I don't think I have ever been happier to leave a city. Rome was AWFUL and that is one of the biggest understatements of all time. Overall, I am happy to say that I have been to Rome and seen the Colosseum, the Roman Forums, the Vatican, etc., but other than those tourist attractions, my experience was down right awful. I don't know what the hell is wrong with Italians but they need to take a very long look in the mirror. I have never encountered so many rude people in such a short amount of time. Oh well. We're no longer there, thank goodness!!!!! I am super excited to have seen Alissa, though. That's a happy story, so I can tell you all about that.
Andrea and I took a train up to Perugia to see my bella Alissa. Trying to figure out how to get to her from the train station was extremely annoying, partially because Alissa gave vague directions. We finally found out where we were supposed to go (the MiniMetro) and which stop we were supposed to take (Pincetto). After Alissa met us at the top, we headed toward her apartment. It was really cute and had a fantastic view. She got lucky with that placement, for sure. We spent a few minutes in Alissa's apartment and, as Ani and I were both famished, we went to a small grocery store to get food. We couldn't get anything from a pizzeria or a sandwich shop because they were all closed for "la pauza" (awful spelling of that, I'm sure). The woman behind the deli counter at this tiny place wouldn't give us cheese to put on our ham sandwiches, so we had to make do without cheese. :( I grabbed some snack mix in line for the cash register. After the lady rang up my stuff and I made Alissa translate what she'd said, I handed her the money. The stupid woman literally jerked the euro-dollar from my hand, got my change, shoved my products down the little counter, and dropped my change in my hand, not even taking care to make sure it all landed in my hand before going on to the next person in line. As we walked out the door, I muttered a bad word in Italian but I don't know if she heard me. I hope she did, though.
We took our sandwiches and sat down on the steps in the main square with the fountain. The steps were originally Etruscan. I'm not sure if they were at their original placement, but they were built by the Etruscans, nonetheless. After we finished eating, Alissa gave us a tour of Perugia - which mostly consisted of the best views of the surrounding land and towns. We did see an Etruscan arch along the way. I can't remember if Alissa said it was the oldest Etruscan arch or just one of the few things people came to Perugia to see. Another really cool thing Alissa showed us was the Underground City. It was pretty neat for the most part, but it creeped me out a little bit, too. After the Romans invaded the area, they moved the HUGE arch entrance into the Underground City further out. I think I have a picture of all of that. It was intense, for sure, and there's no telling how they actually did it. Alissa also took us to one of the best gelato shops in Perugia called Grom. I had strawberry and it was DEVINE. Oh my goodness, it was so delicious. We also went to a bookstore. I have been searching for a book called The Glass Castle, but I cannot find it anywhere - at least not in Italy. I picked out two books and had a hard time choosing between the two. The first book I wanted to buy was Digital Fortress by Dan Brown and the other book was Memoires d'une jeune fille rangee by Simone de Beauvoir. I ended up going for Simone de Beauvoir, partially because it was a couple of euros cheaper, and I haven't been disappointed thus far. It's very interesting and not too challenging. After I finish this book, I think I might read some of her many other autobiographical ones. I am buying a lot of books in French while abroad. It's ridiculous! But whatever, I love reading books in French and it's really cool to read books in their original language. :)
Sorry for the tangent - after giving us a tour of the city, we went back to Alissa's apartment for a little while before we had to leave to go down to the train station in time. Overall, Perugia was definitely pretty - much better than Rome...but the people still weren't any nicer. On another note, Ani and I managed to avoid completely the Italian guys we went drinking with the other night. Success! If you only knew...you'd be rejoicing too!
As for what we did yesterday (Wednesday), it was one of the better days, I think. We didn't plan anything at all. We got up, looked on the map, pointed somewhere, and said, "Hmm, okay. Let's go there." We ended up deciding to go to the Pantheon and Piazza Nuova (or something like that). We got off of the bus a little too far down from Piazza Nuova but it was okay because we walked down a side street with this wicked cool bead shop with some glass-blown things thrown into the mixed. They had some Venetian beads. One of them was shaped like a star so I bought that and the other is blue. They also had a handmade knickknack made of glass. It's shaped like a little pitcher (that's the thing that holds water, right? I can only think of the word for it in French at the moment) and is dark blue. It's decorated with silver glitter designs with white outlines. We then made our way over to Piazza Nuova and just walked around there for a little while. I bought a little watercolor (that Ani says is fake) of the Roman Forum at sunset. It's really pretty so I didn't care. We wandered through random streets to the Pantheon and took an audioguide tour of that. It was pretty neat learning all about how it was built and stuff. We continued our random trek through Rome and went by Fontana di Trevi again. It was even more crowded in the daytime than at night! We were just about to continue randomly venturing through Rome after seeing Fontana di Trevi for the 2nd time when we discovered the somewhat famous gate with all the locks on it. It was really neat and, although I had not found too much fun in Rome, I suddenly had the urge to find a lock and a permanent marker to leave a lock on the gate/fence too. It took me forever to find a permanent marker (which will come later in the events of the day), but we went back to the street vendor right in front of the gate that sold locks. We each bought a lock and the guy started to hand us a permanent marker. I almost smacked myself in the face, but oh well. The blue paint-like pen came in handy for a funny moment later. We wrote something on each surface imaginable on our locks and video-taped each other locking them onto the gate. Ani bought a slightly bigger lock than me and had 3 keys for some reason. She was going to throw the third key away when I suddenly came up with the idea of coloring it blue with the permanent paint-like marker and tossing it into Fontana di Trevi. It was cool to see because if you looked into the water of the fountain, all of a sudden you saw a little blue dot - Ani's key. Totally cool, I must say.
