Roman Holiday

I’m getting behind on my blog posts. With Christmas coming up and traveling happening then, I know if I don’t knock out a few entries in the next couple of days, I’ll just give up entirely. So, here goes the blog writing marathon…part 1…

The first weekend in December was a puente. Puente in Spanish means “bridge,” but in this case means, “really awesome long weekend that you have more than enough time to travel during.” I’m off Fridays (always), Monday and Tuesday were part of the puente (no school), Wednesday schools were open (but my wonderful teachers told me just not to come in), Thursday was another holiday (schools closed), and Fridays I don’t work. So, I only had to work the morning of December 1st (Thursday) from 8.30-9.30am, and then I was done. BUT, the teacher for that class ended up telling me her kids had a test to take and I didn’t have to come in. That meant my puente was going to be eleven days long! If only I had known sooner, I would have extended my trip to Rome. Maybe even visited the USA. But, tickets to Rome leaving Thursday and coming back Monday were already bought.

Thursday, I took a bus into Madrid and met up with a girl I had met at orientation, Alex, at the airport. She had gotten in before me and so I joined her in waiting at the gate that both she and I had been told our flight was leaving from. I was really happy to be traveling to Rome with Alex because she had studied abroad there for a semester and also spoke a decent amount of Italian…so things were going to be easy for me.

Our flight was set to take off at 4.55pm. Around 4.40, no boarding announcement had been made, so we were getting worried. Alex went over to a counter to ask someone about it. She called me a minute later and said, “Grab our stuff and run! It’s final boarding!” RyanAir had changed the gate number about 30 minutes before boarding and so graciously, had not bothered to make an announcement. We sprinted through Terminal 1 of Barajas Airport for 5 minutes, only to get to the gate, find it closed, and no one around to help us. We could see the pilot and the plane, just sitting there at the end of the gate…but we had no way to get on. We watched the plan leave without us and wanted to cry. We made our way over to the RyanAir info counter and after a lot of talk, they told us we could take a flight out the next morning for a small fee of 110 Euros. Ugh! We said we would think about it, then for the next hour talked to just about every airline in the airport to see if we had any other (cheaper) options. We didn’t. So, because we were dead set on going to Rome, we handed over our credit cards and booked the flight that would take off in 16 hours. We had a lot of time to kill.

We metroed back into the city center, ate some McFlurry and French fries comfort food, and then met up with my friend, Juan David, who lives in Madrid. The three of us walked around a bit, saw Madrid’s gorgeous Christmas lights, then went to a bar for a much needed drink (or two). About 1.00am, Alex and I got on the last metro to the airport. Getting to the airport around 1.45am, we soon realized that we would not be alone sleeping there that night. There were a ton of other people camped out for the evening. We found a cozy corner and settled in to try to sleep. After an unsuccessful hour or so and being incredibly cold, we eventually moved to the café area and stayed there until about 6.00am, when we checked into our flight, went through security again, and obsessively checked our gate number on the board until we took off at 9.25am. The flight was fine. Again, it was really cold (RyanAir can’t even be nice enough to heat their planes), so I didn’t really sleep. We got into Rome, very tired, but happy to have finally made it.

We were going to be staying that weekend with my friend, Erik, who I had met in Valencia. He was living there for a bit, but is really Italian. I had told him a few months ago I would be in Rome and we should meet up for a drink, when he said, “Why don’t you stay with me?” So incredible. So Erik and his sister picked us up from the airport. The reunion was wonderful…as if no time had passed. They dropped us off at a metro station with directions and the keys to Erik’s apartment (he had to go to work). We got to the apartment, showered (amazing), ate some pizza and supplí (think croquetas with rice and cheese) from a Kebab place, and felt more human. Then, we set off for our Roman holiday.

We first went to the Colosseum, thinking we could take a tour that day. But, we got there right as it closed, so we were content just to walk around the outside. My first sight of the monument was breathtaking. The Colosseum is something you see so much in films and on TV, that actually seeing it in real life was surreal. That’s actually the case with about everything I saw in Rome.

So we walked for a bit, then made our way over to the Pantheon and went inside. I guess I was pretty ignorant about what the Pantheon is and so seeing that it was a church was a big surprise to me. We then ate our first gelato of the trip, and were not disappointed. We walked through a long street with upscale stores (Gucci, Fendi…), climbed the Spanish Steps (138 steps), and then went to the Trevi Fountain. This was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. It, again, was breathtakingly beautiful. After throwing in a few coins and making a few wishes, we were very hungry, so we went to a pizza restaurant that Alex had remembered from her study abroad times.

