Squid had a pair of socks I could borrow so I wouldn't have to wear wet socks.  First full day of Italy and this trip is turning out to be quite an adventure!

Clothes were so damp that when I got up from eating breakfast, I left a wet ass-print on the chair.  Wish I was kidding about that.  It looked like I peed myself while eating.  Let's just hope that's the most embarrassing thing that will happen to me on this trip.

Today's walking tour included the Borghese Gallery, the Colosseum, and the Pantheon.  I wish I'd thought to bring a pedometer to keep track of the number of miles we'll walk in a day here.

The gardens outside of the gallery

We even stopped to watch some hard-core footballers.  They were playing on pea gravel.  And I mean, playing! Slide tackles included.  As much as I love soccer, there's no way I'd even consider playing on the surface they were.

Outside of Borghese Gallery, before we started off on our hike walking tour.

 

And we're walking...

So...I learned that when pieces of the arch fall off, they just replace it with random pieces from elsewhere.

The Colosseum was astounding.  The history in this place is haunting.

Whew, taking a break after refilling our water bottles.

(I can't find the pictures I have of the drinking fountains in the area.  You can drink right out of the running fountains, fontanelle, which come directly from the aqueducts. Much cheaper than buying water and very yummy.)

For dinner, one of the guys in our group who had the opportunity in college to live in Rome for a semester, took us to one of his favorite places.  There was a film crew there, who knows what they were filming, looked like a reality show of some sort.  The evening walk gave us the opportunity to take some cool night pictures.

Let me tell you, by the time we get back I'm going to be in great shape!  All the stairs and hills here will do my ass a world of good.

Italy, Day 3

01 Apr 06

Rome!

Finally!

Except...no luggage.  They can't find it and assured us it would be in in two hours.  They lied.  No luggage.

The cab ride from the airport to the hotel scared the shit out of me.  No kidding.  It's all gas and brakes.  Green light - gun it.  Red light - slam on the brakes.  And I thought drivers in Mexico were scary.

We met the rest of the group at the hotel - which is not like a hotel at home - in the late afternoon. Hotel Oceania occupies the 3rd floor of a building and the signage is nothing like I expected.  Guess I'm too used to a hotel being an entire building with big bold signs everywhere.  The rooms are kind of cool, though, once you find them. (102 stairs to our rooms - I started counting stairs on our first trip to Europe.)

Our walking tour included the Trevi Fountain and the outside of the Pantheon. 

We had dinner seated at an outside table of a fabulous restaurant.  The seating arrangements were kind of scary, as the table extended into the alley and on occasion a car would go screaming by.

I did not purposely blur this picture - that's a car rushing down the alley.

I drank way too much wine (which was cheap and wonderful).  I drank enough that I found this sign to be hilarious.

Sign on the restaurant's bathroom door.

Between the jet lag and the copious amounts of wine I drank with dinner, I was feeling no pain.  But on our way back to the hotel, I did have to pee something fierce, so Robs and I chose a McDonald's bathroom to use.  I think Mrs Squid was with us, too, but my memory's a bit foggy.  We expected that McDonald's would have a public bathroom we could use, and they did.  Only...well... it wasn't exactly what we were expecting.

It was a squat toilet.

Now, on sober days, I have issues with squat toilets.  After wine and no sleep, in yoga pants, it was almost impossible.   Someone gave me a heads up that it was a squat toilet before I went in, but I hadn't fully thought it through.  The stall looked like a square shower pan with a thing that came up from the ground that I was supposed to aim at.  I remember yelling through the door to Robs that if I fell, she had to come help me.

It took some doing and some bracing against the walls, but I managed to hit the damn target without peeing all over my yoga pants, for which I was very grateful, since literally the only clothes I had with me were the ones on my back and the dirty ones in my carry-on.

I was feeling really grimy by the time we got back to the hotel, so I borrowed a shirt from Squid to wear as a night shirt and washed my clothes out in the bathroom sink.  All I can say is poor Squid, he had to share a room with three women (okay, one was his wife) and I had hung all of my clothes around the bathroom to dry.  It's a good thing he and Mrs Squid are fabulous, easy-going people.