Joel in Rome

warning: this post is replete with typos. i blame the laptop. it skips keys. i'm not going to fix them because i'm pressed for time.

The trip to Rome from Venice is only a few hours by train, but it passes through some very lovely countryside. We arrive at the train station in Rome at 10:00 PM, with a hand-dran map showing us how to get to our hotel. We need to take the A1 metro line, and then walk 4 blocks south and three blocks east. no problem.

only the A1 metro line isn't running after 9 pm. woops. Ok, no biggie, we'll figure it out. supposedly there's a bus that does more or less the same route, and we plan on finding it. We step out of the train station into the street and there are an awful lot of people milling around for 10:00Pm. After rebuffing several agrressive offers for 50euro a trip, unlicensed, "minicab" rides, we finally find a taxi driver who appears to have a meter running. the trip costs 15 bucks and we arrive t the hotel a few minutes before the reception closes. it's late and we're tired but we check in, stow our bags, and hit the sack.

We end up sleeping in a little longer than mother had expected, but no bother, she's got a plan. first stop is a little cafe on the corner of an incredibly busy and noticably uncontrolled intersection. we east delicious pizza and drink beer and mother spends a few frustrating hours trying to get her phone card to work (we would eventually figure it out). While i am sitting at the table by myself i hear a screech and a crash and look over to catch the tail end of a traffic accident. Other people are gasping. Naturally, i start laughing, cuz its funny. To my surprise, i am no the only one. An old italian lady sitting behind me (with a plate of pizza to herself bigger than mine and mothers' combined) is cackling away, and when she sees me laughing too, she proceeds to say something to me in italian. It's clear i don't understand, so she hollers (LUCA!!! LUCA!!!!) for the waitor, and he translates for me:

"She says that drivers in Rome are crazy; everybody here is crazy." but it's meant to be funny and she's laughing, so i have a good laugh too. No one bothers to call the polie, there's no need. one of the cars involved in the accident was a police van, and interestingly enough the accidet appears to have been the police's fault. "The police are the craziest drivers of them all" she tells me through her translator.

After we finish lunch and mom finishes on the phone we head to st peter's basillica, which is an impressive sightto be sure. The line to get into the vatican is longer than the line to get in to purgatory, and i politelysuggest maybe we do the vatican tomorrow. mother grudgingly concedes and we make our way instead to an oldcastle nearby built in the days of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. We spend several hours looking through the exhibits at the museum/castle. i spend a few minutes trying to explain to mother that you can't make cannonballs out of stone and expct them to work, and she spends a few minutes explaining to me that she definatley gets to pick the next sight.

Already only one day in to Rome and it is my favorite city so far. the people seem not ony genuinely friendly, but eager to help as well, and bery patient. we meet a few other tourists at our hotel in the common kitchen we share together (two brits, a loud irish art instructor, and quiet girl from toronto). We cook food, share a few drinks together, and talk about this and tht. mother quickly starts talking politics and turns the kitchen into a conservaive re-education camp. topic of the day? healthcare. i can see we're outnumbered so i sit this one out, and go for cigarettes outside every time i'm tempted to jump in. i have a chessboard with me but no one will play with me. sigh. maybe someone will play me in africa.

we get into bed by about midnight fully prepared to get up early the next day and do the vatican tour. by 2:30 AM we are both still wide awake. mother wonders if it was the two cappucinos she slammed down this aternoon. i wonder if its the bottle of wine we drank that only cost 3bucks and tastd faintly of paint thinner.

by 3:45 AM wehave decided there is no point lying in bed if we can't sleep. so we reorganize and pack our bags for tomorrow. this kills half an hour and tires us out a bit. we get back into bed, but by 5:00 AM we are still awake. we drift off somewhere around 6:30AM. needless to say, getting p early the next day to do the vatican is completely out of the question. but we still have to check out by 11 am, so we stash our bags and hop onto the tour bus and head to the colloseum. definatley the best part of the trip so far. we pay a little extra for a guided tour and it is well worth it. the guy is funny, and incredibly knowledgable and gives us a lot of history. after the colloseum we explore the excavation of the ruinsnearby, and then slowly make our way back to the hotel to pick up our bags.

right around 7:30 PM i start to get uptight (happens at the same time every night) but despite all my nightmare scenarios we make our train no problem. i was hoping for some time o work on my novel in rome, but as it turned out there was just way too much to see and do. i put it off until Nice. (where i do get a considerable amount of writing done because now we are back with Emmanuelle and she can keep mom company while they see the sites, giving me time to sit in the hotel drinking gin and tonic and plunk away on the laptop. i seem to recall Nice was on the beach? i'm not sure... i was inda in my own world for most of it. we stayed just as long there as we did in Rome, but whereas i can remember just about every second of every day in Rome, i can't recall much of Nice. OH! i found a nice little grocery store. that counts, right? smokes were even cheaper than in italy, too. (though nowhere NEAR as cheap as Barcelona)

right now i'm in the Hotel in Barcelona writing on the blog. we had planned on staying at this guesthouse, we even paid a deposit, but the guy turned out to be a crook and we got the hell out of there and found a decent hotel to stay at instead. i've been a bit of a hotel hippo the last few days cuz i've been doing alot of writing, but i've still had a chance to see most of the sites. this afternoon when mom and emmanuelle get back from the bus tour we're going to the beach, where i will spend most of my time trying to find an electrical outlet for the laptop.

that's all for now.

Joel's Top5 European Surprises:

5. People drink booze in the streets and no one seems to care
4. There are little shops EVERYWHERE, like 8 on each street selling the same stuff.
3. Everything is WAY more expensive then home (except booze and smokes)
2. Cashiers in stores get to SIT DOWN in elevaed chairs while they work.(fuckin unions)
1. Nobody has tried to shank me yet.

photos of rome coming soon.