I'm trying hard not to keep repeating that Lady Gaga reference everytime I hear the word Roma. You know, that one that doesn't really but kind of includes it? It makes me kind of sad that that's what comes to my head when I hear the word Roma, as just a word. Anyways.
I find it hard to describe my travels to you, as everyone and their mother wants to hear, because I don't see a point in blow by blow accounting my roaming of Rome. I don't know how to do it without sounding like a boring newsfeed of events right now. It's such a jumbled mix of touristy sites and pizza and gelato and strangers yelling at us and inside jokes and just hanging out; it's hard to sort through, really. I have 589 pictures to go through as it is so I better get on that.
But, points of interest:
1. My stuff didn't arrive in Rome. So they sent it on a flight to arrive the next afternoon, which it did, at the Fiumicino Airport. And I called to ask where it was at the next morning and they said it sent to the delivery company so I should have it within 24 hours or even by that night. Which I did not. So there I was in Rome, calling every day and night to see where my luggage was, hearing that it was slowly making its way back to me, using my finger as a toothbrush because, it was only 24 more hours right? Wearing the same clothes, sharing Saphia's tops, Vicky's pyjamas. One night, the night before my birthday, we all went out on the town and I think the only things on me that were mine were my shoes and glasses. Good times. Finally, Sunday morning, my birthday, I had Vicky call up again to yell at some people in Italian, which she did, and soon discovered that my bag had never in fact been sent to any courier at all. It was sitting in the airport lost luggage storage waiting to be picked up. Happy birthday to me.
It seems strange to start off on a bad note like that but it turned into a running joke really. It's just one of those things ... Remember that time in Rome? When Noor had no clothes and her phone didn't pick up signal and she had to borrow all sorts just to avoid smelling like a laundry hamper ...?
3. Saphia's head got searched in Amsterdam. Just her head. Because she wears a headscarf. She didn't even beep through the security thing but they searched her head anyways. Can we all just take a moment to appreciate the hilarious ridiculousness of that situation? JUST. HER. HEAD. I love stereotyping. (Otherwise, we were highly impressed by what we deemed the grandness of Amsterdam airport. It's changed a lot since I was a kid and is just so damn cool! We approve.)
2. We hit up all the touristy sites, of course. Except I didn't get good shots of the Ancient Forum and the Coloseum because we didn't spend time there during the day and I didn't get to actually go inside but save that for another trip, no? We went to all the Piazzas and Plazas and the Vatican, a few Basilicas, the Pantheon, many many ancient ruins, some fountains, several churches, etc etc but the best parts were always the ones when we stepped down some side street to forage for food (pizza & gelato) and sat down just to soak it all up. Just to see the city as it is, like we lived there not like we just dropped in as observers. It was so great that we stayed with a friend who actually lives in Rome because we got such a fantastic balance of trekking the sites, burrowing through hordes of tourists, and actually experiencing the city as home. Plus, we got all the inside scoop on the grand touristy sites, background info, controversy, narrated to us by Vicky and her knowledgeable self.
3. I will always and forever attest that the best possible way of knowing a city is simply to walk it and walk it we did. Saphia and I strolled what felt like the entirety of Rome, just spending hours figuring out how to get from one place to the next on foot (we were too broke for day metro tickets). We saw bits that most people see rushing past or on an open bus tour, but consider rather the path from point A to point B as opposed to a site in itself. You get me? It's so amazing when you're just ambling along a little boutique-y street and turning the corner, you find yourself facing ancient ruins, the leftovers of the Roman Empire just sitting there behind a cafe. Just being all, oh hey ancient ruins, what's going down?
3.5 And let's not forget that it was like walking through my AP Euro or Ancient History textbook. I was actually standing in the Sistine Chapel. And where Michelangelo actually painted the ceiling. And if I closed my eyes, keeping the picture of the Forum in my mind, I could see it, the Roman Empire, bustling through the columns and stones and bricks. There, right there, Caesar was stabbed. What? Mind-blowing.
