day 1--monday in rome. part one.

we arrived in Rome! upon looking out our windows we saw it--fields full of hay bales. not exactly what we expected. but we were HERE! and in ROME!

we waited in line for the nice customs people to glance at our passports and stamp them, collected our bags and were ready to make our way to the hotel. oh, yeah, and I took time to change out of my yoga pants and into a skirt. y'know, because that clearly made me WAY more presentable after my lengthy plane ride.

we'd heard tell that you could purchase phones at the airport. we passed a kiosk offering to sell them to us for like 120 euro. which is OBSCENE. we passed on those. we did hit up the ATM, though, which was a mini-adventure in itself, as only half of the words made sense to us. (the phrases were a bit weirdly worded)

but we had money and were ready to go. next question: bus? train? cab? hmm...after some wandering and unnecessary dragging around of our bags, we decided on bus. this seemed the least expensive and the most likely to get us to the general vicinity of our hotel. it was 8 euro a piece (the same cost as the train/metro, but we'd committed when we discovered this--and we figured we didn't have to deal with our luggage).

thing we learned: you want COINS. the nice money-taking people are NOT pleased when you hand them 50 euro for a 32 euro purchase. and they are even less amused when you have no coins. you would think that since we were a) clearly americans and b) clearly at the airport, this would be run of the mill. but we made a note and moved on.

the ride was hot and a little nauseating. the streets are small and windy to/from the airport, the drivers are NUTS, the traffic was bad and we were all tired and hungry and out of sorts. and experiencing some culture shock for sure. we drove around and passed the vatican, and they came to the "city center." we made a last minute decision and stopped there, which was a good thing, since we later learned that the termini stop was both farther from our hotel AND far-ish from where we were.

we unloaded and attempted to hail a cab. our garmin wasn't working even with its italy maps, and we had no idea where to go. hailing a cab was unsuccessful. multiple times. until one cabby started gesturing wildly behind him. and then, aha!

thing(s) we learned: in areas were cabs are commonly needed there are cab kiosks of sorts. you just get in the queue and load into the cab when it's your turn. there's very little flagging them down, apparently.

also, cabs will charge you out the wazoo. a charge for extra passengers is customary. and I know they charge for luggage in NYC, but one extra euro a bag and per person adds up! but a 12 euro cab ride sure beat the heck out of all that walking in the sun.

and then, we arrived at this blissful place: Hotel Villa Glori. We liked this one for sure. The location was a little off-the-beaten-path, but we were kind of grateful for that in the long run. We took the world's smallest elevator (seriously, it held ONE of us and our suitcase--just barely) to our rooms. We were on the 2nd floor, and Courtney and Derek were on the 3rd I think. We later learned our rooms were a little different, but very similar all in all. And they had a wall-mounted flat screen TV. We did not.

next on our list: LUNCH. there's a faboo little pizza place across the street from this hotel. pizzeria vignola. it was here we learned a few other important things...

for one: ask how big a dish is. pizzas were 6 euro a piece so we assumed they were individual-size. um, NO. we looked ridiculous with our huge pizzas. we could have had two TOTAL. and maybe would've wanted an appetizer or something.

for two: be specific. derek, trying to embrace the language, said "vino!" um, yeah. courtney and I were super worried they'd be bringing us a bottle of the most expensive thing in the house. fortunately the nice man brought us a bottle of the house red wine and even then, allowed us to just drink what we wanted and they'd pour glasses of the rest. and matt got a beer. next time, we need to say un bicchiere vino rosso della casa, per favore. turns out that phrase was never used. (un bottigilia. or un litro was more like it.)

 during our lovely Italian lunch we also saw a tree being chopped down. a guy in a cherry-picker crane thing, totally not strapped in at all, was just going to town. cars almost got hit, people were right below him while he was working, but somehow, no one was harmed in the demolishing of the tree. they cut it down to the ground, we saw when we returned!

 

 then we had the restaurant call us a cab and headed to our next stop: the vatican!

(I'm trying not to make these super long posts, so pardon the piecemeal accounts!)