We kept wandering throughout Rome the rest of the afternoon and early evening. We wanted to go inside Quirinale (spelling?) because I thought it was like this giant park/garden, but we weren't able to. Across from it, however, was a little park with a similar name (Giardini di Quirinale? I can't speak/write/spell Italian, so I'm guessing on this one.) Ani and I decided to go in and explore, but also rest a bit. There was this little stone hut thing there where people had written tons of things inside. I decided to write something too, with my blue permanent marker. (Note: here's where the marker really does a number.) I decided to write "All you need is love" and my initials on the inside. I also wrote it in French just below it. While I was trying to write on this wall, I kept having to shake it to make more ink come to the tip. Well...eventually I shook it too hard or too long and I felt something wet hit my face. Blue ink. I wiped it off with my hand and had a long blue streak there. I looked out at Ani and asked her if I had blue on my face and she started laughing. I had a huge blue mark on my face. I also managed to get drops of it on my shoulder near my spine, the wall around me, my ear, and two different parts of my shirt. Trying to clean this all off with a bottle of water was interesting. Ani recorded it with my camera so when I get that uploaded you are definitely in for a treat. :) After deciding I'd made enough blue disappear to make myself presentable once again, Ani and I headed out again into Rome - in the direction of our hotel (but not directly for it). We walked down Via Nationale, which has a lot of shops, and stopped in a couple of bookstores. I was still looking for the Glass Castle but I never found it. About halfway down Via Nationale, we ran into a group of girls we know from CIDEF! Completely random but totally cool.
After that, we pretty much returned to the hotel and didn't do a whole lot. We packed a bit, grabbed some dinner, and slept. This morning when we woke up we didn't have anything else we really wanted to do either and lots of time to kill before we had to start heading toward the airport. Through our hostel, we could get a discount on laundry a couple blocks away, so we decided to go there and wash our clothes. It only cost us 6 euros each for washing and drying (including detergent and fabric softener) and had internet access. Ani read the whole time, but I used the internet. I did a lot of research of the best things to see in Berlin and stuff so we'd have a little better idea of what to do once we got there. After our laundry was done, we ate lunch and headed toward Termini Station. I had seen Villa Medici on the map so I thought maybe we could take a tour of it or something, but we never found any information on it and gave up. We headed back out of the station in search of a park-like area where we could just sit down and read for awhile. We found a place outside the station along the boulevard. We sat down for a while and started to read. After some time, my back started to hurt so I laid out my jacket on the grass and laid down. I was that way for quite a while, but then some guy in a uniform was walking by and started yelling things in Italian. Another girl behind us was sitting down and leaning against the tree and reading. I don't know if the guy was yelling at her for leaning on the tree or what. But the guy never stopped...he just yelled in Italian as he walked by. I went back to my reading until Ani nudged me a few minutes later because a crazy Italian woman was screaming who knows what in Italian. As if I understood what the hell she was saying. Whatever - Ani and I packed up our stuff and headed back into Termini in search of somewhere to sit down for a bit. Alas, we also found NOTHING there. It's impossible to sit down anywhere in Italy. They are crazy ass anti-sitting nazis, I swear. Rule number 13 why one shouldn't move to Europe: you can't sit down anywhere without getting yelled at, no matter where you are. Absolutely ridiculous.
While we were in the bathroom in Termini, one of the zippers broke on my backpack so I spent the next 30 minutes repairing that noise, but I succeeded! We decided to walk around for a while again, and ended up going in and out of random stores that interested us. We found an Etam and an Etam Lingerie and went into the Lingerie store...where they had bathing suits. Underwire bathing suits...in my size. You have NO idea how hard it is to find my size bra/bathing suit top in Europe. Of course I bought the matching bottoms. Most expensive bathing suit I've ever bought (39 euros for both pieces), but super cute and one of only 2 bathing suits I own that fit. However, this one is the only one I have with me in Europe, yippee! Now whenever it's warm enough to go swimming, I can do so. Doubt it'd be possible in Greece, but who knows? Maybe my aunt has a pool or something. Ha ha. I'm just excited about finding a cute bathing suit that actually fits and covers everything properly. :)
So that's pretty much all that's happened since the last time I updated you. Peace out, yo. We're off to learn random words in German for a couple of days.
jh
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