Hello from Rome. Today was a rest day, but that doesn't mean we took it
easy. For starters, Chanda's bro Russ showed up today. In the true spirit
of Team Aroundtheworld he quit his job and flew to Rome to hook up with us
for a couple of weeks on our Euro leg of the journey. Gina, his wife will
be joining us in a week as well.
Todd and Chanda took the train to the airport, picked up Russ, and made it
back to the hotel not much after Nick, Jeff and I woke up.
Today is coliseum day, so the six of us hopped on the subway for the quick
ride over to that part of town. We didn't have enough time to check it out
yesterday so we wanted to make sure we squeezed it in before we left Rome.
Our guide for the tour was Gabby, a transplanted New York gal who was
studying art history in Rome. Not bad place to study in my opinion. It
costs a couple of bucks to get into the coliseum, but the tour was free.
The only hitch being you had to listen to her spiel concerning paid, guided
tours of the city, when she was finished. It was a totally fair trade-off.
Gabby turned out to be great. She was extremely well versed on her history
of ancient Rome and its various emperors, and the coliseum in particular.
The post tour spiel was quick and benign. We weren't sure if she was
expecting a tip or not but we gave her one just the same. Afterwards we
hung out and talked with her for a while until someone suggested we get a
beer. Gabby led us on an impromptu mini-tour of the city enroute to the
local bar.
We wound around alleys and backstreets eventually ending up in a large open
square. There was a big crowd of people watching a troupe of dancers twirl
flags and stomp about. We stopped and checked it out for about twenty
minutes or so before pressing on. We eventually found what we were looking
for and settled down for a round or two, One thing led to another and we
ended up staying for a couple of hours. This was no big deal, but Todd,
Jeff, and I had all dropped off laundry at a shop by our hotel and were
supposed to pick it up before they closed at eight or nine. We enlisted
Gabby and her Italian language skills to help us out. Her task wasn't an
easy one. We knew the name of our little hotel, but not what street it was
on. Apparently the name was not enough for the Italian operator. The next
obstacle was the name and location of the Laundromat, of which we knew
neither. We did know how to get there from our hotel, which was located on
the unnamed street. After about a half-hour or so Gabby was able to phone
our hotel owner and arrange for him to pick up our laundry.
Gabby knew of a party that some friends were having so we decided to go
check it out. We needed to get something to eat before we went and I get
the feeling that Gabby was hoping that we would sober up a bit before we
invaded the party. We hit a great little pizza place and chowed down. It
was at this time that we lost Russ. He had succumbed to a combination of
jet lag and straight shots. Jeff gallantly opted out of the party and
volunteered to take/carry Russ back to the hotel. The remaining five of
Chanda and us continued to the party, but enroute Nick decided to bag it as
well. Then there was three.
The burden of representing our county in the party competition fell to
Toddo and myself and we did not let our countrymen down. The hostess was
Isabella and her older Italian boyfriend. Isabella was about to give birth
to her first child so she refrained from the devil's drink but her
boyfriend made up for her lack of participation. It was an artsy fartsy
group of people. I met a young American girl, Annakaterina, Who was living
with her French, painter boyfriend, Patrick, in Rome. There was Sylvia,
the Italian party girl and a cast of others whose names escape me at this
time. Toddo found his niche immediately. A group of people were jamming
on an assortment of instruments and singing and dancing. He spent at least
four hours straight playing the acoustic guitar and weeks later still had
the blood blister on his finger to prove it. I fell into the fartsy side
of the party spending the evening drinking wine, listening to the music and
chatting up hash-stupored Euros.
We didn't get back to the hotel until four A.M. or so but we didn't have
the key to get into the front door. We had no choice but to completely rat
out the owner and ring the buzzer. His bleary eyed, visage was not a
pleased one. Jeff was forced to do the same thing, but at a much earlier,
hour although I'm sure the hotel owner wasn't too impressed with Russ.
Combine this with the fact that we had asked him to play laundry boy
earlier in the night and you can understand why he wanted us out of his
establishment. No biggie, we were leaving for Florence the next day.
Actually we were embarrassed by the situation and felt bad, but when you
give a party of six one key to the front door, things like this happen.
Later, D.
