First Day in ROME!

First day in Rome was kinda crazy. A good friend that got me drunk in the Cairo airport made the trip much better. (Apparently somewhere between long-island and Cairo iced tea ditched the triple sec and gained tequila. Disgusting.) She got me to the gate in time for me to pass out in my airplane seat. I woke up to Italy.

A nice young English speaker (who was reading a fantasy novel the whole flight) woke me with a gentle “we’re in Rome man” I got up and got my bag and wondered through FCO. While walking through the airport I remembered that I needed to get a ride to a place I’d never been.

It was eleven o’clock in Rome and I had a hangover. Money changers! Good idea! Exchange euros for dollars, proceed to contemplate America. A man asks if I need a taxi.

“Why yes I do.” 

The place I’m going is on the other side of one the oldest metropolitan cities in existence. I pay him the equivalent of two weeks of groceries back home (he stopped at an ATM for me) and schedule him to come back in the morning to make the reverse trip to pick up my wife.

Checking into the “Rezedenza” was different than any hotel experience I’ve ever had. First, they didn’t have my reservation. At the word “Expedia” the beautiful lady gets a look of annoyance (which she still surfaces on site of me). Never the less she took me to a room that was pretty nice. It’s like someone had a very nice house in the middle of Italy, within commuting distance of Rome and built an old-vegas-style motel around it.

At the center is a large house with rooms upstairs and down. The basement is a large well-furnished recreation area, with a kitchen for the breakfast every morning. Out back is a swimming pool. I watched some pasty Europeans basting in the warm Italian radiation. My room is part of the “motel” outside. A single long structure that houses what I perceive to be the lesser rooms (or Expedia rooms).

I’m excited! The guy on the way over was telling me all about the great things that awaited my discovery.  I threw my stuff in the room, changed, and went to the front gate. It was locked.

The Rezidenza has a 8 foot high wall around it to protect it from intruders, and the front gate locks every time it’s closed. I enquire at the front desk about how to unlock the gate and Denise feels it’s important to include how easy it is in the instructions.

“To open the door is very easy because there is a button to the right way that you push and it opens”

Thanks Denise, best English in all of Italy. She goes on to tell me that the bus is blue and it comes from “this way”.

I ask how I can get to "Roma" and she shows me the bus schedule. I have roughly 30 minutes before the bus comes by to take me to Rome. I take the time to charge my dead iPhone. It gets up to 40% before I decide I need to get over to the “bus stop”.

The walk down to the main road was nice. There are large houses with walls on each side of the street and larger gates that tell me they would not like visitors. I wonder if they are all “Rezedenzas” and I look for signs of life. There are none. I get to the main road. There is a steady flow of traffic and no sidewalks. I start to feel like I’m back home in Mississippi. I decide to snap a phone-shot of the street sign at the bus stop. 

I see an advertisement for “spazia libriteria” which looks a lot like “free spa” to me for some reason, and decide to try my cell reception. I get a ring before the blue bus shows up and I hang up to board the bus. I expect to pay, but am never prompted. I look for a seat but it’s like the scene in Forest Gump. All the aisle seats are taken so I ask an older blonde to get up so I can sit by the window.

I watch the Italian landscape unfold before me. It’s unlike the vast desert I’ve been confined to lately and I lose myself in the wonder of large beautiful fields and the concept of having no level ground anywhere. I see the backs of several street signs reading “spaziza libriteria” and realized I’d dialed an ad agency earlier. The phrase means "free space"All of Italy is built on the tops and sides of hills. The fields are all on the sides of hills and the roads work themselves in as best they can.

I see a sign that says “Roma 27” Okay! Were getting close. Beautiful Italian women get off and on the bus. I don’t notice that the blonde has gotten off the bus. I start to realize that everyone in Italy is beautiful. I see that my phone is down to 37% battery and, I start to feel underdressed with my cargo shorts and flip-flops and my “Boar’s Butt” tee shirt that I picked up in Alabama.

