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. 

Italy, Days 1 & 2

30 Mar 06

Off to Rome...ha!

Robs, me, Brandy, Justin


Our plane in Denver was delayed by almost an hour, so we made a last-minute change to another flight to Dallas, for a connecting flight to London. Our new flight to Dallas got us in about 15 minutes after our connecting flight took off, due to bad weather in Dallas, not Denver.  We probably passed each other in the air.

American couldn't get us another flight to London, so we'll be flying into Frankfurt, Germany, then on to Rome tomorrow.  We're losing a day of sightseeing in Rome, but we're hopeful that we can still make the Vatican after we get in.

The airlines put us up at the Clarion Hotel in Dallas.  Jeez, what to do in Dallas?

Hotel courtesy of American Airlines

31 Mar 06

Well, the rest of the group will be landing in Rome today while we're taking a walking tour of Dallas.  We're not even here long enough to do any real sightseeing.

We had dinner, courtesy of American, at Bennigan's last night and breakfast at Denny's.

I'm so glad that I had an extra change of clothes and all my toiletries in my carry-on, it made our unexpected mini-vacation in Dallas so much more comfortable. (Our luggage went on without us, on our original flight.)

My Life Before

If you've read my header, you might have the impression that life before Jay was miserable.  And, in some ways it was.  Not always, but certainly the two years before I met him were less than fun.

Life sucked.  It was hard and I was constantly lashing out at the kids because I hated our situation.  But it wasn't always like that.

After my divorce, while I was still in college, I had the good fortune of meeting someone who would change my life.  Hall and I were lab partners in biochem and we became friends.  I would not have passed my chemistry classes without him as a study buddy.  He was kind enough to come over after I put the kids to bed and help me study.  He had a girlfriend and I was busy being stalked, so it truly was completely innocent.

Frankly, I was jealous of his girlfriend, not because I wanted him for myself, but because I'd just gotten out of a not-so-great marriage and was being stalked by a former friend.  Mostly, I was jealous because they had their whole lives ahead of them and I was pretty sure, at 26, mine was over.  Because I'd been stupid and married so young, and had three kids, I'd never get to be young and carefree like they were.

Hall helped me for a couple of semesters, during which time he and his girlfriend broke up.  He was upset, understandably, but seemed to move on.  One night, he invited me to his place, with a couple of his friends.  We had a good time and shortly thereafter started dating.

I believe that people come into our lives for a reason, and he definitely came into my life for a reason.  He taught me how to be young.  I'd spent so much of my early adult years being an old, married woman and then an old, single mom that I forgot how to have fun.

More importantly, he introduced me to people who would become my life-long friends.  We were together about five years and his friends became my friends, and then became my family.  Without Hall, I wouldn't have My Girls.

Our break-up was ugly and I hope no one felt they had to take sides, but I remained friends and stayed in contact with his former roommate, Squid, and the future Mrs. Squid. A couple of years after Hall and I broke up, Hall got married.  I can't say as I was okay with it, because my heart was well and truly broken when we broke up.  In fact, Robs and I got even closer during our break-up because she was also in the process of having her heart broken, so we spent a lot of time on the phone crying and commiserating (and honestly hoping that Karma would visit them both for hurting us they way they did). Someone once told me that it takes half as long to get over a relationship as the duration of the relationship.  Since we were together just over five years, so I anticipated it would take two and a half years to "get over" him.  It took closer to three and a half, but I eventually got there.

It was about that time that Squid, our trip planner extraordinaire, invited me to join the group on a trip to Italy.  In the time we were together, we did a lot of traveling with their soccer team.  Every year, we went to Florida for the 3v3 National Tournament in Disney World and we'd traveled as a group to Europe in 2002.

When Squid called about the upcoming trip I was overwhelmed with joy at being included.  He cautioned me that Hall and The Missus had been invited, but by that time, I had gotten over our break-up and figured that with a large group, it would be just fine traveling with them.  After all, there was no reason why the whole group had to stay together the whole time we were traveling.  In the end, Hall and The Missus decided not to go, so it really was a non-issue.

Recently, I've been getting itchy feet.  For someone who didn't want to travel in the first place, I got addicted pretty darn fast.  It's been seven years since I've been across the pond.  Jay and I have always talked about returning to Italy - together this time - and I started thinking about my last trip with the group, so I checked with Robs, Squid, and Mrs Squid to make sure they wouldn't mind if I blogged about our trip.

They've given me the thumbs up and so I'm going to start a series of posts about our trip.  I used to be a cropper, but no longer have the time or inclination to scrapbook; putting the posts up on the blog will be a great way to document it permanently.

Foodie Walk

It dawned on me as I left work on Thursday that for the first time in weeks, I had absolutely no obligations for the next three days. 

None.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.

That's exceedingly rare during 9HealthFair season for me to have time off with no plans.  So, of course, what did I do?  I made plans for us to join some fellow WriMos for a "free" Foodie Walk.  Apparently, the Downtown Business Association sponsors a Foodie Walk every month, and though it's the same seven stops, the theme changes each time.

The walk turned into more of a shopping trip for us.  The sample of food were okay, nothing knocked my socks off, but I did find something to buy at three of the stops.  At the first stop, I bought a vanilla lotion bar.  Not even remotely edible, but I've been eye-balling it for a long time and my hands are a dried-out mess.  I know the lotion bar will help.  At the spice shops, we found some spices that we just *had* to have.  Jay managed to get me out of the Olive Oil shop without buying anything.  That, in itself, was a miracle, because I really, really loved the flavored olive oils and the garlic one almost came home with us.



Habanero Sugar (can you say Aztec cookies?)
Raspberry Sugar (I have no idea why I NEEDED this)
Ghost Pepper Salt (Jay's stepping up his hot sauce)

Ground Jalapeno Chiles (Jay's hot sauce is going to kill someone)
Tandoori (I don't know, Jay says it's good for chicken)
Madagascar Vanilla Bean Powder (shh...birthday present for the Bionic Cowgirl)
Piri-Piri Style Spice (again, not a clue, but Jay assures me it's good)
Vanilla Lotion Bar (not edible, but necessary for my hands)

 

 

Yes, that's my husband copping a grope on the statue :)

So our "free" Foodie Walk ended up costing us about $30, but it was fun anyway.  We might even do it again next month.

Braggin'

Jay's been working on a children's book for a while now.  He started his illustrations on paper and it took him days to complete just one panel.

A year or so ago, he changed from paper to computer and began "drawing" his illustrations on the computer.

Today, he finished his book.  Completely.  All illustrations and text are complete.  The cover is complete.  It's beautiful.

Now, the hard work begins...to shop it around and find a publisher.

I'm super proud of him; this wasn't an easy task to complete.

Aaaannndddd, Karma's a...

...bird, apparently.

I was so very, very happy with my new hooters.

I really was.

They were things of beauties and within 24 hours those poopin' finches were outta here.

24 hours after that the doves moved in.

Doves are not afraid of hooters.

And doves shit twice as big as finches do.

Damn you, Karma!