"Selfie-stick, 5 Euro"

Rome, Italy: the land of the selfie-stick vendors and continuously running public water fountains.

Last Sunday, Zoe and I flew from Prague to Rome, where we were to spend the next five nights at an airbnb right across the street from St. Peter’s Basilica. Zoe was ecstatic to be headed back to her Italians and I was happy to staying put for a couple days. When we got off the plane at Rome Fiumicino, however, we began to run into some problems. We took a bus from the airport to that was supposed to take us to the Vatican. It’s true, the bus did pass the Basilica, but then it kept on moving right past it, eventually stopping a ways away from where we needed to be. We got off the bus, preparing for the long trek ahead in the 90-degree heat. Zoe had pulled up directions to our place from the Internet because the directions the airbnb woman had given were far from clear. We walked and walked and walked, Zoe with her backpacking backpack, and me dragging a rolley carry-on and a duffel bag. After a while, we started to head into a neighborhood that didn’t look like the one we should be staying in. Zoe whipped out her Italian and asked someone for directions and he pointed us in the wrong one. A couple blocks later Zoe went into a hotel, got a map and some better directions, and we were off. We made it to the pizza parlor where we were to pick up our keys, headed two houses over, and followed directions to the third floor, door on the right. Zoe put the keys in but the lock wouldn’t budge. We tried every door in that apartment to no avail. Zoe went back to the pizza guy to see if maybe we had the wrong keys but we apparently didn’t. Frustrated, hot, and tired, we tried to call the airbnb woman but she didn’t answer. So we lugged our stuff back down to the pizza parlor, had lunch, and waited for the airbnb woman to call us back. Half an hour later she did, with the helpful Italian advice, “I don’t understand, keep trying.” We went back up stairs, fiddled with some more keys, and eventually I realized the keys worked on the door on the left, not the right, like she had told us. We opened the door into our airbnb exhausted, and ready for a nap.

St. Peter's Basilica from our first airbnb's bathroom window

We didn’t get our nap. Five minutes after entering our airbnb we had come to the conclusion that 1) our toilet did not flush properly and 2) we had no wifi. Normally not having wifi wouldn’t be that big of a problem, but Zoe and I were planning on meeting a couple friends during our stay in Rome and without wifi we would have no way to contact them. Also, during our stay, we both had our pass times to sign up for UCSB classes in the fall. And, we were also going to be in Rome for a long time compared to our last couple cities. Wifi and a functioning toilet were a must. So we found a gelateria where we were able to log into wifi and went to work. Zoe got in touch with both the airbnb woman in Italian and the airbnb company in the US to explain our situation and get approval to cancel our reservation and receive a refund. Meanwhile I was looking up other available places we could move in to the next day. An hour later, we had everything figured out and were ready to put the shaky start to Rome behind us. We walked from the gelateria to the front of the Vatican, down the Tiber River to Castel Sant’Angelo and then found a trattoria for dinner.

Monday morning we were up bright and early for our tour of the Coliseum and Roman Forum. Monday was just as hot as the day before and 15 minutes into our 3-hour tour, our group was already seeking shake. Our guided tour of the Coliseum, while hot, was really interesting and we had a very excitable and cute middle-aged Italian woman tour guide. The second half of the tour, the part where we were in the Roman Forum was particularly interesting and full of history. Had we explored it without a tour guide to explain the particular ruins and their historical purposes, it wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive.

Inside the Coliseum

Stacey in front of the Coliseum

Roman Forum ruins

That evening, we gathered our belongings from our airbnb and traveled an hour to the other side of the city to our new, wifi connected, airbnb. While it was farther out from where we wanted to be, it was accessible enough by the metro and, more importantly, allowed me to sign up for my classes that night. After I registered for classes, Zoe and I met up with one of her friends from her Florence program for dinner near the Coliseum.

Tuesday morning we were again up bright and early for a tour, this time for a tour of the Vatican. The best part about having preordered tickets for a guided tour before we arrived in Rome is that we didn’t have to wait in the massive line that wrapped around the Vatican—we walked right in. Our tour guide, Barbara, was unfortunately not as captivating, or as easygoing, as our Coliseum guide. Our tour got off to a rough start when Barbara got testy with one of the other tour guides when she discovered that two ladies from our group had latched onto another tour guide’s group. He apparently didn’t show her appropriate concern over the two rebel tourists and she didn’t take kindly to his attitude, calling the front desk to complain about his comportment. Then she spent the next 20 minutes counting and recounting our group to make sure she had all the proper members. It was beginning to feel like we were back in kindergarten.