4. I'm going through the pictures now and a lot of the ones from inside places have come out blurry :( I don't understand how I missed this. I'm annoyed.
5. Speaking of boutique-y streets, Saph and I have vowed to go back (we even tossed a twopence into the Trevi Fountain) with money and just go shopping. We've seen the sites, we just want to go back and be able to buy all the things we kept wishing we could. And all the homemade pasta in the world. We went to a market on Sunday morning/noonish and every thing was SO DAMN CHEAP and yet cute and interesting and trinket-y and colourful and just so great. I wish we had a market like that in Manchester. This place was MASSIVE and lined with anything you can imagine, even bed sheets which I'm sure is where your imagination jumped to first. A nice guy at one of the food stands cut us a deal on two packs of handmade Italian pasta with some chili/herb mix. I gave one of the bags to my cousin in London and it was SO DELICIOUS. I looked a right weirdo carrying around a bag of pasta through airports and London underground. The guy at security in Amsterdam gave me the weirdest look as it moved down the conveyor belt before asking, "Italiano?" You know it.
6. Because Saphia has darker skin and wears a hijab and looks Arab, something at which I fail miserably, random Arabs or people who knew an Arabic word or two (eg habibi, salaam) would just start yelling whatever at us in the streets, thinking they could get us to buy stuff or take their leaflets if only we were attracted to their apparent grand knowledge of our heritage. Actually, the first encounter with a foreign language we had, the first morning we went for pizza, the lady didn't speak English and we needed to figure out which pizzas were veggie and out comes this Arab chef and starts chitchatting in Arabic! Saphia's not even Arab! The whole trip was basically me being ignored because I looked Italian / European and Saphia being called out at every opportunity -- "Miss India? Iran Iran! Where you from? Ohh, no this ice cream has alcohol, I know you girls, you don't like that!" Some of the things people knew about Muslims, particularly Muslim women astounded us. We were so impressed, particularly Saphia who was worried that the attentions might be more negative, heading towards the racist end of the stick. She needn't have worried at all, really; I was the one feeling slighted the whole time. One guy at a restaurant asked me were I was from and when I said Palestine, he gave me SUCH a suspicious look, like really now? Your white features are telling me otherwise. So he asked what city and even though I immediately responded, he still seemed dubious. Another guy walked right past us on the way to the Vatican and yelled, Assalamualaikum, ya bint baladi! Which means, Peace, girl of my country. At which I responded in Arabic, girlS, GIRLS, IT'S PLURAL DAMMIT.
7. I've written everything down in short word references, day by day, in my planner and looking at it now, so much of it is little events that would be so insignificant to anyone but me, Saph and Vicky. That to me is the mark of a really really great trip. It was seriously wonderful. We are determined to go back and live there. New favourite city to add to the list? I think so.
