Florence, Italy: Rome Day 1

I woke up this morning in a self-induced state of hell. We went out last night and celebrated one of the TCU girls’ 21st birthdays and I overdid it. Perhaps what was even worse was my coping with it by drinking a lot of water in the morning to try and re-hydrate. That ended with me having almost 2 liters of water sloshing in my stomach in the middle of a bumpy bus-ride. It didn’t end up good.

When I got to Rome I was feeling the worst that I’ve ever felt. Then, after showering and taking a half-hour nap in the hotel, I felt like I was ok enough that I could do the walking tour with the group. Funnily enough, the turning point with my outlook on the day occurred when a bird went to the bathroom on my neck right before we started. This bird had great aim. It was probably 20 feet above me and somehow it hit the neck and completely missed the shaved head and the shirt! At least I had something to be thankful for. Here’s the culprit who I captured on camera but not in life:

The afternoon tour was phenomenal! Jeremy, our tour guide, put in so many funny details and background tidbits that stuff was making sense. I’ve never had a huge interest in art, but I’m definitely growing one with my class and with Jeremy’s tours.

Our hotel, the Albergo del Sole, is nice! All five of the guys here (three from the San Franciso group and then Brett and I) have a room with four separate beds, one of which is a queen. I’m also loving that the hotel is centrally located. This may be my hotel for when I come back in the future on my own — we’ll see.

Before coming over to Italy, Mike Bruce (a friend who goes on the Appalachian Trail each May) gave me a map of Rome with walking paths marked that he and Angela had done as well as a lot of sticky notes giving me good places to eat, places that were scenes in Angels and Demons, and some of the best views. Mike doesn’t disappoint! He’s so organized he would be a great travel agent.

Our hotel is actually right above a restaurant that he and Angela had eaten at and he’d marked on the map. So I figured that serendipity was working and I ate there for dinner tonight. The food was great! With gnocchi and a type of fried flower, I was dining nice. The waiters made me feel even more welcomed by giving me a table in a corner with an electrical socket to work at. Every time they came by they grinned and looked over to see what I was doing on my computer. When I showed them the pictures I took during the day they were even nicer!

I finished out the day by taking one of Mike’s walking tours and seeing the Coliseum at night. I’m pretty bad at using maps when I have them. I don’t have a problem reading them (that’s the easy part); the problem comes from taking the time to stop and pull them out to read. For tonight’s route I memorized each of the streets that I was going to turn at. That worked pretty well, and I only had to pull it out twice to realign myself.

One of the things I should have noted is that Mike and Angela walked the route by the circus maximus right before dinner — not two hours afterwards. It wasn’t until I was 2/3 of the way to the Coliseum that I realized it wasn’t the best idea to walk through an unlit park by the river in Rome alone at 9:30 at night wearing all-black clothes. The thing I realized that made me laugh is that people were probably more afraid of me than I was of them — I was wearing all black and have a shaved head! Stereotypes fuel fears and this one might have actually worked for me in this case. Then again, it’s all speculation. Once I got to the Coliseum, however, there were always people in view and I took major streets back to the hotel after that. On those streets were the Monument to Victor Emmanuelle (gigantic+enormous = ginourmous) as well as the first Jesuit church in Rome!

Tomorrow morning we wake up and go to the Vatican Museums early to avoid most of the lines. I love this city!