A Charlie Brown Trip to Rome

Whew, a lot has happened in the past few weeks. I'll split it into a few entries. First, I went to Rome with Gabe the weekend before Thanksgiving. We flew in on a Friday night and left on a Monday morning. Germany snowed the whole weekend while Rome was in the 50's. I was glad for the 50's.

When Gabe and I landed we shuttled into city center and found our hotel. It was a cute little hotel on the 2nd floor of a building along Via Nazionale. The door was a hole in the wall door and it was buzz-in access. The room was tiny but comfortable and clean. We dropped our stuff off and went on a hunt for food. Neither of us brought the map, brilliant i know, so we walked and walked and walk the most circuitous route to the Trevi Fountain. I knew it wasn't far from our hotel but we walked too far south to begin with and followed random signs. When we got there one of the rose sellers was being really aggressive towards me. Gabe nearly got up in arms with him. From the Trevi Fountain we meandered back to our hotel, the long way, to sleep and get ready for a big Saturday.

Saturday we did a TON. We slept in a little, and then we took the underground to the Vatican. We went through the Vatican museums to ultimately see the Sistine Chapel. We saw a lot of statues, Raphael's "School of Athens", as well as some Dali and Chagall modern art. The Sistine chapel was a lot smaller than I thought it was be. I seem to say that about a lot of things, but it was still phenomenally beautiful. It was very crowded and a no talking rule was strictly enforced by Vatican security frequently hissing "SHHHHHH!!!"
From the Vatican museums we went to Saint Peter's Basilica. It was being set up for a big Sunday mass. There were chairs everywhere blocking a lot of walking space. It was still very massive and impressive. I tried to get a lot of good pictures but it's very hard to hold still long enough to get good light sometimes. Flash just doesn't do inside churches justice.
From Saint Peter's we walked across the Ponte di Castel Sant'Angelo to Piazza Navona. I was so looking forward to Bernini's fountain of the 4 rivers... it was UNDER CONSTRUCTION!! I was so bummed. Then we went to find food. We found a restaurant in an alley a block away from the central Piazza area. This was our best meal of the whole trip. The waiter recommended excellent wine and food and was very friendly. We spent quite a few hours there. It was dark by the time we left.
After the restaurant, we went to the Pantheon then walked to the Spanish Steps along the Via Corso. Lots of good shopping on the Via Corso. I wasn't quite in the mood for spending money though. We enjoyed some time sitting on the Spanish Steps then headed back to the hotel for a few hours to gear up for enjoying some Rome night life. Gabe took a nap and I tried. Here's where the night starts heading downhill....
We signed up for a pub crawl. At the 1st bar we met these two other soldiers from Italy on a weekend away. They were fun to talk to, they were "older" and married, no games. Somewhere in the midst of all this, some girl leaches onto Gabe. Gabe, being Gabe, didn't shut her down. He relished in the flirtation. I think I got a little jealous and I didn't stand up for myself as the girl he was on a trip with despite not being his girlfriend. On the walk between bars, this girl ditched her friends to stay near him, so I talked to our other soldier friends then started talking to an Australian architect making his way through Europe for a few months. It was fun to talk to him, he was cute too, but obviously this did my situation with Gabe no good. We did a few other bars and as the night is wearing on I'm more inebriated, therefore more emotional, and still feeling threatened. Things just started going wrong. To make a horrible story short, at the final place I went into the bathroom and ended up leaving my handbag in there. In the two minutes it took me to circle back to the bathroom, the bag had been rifled through and the 30 Euro I had remaining was gone. All my cards were there, all my ID's were there. I was SO LUCKY. I went back to coat check to look for Gabe and Kris and they weren't there. I made a BIG loop back to the bathroom and they were waiting for me. They were worried. We'd somehow circled each other. I admitted the loss of the 30 Euro and in that instant Gabe and Kris agreed it was time I was taken home. Gabe disappeared to get his coat and I got really upset that nothing was going well anymore. The weird part is, I was not very drunk by any means. Not so pleasant things were just happening to me one after another. By the time Gabe came back, all I wanted to do was crawl into a bathtub. We took a quick and easy taxi back to the hotel and I did as I wanted, I sat in a hot tub for a few hours and then went to sleep. I don't know if Gabe would have responded to the advances of this girl or not, but either way, I became his number one concern in the end. It was one of those nights where I realized that I'm 23, I've never had an experience like that before (thankfully), things could have gone very wrong, and I was very lucky to have Gabe and Kris there for me.

Sunday took me a little while to perk up. After all, my friend Gabe had just had to take me home the night before and he'd never seen me like that before. He was fine of course, and I was just a little embarrassed about the snowballing cascade of events of the night previous. I perked up over breakfast and off we went to the Coloseum. We explored around inside for awhile and then wandered through the Roman Forum. For two simple things we spent a lot of time there. Ancient Rome is by far my favorite part of Rome. It's just fascinating to imagine what once stood. It's fun to walk amongst the rubble and see the Latin engravings in the stone. To see how these immense structures were built and how it was all done before modern machinery. It's right in the middle of modern Rome. You can be walking on the street, turn a corner, and right in front of you are ruins. It's great. We went from the Forum back to the Trevi Fountain for a second look, to take pictures, and to hunt for a gelatertia that I'd been craving for the last few years. Can't find this gelateria ANYWHERE. But, the fountain was much more pleasant this time. We decided to hang out closer to the hotel this night. We took another little nap and then went on a walk looking for dinner. We had one restaurant in mind and ended up finding another. We had a liter of beer and some Italian in a WOK. I laughed, but it was a clever way to serve your food. Straight from the burner. After dinner we went to the Irish pub next to our hotel and just enjoyed each other's company for a little while. We wanted to enjoy our last night in Rome before crashing to be awake at 3:30 in the morning to catch the flight back.

Our flights back were uneventful and then I went to work Monday night. I was EXHAUSTED!!. I'll post pictures when I get home. I'm at work right now.