Ciao Roma, Buenos Dias Barcelona

Tomorrow is my last day in Rome, and in Italy. We have been in Italy for about 10 days, and boy was it an experience. Italy is significantly different from the 5 other countries in Europe we’ve been too. I’m interested to see how it compares to Spain, which is next. Anyways, Italy was good to us. I would recommend, to those who may plan a euro trip in the future, to start out in Italy and move out west. Italy, in my opinion, was definitely what I thought Eastern Europe would be like. It is a pretty different culture, reminded me a lot of India. People here seem to lack peripheral vision and bump into you often. You will always be in their way, and will need to get used to weaving through traffic, and the driving really reminded me of India. I think William had sort of a culture shock here, as did I. It was shocking to see Italia so different from the states, very shocking. Out of all the countries, Italy probably made me miss southern hospitality the most. An old man even yelled me at on my way to the train station in Florence. We’re not sure why, but I think it’s because I didn’t make way for him when we were crossing the streets from opposite ends. I could only go a certain way because I had rolling luggage that had to go up the ramp, and he just happened to want to hog the ramp and apparently didn’t want me to go on it? We really don’t know, but he started saying something to me in Italian, first I smiled because I thought he was being nice, and then I quickly realized he wasn’t, to which my response was… good. I didn’t get [too] bitchy; I just turned my head up and looked down at the 5 foot 2 man with my half-open “I’m not amused” look. William also stopped to try and figure out what was going on and said, “he’s crazy let’s go.” We are still not sure if he was just having a bad day, or if he was deranged.

Venice made my Italy trip. I absolutely LOVED it. After the initial “I hate [other] tourists!” shock, I realized that I could have stayed there for 10 days and have been fine. Especially with that delicious Chinese restaurant! Florence was good. We bumped into some tourists from Woodlands in Rome, who had just come to Rome from Florence also and they told us how much they were unimpressed with Florence. I definitely thought it was overrated, but climbing to the top of the Duomo was a great highlight of the trip and made Florence for me. The only downfall for Florence (for us) was weather. It was so hot. Rome was hot on the first day, but after that the weather was great, but Florence was psychotically hot; I think like 92 degrees, which is a lot when you’re walking around. Rome is about 85.

Rome, or what William likes to call it, “Roma: The Land of the Dead” was nice, but it had it’s own type of charm. William’s title definitely sums it up: most of the attractions are from the ancient world, like BC era. I think it would have been great to start of with the old and visit the Roman Forum and move to Brussels, and then to Versailles in France. It’s hard to really appreciate the beauty of the ruins… which looked oh so ruined, when you still have images of the chandeliers from the most beautiful palace in the world.

Italian Fights, Mafia Style

Italians can fight. And they do. We’ve witnessed several, and boy, are they show stoppers. We’ve seen an Italian catfight, an Italian Cop vs. minority Roma fight, and one of my favorites: local customer vs. storeowner vs. cop fight over prosciutto.

Cats Take Out Their Claws (or just point fingers)

These French tipped divas took out their pointy fingers at one another at a bakery. The waitress, with black lip liner, and the customer (?) with multi-colored hair pointed fingers at one another while screaming at the top of their lungs. Their fingers got closer and closer to one another’s face and while one towered over the other, the little one showed more and more of her teeth. This was really more of a big girl vs. mini girl fight. Me and William were on a mission, so we didn’t get to see it play out, but the owner, a man, hesitantly, but amused, watched carefully from the counter, ready to break the fight with croissants and jelly buns if it came to that. The way it was looking, it would be probably be wiser to throw the cappuccino machine.

Roma vs. Polizia

Not sure what started it, but I can take a guess. I’m assuming the Roma women were standing and begging near the ticket sales booth and the local cop decided to give them a hard time about it. Whatever it was, it offended the crap out of the Roma woman who, with baby belly-packed to her front, yelled in a condescending, accusing voice to the cop. Once again, I had no idea what was really going on, but the cop stumbled with his words, looked embarrassed, but didn’t seem to back down. His face turned redder as more and more Roma came to defend their homegirl.

Bacon Makes the World Go Around

Whether it’s your only source of protein on a farm in Wisconsin, or meat of garnish, bacon is the best thing to happen to the carnivorous world. [As you can tell, I’m having withdrawals and can’t wait to have some.] In this train station market, the customers, man and wife, fought with the storeowner about something. The husband was very distraught, with perched eyebrows and a frown turned upside down! As he yelled in Italian, he waved a giant packet of bacon in the air. Yummy! The storeowner just shouted back and in came the lame polizia, being useless, but trying to look macho with their machine guns. Obviously the machine gun was not loaded, or else I’m sure the guy would have noticed the cop and put the bacon down. I mean, either the guns are truly plastic, or that is some important bacon. Really, all bacon is.

Anyways, back to Italian life, I realized that Italians just don’t sweat. While American and other tourists drowned in their own sweat (my first day in Rome), Italians walk around, without looking slightly sticky, cigs in mouth and all. I mean even the freaking nuns are sweat-less. In pure jealousy I sadly asked William, “How come nuns aren’t hot in their dark gowns?” Hoping to be enlightened, but instead heard with mutual sadness and sarcasm, “Because Neeti, nuns walk with god.” All said without even turning around! But then I noticed the 7 drops of sweat running down the back of William’s neck. Next time I come to Rome, I’m gonna walk with god.

Best of Rome: Capuchin Crypt

This place was awesome! So it’s basically a resting place of over 4000 friars, along with poor Romans. Wikipedia explains it better than I can so here, “Large numbers of the bones are nailed to the walls in intricate patterns, many are piled high among countless others, some hang from the ceiling as working light fixtures. There are six total rooms in the crypt, all but one featuring a unique display of human bones.”
I loved it!!! It was so neat and it was free! It’s about 5 or 6 small chapels, but it is a sight to see. I’ve always wanted to be cremated, but if an artist would like to inherit my bones and create something cool, let me know! (I like birds).

Our American Friends

We’ve actually gotten really lucky with lines for the many sights we’ve seen. With the exception of Versailles and The Vatican Museum. Luckily, in the line for the Vatican Museum, we met us some good ‘ole New Mexicans! We had ourselves a blast, so much so that our two-hour wait seemed like 20 minutes. We talked about everything from being, “dumb” Americans, to bacon-less breakfasts, to the damage to our lungs from second-hand smoke, to “which smart car would you drive?” Overall, it was nice to see people who understood that pizza should not be paper thin or else it’s just dressing on a cracker, and they found comfort in the fact that we agreed with their NM slogan, “Toss no mas (aka don’t litter)” and realized that this needs to be translated and put all over Europe, especially in parks. As much as I love and appreciate being immersed in a different culture, it’s always nice to know you’re not the only one cursing the smokestack pushing their stroller, or condemning the hookers in the Red Light District.

Italian food has been great. I freaking love gnocchi and my favorite: Spaghetti Carbonara. YUMMO. Even the pizza is good, when it’s not on a cracker. And the gelato and nutella don’t hurt either. But a nice way to end our trip was getting some limoncella on the house because our waiter loved us. I think it had to do with the fact that we inhaled our food like poor children; he felt as though we could use a drink, so he gave us the strongest shit he could find. I think it was limoncella? Either way, he gave us back our credit card and said drink on the house and smiled. I smiled back because overall, Italy treated us well, but now… Estoy muy emocionado de ir a España!