Rome If You Want To

Editor’s Note:

For the next 3 weeks, Ezra and Sarah will be traveling through Italy. Then there will be 4 months of studying abroad Denmark. Or “Eat, Bike, Eat”. Also, I wish I actually had an editor.

-The Editor...?

Morning, world. I’m writing this at 2am Roman time. I’m awake because, when in Rome, get really jetlagged, as the saying goes. Sarah and I stumbled through our first day in a blur of pizza, panninis, and pasta. Since I’ve just recognized a pattern of P-only foods, I can look forward to polenta, prosciutto, and pimentos. Lots of pimentos.

So far we’ve met a middle-aged couple from Orange County outside of a museum who was bummed about nothing in Rome being open at the times they wanted. “It’s really hard to see anything in Rome,” they said. “And parking’s terrible.” While I do want to make fun of them an appropriate amount for wanting to experience genuine Roman traffic culture up close and stupidal, I can get behind this idea of “it’s really hard to see anything.”

First, I realized that while I am familiar with several impressive Italian achievements (building naked statues with big hands; winning a world cup, then sucking four years later; having a language close enough to Spanish that I can almost get by) I know very little of what’s actually supposed to be in Rome.

I know about the Coliseum (which is in much worse shape since they filmed “Gladiator” there) and everything else is either food or in a different part of Italy entirely. Don’t get me wrong: there’s a chariot-load of cool stuff here, but when I see it, I don’t know what any of it is.

We’re pretty sure we saw the Forum, which I think is important, but as I never got all the way through the play “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” I have no idea what it was for. It looks... ruinous. So I think it might’ve been an old archeological dig site.

(Editors Note: It was the Imperial Forum.)

I saw (on a map, not in person--walking’s tough when your eyes think it’s 4 am yesterday.) the Pantheon, and I believe I’ve gotten it mixed up with the Parthenon, but since I didn’t know much of what either were for, the confusion wasn’t very impressive.

Usually when I don’t know something I look something up on the Internet, but our room charges for broadband and the free stuff is all the way in the lobby. So as it stands, I’m cheap, but lazy also, resulting in an intact wallet and less time knowing what’s going on.

Oh, and did I say we don’t have a guidebook? We don’t have a guidebook. Instead we have a corporate-sponsored map of the city center. Did you know that the Hard Rock Café is one of Rome’s main attractions? You do now!

I’m not complaining though. The food so far has been tasty wherever we’ve gone- train station, back alley café, frozen fruit cup from the airlines- so we’ve been wandering through a dream with an overarching feeling of satiety and fullness. I tried to order the gnocchi at a café full of Chileans and Israelis speaking English with accents, but the waiter frowned and said “I don’t like,” so he recommended the lasagna alla bolognese instead. Thin layers of wide noodles, a generous heaping of creamy cheeses and kernels of meat in an alluringly glutinous ragu. I was happy.

The biggest downer so far is that our first experience in Rome was discovering that somewhere between San Francisco, Miami, Madrid, and Rome my checked bag had been picked through. Thankfully, my tightly rolled pairs of boxers were found wanting, but two unlocked cell phones, acquired specifically for these European adventures, made too tempting of a target to pass up. I hope the new owners appreciate the 256-color Nokia that weighs as much a small pineapple, and the monochromatic Motorola we got from Sarah’s friend.

Also, please enjoy the Danish SIM card that I locked up by entering in the wrong PIN three times in a row. May it serve you well.