This scene continues for a bit and I roll with it. The small townships continue to punctuate the vast openness of the Italian countryside. I see another sign that indicates that Rome is to the left, and I watch as the bus takes a right. I wonder if I’m going the right way. Then I zone out into my hangover again, and continue on until I see another sign that reads “Roma 39”

We end up with no one on the bus but me and a women that can I only guess who’s age begins with an 8 or 9, and the bus driver stopping the bus and speaking Italian through the rearview mirror at me. I calmly walk to the front and gain that this trip stops here, in this village, on top of this mountain.

I get out in a beautiful township on top of a mountain, and the all the shops are closed. I see a Ducati parked next to a Fiat and a “Mercado” where fruit is sold. I double back to wait on the next bus. I sit in the sun next to an Italian teenager until the bus comes. The digital sign says something that ends in “Tivolli”, the name of the town the taxi driver had mentioned was close, and had beautiful women. Everyone in Italy is beautiful.

I get off when I see that we are in Tivolli, and I take a walk-about. The streets are covered with beautiful teenagers and people who could have filled in for the Sopranos. I dive off into a supermarket and back out. I explore Tivolli to it’s depths. The streets are lined with every kind of shop from Pet goods to Pizzerias. People wave and greet each other. Kids play in between the traffic and it’s like what you’d like to picture while walking through New York. I felt as though I was back in little Italy, but this was Big Italy.

Apparently no one here leaves their living space without thinking though their clothing options thoroughly, shaving the necessary areas, and doing something with their hair. I felt underdressed.

I decide it’s time to go back to the “hotel” and I think about how I got to this place. I wonder how I’m going to get a ride back to a place in the middle of the suburbs of Rome from a town that I’m not sure where is, on the globe. Also, I contemplate a hotel room for the rest of the night and decide I need to eat, get cigarettes, and maybe some liquor to cuddle up next to.

I get an Italian hot-dog which; instead of a bun has pizza dough baked around it which is cut open and has ketchup and mayonnaise added. I then go buy cigarettes and receive no change for my offering of 10 euros. I go back to the supermarket and grab a bottle of Vodka and a 2-liter of Sprite. I try to buy a freezer bag to put them in, but the lady at the counter talked me into a plastic bag, so I went with it. I then went to the bus stop.

The first bus showed up and I grabbed my phone to navigate to the picture of the street sign at the bus stop. I see that I’m at 27% battery. The bus pulls away before I get the picture loaded. FUCK! I wait. The next bus comes and the driver looks at my picture and tells me “NO” and motions for me to get off the bus. The same thing happens for the next three busses. While showing the third guy my picture my phone notifies me that I have 20% battery left.

I try the bus thing once more and decide that I need a taxi, like now. I go into a bookstore and ask they guy if has a number for a taxi. He tells me the number is around the corner. I investigate and find no number. I go back to the hot-dog shop , and the guy behind the counter calls an English speaker out of the back room. The English speaker has a lazy-eye and a thick accent but he gives me some instructions that land me in the middle of goombah heaven and I wonder around in a large circle. I experience the ancient style of the this city with a mad sense of urgency. I run across huge allies that have been turned into inner-city playgrounds. I see people that live here, saying hello to each other. I see the basic Italian mentality. I see everyone dressed up for each other having a nice time in a beautiful surrounding of ancient buildings and cobblestone streets.

I end up finding a posting for a taxi and waiting only, to be received by a brand new Mercedes-Benz E-class and a driver that knew the countryside like the back of his hand. I hadn’t realized how far away from the Rezidenza I had traveled. It took almost 45 minutes on a direct route to get me back home. My phone died on the car ride. I happily paid the guy the equivalent of a decent pair of running shoes and retired to drink my vodka and sprite.

While drinking and writing these thoughts down I’ve finished ¾’s of the vodka and had a strange conversation with the night security. I used my slight knowledge of  French and the similarities of Spanish and Italian coupled with my pick-up phrases in Arabic to introduce myself to the African in charge of night security here. His name is Mohamed Mustafa something something, and he speaks African French and Italian. That’s all I really know right now but he seems very friendly and I hope to speak more French/Spanish/Italian/Arabic/English with him soon.

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