Barbara: crazy Vatican tour guide

The first two hours of our tour were dedicated to the Vatican Museum but the information Barbara gave us seemed unimportant, and moreover, uninteresting. All we really wanted to see was the Sistine Chapel and the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. It was unfortunate we had to listen to Barbara for over two and a half hours before we finally reached the Sistine Chapel, and then after only a few minutes, were quickly herded out like sheep. From there we entered St. Peter’s Basilica and it was amazing. It is so large, and decorated with statues and paintings that are gigantic.

St. Peter's Basilica steps

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

After enduring three and a half hours with Barbara, Zoe and I needed a break so we got lunch and relaxed until we were to meet up with Simone, my friend from Bordeaux, who also happened to be staying in Rome. We got drinks, had a nice dinner, and followed dinner up with gelato before heading home for the night. The Roman metro system really pales in comparison to the other metro system’s we’ve experienced the past couple of weeks (and even Bordeaux’s) and it took us over an hour to get home.

Wednesday provided no rest for the weary and Zoe and I were back at the Vatican to hear Pope Francis give his weekly Wednesday speech and blessing. We got to the Vatican around 9:30, just before Pope Francis made his tour of the square in his “Pope-mobile”. Zoe and I were far from the front of the St. Peter steps, but Pope Francis made it all the way back to where we were and passed about 10 feet in front of us in his little car! We were very excited, and also a little concerned by the hoards of parents raising their newborns into the air, in hopes that Pope Francis would reach out and bless them. It was a scene resembling that of The Lion King, when Rafiki holds Simba out over Pride Rock for the entire animal kingdom to praise. I was just waiting for someone to drop a baby.

Papa Francesco on the Pope-mobile!

The homies: Swiss Guard

Gathered in front of the Vatican for Papa Francesco

After listening to Pope Francis speak about the importance of parents educating their children at home and not leaving teaching to the education systems, Zoe and I embarked on some sightseeing. We hopped on the metro to the Trevi Fountain. Unfortunately, the Trevi Fountain is under construction until October, so much of the stone was covered in scaffolding and there was no water running.  From there we walked to the Pantheon, and strolled inside, admiring its altar and ceiling.

  

Trevi Fountain and scaffolding

Wednesday night we had more dinner plans, this time with Margaretta and Doug Page, friends who live a couple blocks from us on 8^th Avenue in San Francisco! Margaretta and Doug were in Rome celebrating their 25^th wedding anniversary and we just happened to be in Rome at the same time. We met them for dinner near the Spanish Steps and it was great to see familiar faces from home. After dinner we hunted down the gelateria Come il Latte, which they had found highlighted in the New York Time’s 36 Hours section on Rome. It took some good map reading to find, but it was well worth it!  Best gelato we had in Rome, made even better by the dark chocolate lining of the inside of the cone. It was so fun to see Margaretta and Doug, but when we parted ways it made me all the more anxious to get back to San Francisco! We exchanged travel stories and for me it was really amusing listening to them talk about all the things they’d seen in the past week. Talking to Zoe later, we could really see how all our traveling was beginning to wear us down because as Margaretta and Doug were naming all the things they’d seen and wanted to still see in Rome, Zoe and I just wanted to relax.

View from atop Spanish Steps

On the Spanish Steps

Thursday finally allowed Zoe and I to sleep in. We got up around 10:30 and forced ourselves to go on a run. Even with all of the walking we’ve been doing in the past couple weeks, all the good food we’ve been surrounded by is beginning to show! We took the metro to the Coliseum and ran from the Coliseum to river, a ways down the river, and then back. We made lunch at our airbnb and hung out for most of the afternoon at our airbnb, feeling a little guilty for not going to see more things in the city, but at the same time exhausted from so much traveling for so long, that relaxing was a nice reprieve. That night I met up with Simone for drinks at a really cool bar in the Trastevere neighborhood on the other side of the river from our airbnb. What is really cool about these Italian bars is that instead of happy hour (or sometimes in addition to), they have apertivo, which when you buy a drink, allows you access to a buffet of varying hors d’oeuvres. At this bar, they had lots of different apertivo options, from saffron rice to couscous, to baked cinnamon apple slices. It was a great last night in Rome.

That brings us to today, Friday, May 22. Zoe and I are on a train headed to Florence, back to Zoe’s host family actually. We are staying with them for the next three nights. But while we are staying in Florence, two of the days we will be there we will be taking day trips—one to Cinque Terre, and one to Venice. Zoe is leaving Florence to head back to Sacramento May 26^th, and I’m leaving the 27^th from Paris. We are really getting close to the end of our travels, but we are still packing in as much as we can (maybe even too much!) into our last few days.