At the restaurant, the pizza was great. The only catch that was because Alex and I were a party of two, we got placed with another party of two at a four-top table. Awkward. Luckily, the Italian couple was very nice. Alex was able to bridge the communication gap between their Italian and my English/Spanish…but overall we all just kept to ourselves. Still, every now and then, we would bump elbows or have to stand up so someone could get out of the table to go to the bathroom. Later, when we told Erik about the experience, he said, “And?” I guess dining with strangers isn’t as weird in Rome as we thought it was…

That night, we were absolutely exhausted. We went back to Erik’s apartment, and met his roommate and his roommate’s friend. Alex went to bed, while stayed up and chatted with the three of them for a while, eventually giving in to my exhaustion, and went to bed.
The next morning, we had planned to wake up by 9.30am so we could get the day of sightseeing started…but that didn’t happen. We both slept through our alarms and woke up around 11.30. I guess we needed the sleep. So after getting ready and grabbing a chocolate corneta for breakfast, we walked over to the Vatican. The Vatican was incredible. We didn’t have to stand in line for more than 20 minutes before we got into St. Peter’s Basilica. I kept thinking of scenes from “Angels and Demons” (worst movie ever) and again, couldn’t believe I was really there. After exploring the basilica and getting some gelato, we went over to the Vatican museums. We wandered for a bit, saw some gorgeous art, and then ended the tour seeing the Sistine Chapel. It was definitely not as awe-inspiring as I thought it would be, but it wasn’t a let down either. Despite all of the 10 guards in the room yelling, “No photo! No photo!,” I was able to snap a pretty perfect one of the typical fingers touching panel.

When we left the museums, we were sad to find it was raining. And it was raining hard. We walked over to the bus stop, passing a bunch of street sellers trying to sell us umbrellas. We were determined not to buy one because both of us had our own back at Erik’s apartment. But by time we reached the bus stop and were soaking wet, we kind of wished we had bought one.

We bused back to Erik’s neighborhood and had some delicious pasta for lunch. Then we went to the grocery store and bought ingredients to bake cookies for Erik and his roommate as a “thank you.” We baked and relaxed for a while in the apartment until Erik got back. We all got ready to go out, then went and met up with another Italian friend who was in Valencia with us, Diego. It was all very strange to be hanging out with the two of them again. Great, but strange. I think I thought that after I left Valencia, I had closed that chapter of my life forever. I kept saying, “This isn’t adios, just hasta luego,” but I don’t think I really believed that. But, this trip proved to me that you really should never say “goodbye,” but instead “see you later.”

Erik, Diego, Alex, and I put our name down on the hour wait list for a good pizza place, and hung out until our name was called. After taking shots out of a chocolate shot glass and standing in the rain for a bit, we went into the restaurant and ate really well. We had all different types of bruschetta and delicious pizza. After dinner, we went to a couple of bars, finally ending up at a Spanish themed bar…how appropriate. We ordered a jarra de Agua de Valencia (why wouldn’t we?) and settled in to watch the special that was on their TV all about Valencia’s Fallas (it was meant to be). We all headed back to the apartment and crashed.

In the morning, we made an American brunch for the boys, complete with French toast, pancakes, bacon, and the rest of the cookies from the day before. We ate for a while, said goodbye to Diego, then headed out. Since Alex had studied in Rome, she had already gone inside of the Colosseum and since it costs money to get in, she was going to skip that part of the tour. So I headed over to the Colosseum by myself and instead of standing in line and paying a cheaper price to get in, I sprang for the private tour and skipped the line. I was so happy I took the guided tour because without it, I wouldn’t have known what anything was. The Colosseum is one of the coolest places. There really aren’t words to describe it. I did, however, keep thinking of the movie “Jumper” (again, terrible film)...I’m, a product of the TV generation.

After the Colosseum, I walked through the Roman Forums (cool, but not my favorite) to meet Alex, making a quick detour to go inside the Piazza de Venezia. Alex and I met up, walked back to the Spanish steps, and then went towards the apartment. We picked up some supplí as a snack, showered, relaxed, and then headed out for dinner. Erik was eating with his dad that night, so Alex and I were on our own. Again, we ate pizza (so good, it never gets old), drank wine, and enjoyed our last night in Rome. After dinner, we explored the chocolate festival that was going on in the neighborhood, bought some goodies, and then went back to the apartment. That night, after Erik got back, we all hung out a bit, then went to sleep.

In the morning, Alex and I were determined to get to the airport early, so as there would be no possibility of missing our flight. We got up, packed, said a “see you later” to Erik, and then headed out. We grabbed more cornetas, and then took a shuttle to the airport. We were plenty early, even having time to do a bit of souvenir shopping before getting on our flight back to Madrid.

All in all, I think my Rome trip was by far my favorite trip I’ve been on since coming here in September. The whole experience was great. The city, the sights, the friends…except missing our flight, things could not have been better. I threw my coin backwards into the Trevi Fountain, so according to popular belief, that means I will definitely return one day. Let’s hope that’s true.