8. My birthday, which started as a late night out venture into the clubs and bars of Rome which are packed in behind little alleyways and streets and I love Europe. Saph got harassed by some guy who walked by and just kept asking for UN PHOTO and how bella she was and how she was like a museum and he wanted to take a photo and wow it was hilarious. You had to be there. We got back in around 4.30am? 5? That makes it sound like we did some hardcore club hopping but really, we went out at like midnight/1am and got denied from two or three places because they were full and just walked into a random place and chilled out talking about current teen drinking culture and other morally centered subjects with Vicky's sweet roommate (from California! word up). We had about two or three hours of sleep, woke up to harass the airport people, finally found where my stuff is, went off in search of that massive market, where we spent the whole morning/early afternoon. On the way back we passed this Roman pyramid and the non-Catholic cemetery which is gorgeous and the Ghetto, up the Vittorio Emmanuele memorial steps to eat at the cafe, overlooking the Forum and half of Rome. To Termini, the main train station to catch a train to the airport -- we almost missed the train, something Saph and I seem to be very good at. When I saw that we actually had 1 minute to go instead of 5, we sprinted down the platform, Saph ran for the doors to keep them open and I actually slid the last 3 feet yelling NOOOO (yes, people stared) and ripped the tickets into and out of the validation stamper thing (the validation is actually curving off the ticket) and jaws-of-lifed myself into the train. Went to the airport, found my stuff just waiting on a shelf and then got the train back. It was a very chipped train ride back, it felt like we were going home. ♥. Oh and earlier that day, I'd mentioned to Saphia how she used the word gobsmacked a lot and how I always noticed it because it was such a strange word to use so commonly and she'd used it like 3 times in a span of 5 minutes. She didn't believe me. She fully did not believe that she used that word AT ALL and thought I was completely making it up. And then she used it on the way back and I just yelled THERE THERE YOU SAID IT and she was gobsmacked at her use of gobsmacked. Five minutes later, she was about to use it AGAIN. You don't care. See what I mean? This kind of thing was crucial to me but to someone who wasn't there, you're thinking, she was in ROME and all she had to write was that her friend oddly used the word GOBSMACKED? Yes, got a problem? Anyways. A rainstorm started up on our way back and it was absolutely pouring as we ran from the metro to the flat. I got in, had a lovely warm shower and put on MY OWN PYJAMAS!! Then we had a birthday feast, homecooked just for me, with delightful pastries from the downstairs shop for dessert. We just sat at the table chitchatting, relaxin' maxin' all cool, sharing bidet stories and anecdotes from Vicky and her flatmates' experiences in Rome and laughing and being happy. And then reading loads and loads and loads of facebook birthday messages. Ahhhh, it was such a grand birthday.
9. Vicky and her Italian flatmates are incredible. Most perfect flat to be a part of. And breakfast on the balcony, soaking up the Italian mornings? Mmmmm.
10. On gelato tasting--
Saphia: Which ones are nice?
Gelato man, creepily: I think I'm nice.
11. The food. Oh my goodness the food. The pastry shops, the gelato parlors, the sandwich places, the pizza places, OH MY GOD THE TIRAMISU. I wish I'd taken more pictures of the food places, seriously. Ohohoh and the greatest candy shop ever called Jolly Pop, between the Spanish Steps and Piazza de Popolo. I'm telling you these details so you can find it yourselves. Find the Spanish caramel chewies, I have no idea what they are called but they are HEAVENLY.
12. We were at a really crowded and delicious Roman pizza place for dinner once (I say Roman because Roman food is different from the stereotypical Italian food) and as we were sat there chilling with our dinner, a waiter came by and put down a huge plate of beans on our table. Vicky looked up and said we hadn't ordered them, they weren't ours. The waiter responded, just wait. Behind him, a middle-aged guy in a business suit walked up and told us how impressed he was that we all seemed such nice and educated (polite) ladies and that he wanted to gift us these beans, which he paid for. Beans. He gave us a free plate of beans. You should have seen our faces.
13. The guy at the crepe place who thought I was insane because he misheard me and thought I wanted banana, strawberries AND nutella on my crepe and looked at me with eyes that said simultaneously "crazy" and "fatass." The fact that we kept seeing random tourists from our trip over and over -- how likely is that in a city like Rome? The Dutch couple on the train into the city showed up at the Vatican two days later. The guy eavesdropping on our storytelling in the Roman pizza place was at the train station the night after. One day this lady was seriously following us on our trek through Rome; she just kept showing up at places or on the way to places even though we weren't on some standard tourist path. How Saphia kept sending priceless toffees flying out of their wrappers, one of which I had to dive after to save it. That drunk guy on the metro who sang the entire 15 minute trip to Vicky's cousin's blonde friend, serenading her with a warble-y I LOVE YOU BAAYYYYBAAAAY.
14. And lastly, ITALIANS ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. ALL OF THEM. I think Saphia and I saw our husbands several times over. We just needed a few more days..
Good flippin' times.
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