when in rome

I spent a bit of time on the flight home on Tuesday night wondering how I was going to cram our whole trip to Rome into a blog entry. After a bit of consideration, I decided that you couldn’t fully appreciate the experience through my attempt at conveying it and that would be a real pity. Instead I chose to share a few things that I discovered during the course of the weekend…

• 1.5 hrs sleep is not sufficient when you have to leave for the airport at 4:15am.
• I need to learn how to be more competitive and not get myself ‘niksed’ into shameful situations involving fellow Asian travelers and peace signs.
• When calling a hotel whose staff ‘no speaka da Engaleesh’ it will be very difficult to understand that your hotel booking was not confirmed. It will be even harder to acquire the address of your new hotel and putting on an Italian accent will not make the communication any easier.
• Slightly rotund, balding Italian men may try to corner you on the 64 bus and it is handy to have a 6ft 5 boyfriend who can gallantly rescue you when you are too polite to stand up for yourself.
• An FD (a purposeful ‘fall down’) among a crowd of unsuspecting foreigners at a popular tourist attraction is highly amusing and even more so watching it over and over on camera.
• An unidentifiable cocktail is best enjoyed in the company of good friends in a wine bar, off the beaten track and served by an over-the-top Italian barman who evidently spent an extended number of years at acting school. Add a cheesy keyboard-playing, pop hopeful and you have an ideal Saturday night in Rome.
• Pizzas and sandwiches bought from vendors on the roadside are dodgy!
• Arrivederci is a very complicated Italian word and is best remembered by breaking it down into separate syllables. Need any help? Ask Steve as he should have it down by now. Other words I have since had to restrain myself from using are rad, lank, bru, kiff and diblaho(!) (shot Dana).
• Bron and Margaux are great roommates if you are not looking to get any sleep. Otherwise, be prepared to chatter until the early hours of the morning and then sleep through your alarm clock, thus missing out on the decent breakfast and the Sistine Chapel (sorry Erica!).
• You are not allowed to laugh raucously in the Pantheon or sit on the steps at Vittriano or you will get yelled at by a priest and whistled at by a guard, respectively.
• Ryanair has enough leg room for a hobbit. Anyone else, unlucky.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither can it be properly discovered in three. But, we did our best and tossed a coin, or a few in Ian’s case, into the Trevi Fountain to ensure a return visit.