Day 2 - Twihards
I can’t remember how we arranged it exactly, but my Ma and I had some sort of agreement that we would meet in the terminal where I landed. This would turn out to be the first dumb American mistake we would commit over the next few days: arrogantly thinking that shit is just going to present itself in a way that is familiar to you. Indeed, when you get off the plane, you are herded through border control, shuffled to baggage claim (I overpacked again. When will I learn?), and then rushed out some doors where you are immediately swarmed by short men asking you if you need a taxi…and not taking no for an answer.
“Miss, taxi?”
“No”
“Good price good price!”
“No”
“Where you go? I give good price, where you go?”
“Dude! Are you kidding me?!? I said NO! No is no! Even in Italian! I know you understand NO! Why –“
“Hey Danielle! Dani! Dan!”
Alas, this is how my Ma found me. She had been wandering the terminal for an hour or so. Thank goodness. For a few minutes there I thought I was going to have to have smoke signals sent out if I couldn’t find her. My work-issued cell phone works internationally (yay insurance!), whereas I am not entirely sure hers can power on outside of her town.
She actually looked a lot better than I thought she would. She later explained to me that this was owed entirely to the fact that she swallowed two Tylenol PMs, allowed the delirium to set in, and then informed the flight crew she was setting up camp on some unoccupied couch/bench thing in the back that I think is normally reserved for attendants on their break. Whatever, she was able to score a few hours of over-the-counter snooze and thus looked like a functioning human being. I cannot say the same for myself.
We took a cab to the hotel. The cab driver spoke about 9 words of English but managed to give us a sound lecture on the perils of getting into other cabs without meters (i.e. those aggressive taxi guys that invade your personal space). He was really nice about it but the general message was that we were dumb tourists and we are therefore more likely to get ripped off like crazy, so we best watch our fascist American asses. Duly noted sir.
Here’s the thing about Rome. It looks remarkably like San Francisco, except old. And European. It’s also a lot smaller than you think it would be. Well, there are a lot of people there but you can actually walk across it in a very short period of time. There are only two subway lines…A and B. Some features of the city looked a lot different than I remember (Piazza Barberini…I realized it’s not really a Piazza at all), where as other things were really familiar. I remembered how to get around a lot better than I thought I would. The last time I was in Rome I spent like 4 or 5 days straight there, so I suppose I knew it better than I expected. We stayed in the Campo di Fiori area, which was really cool and relatively free of tourists. I don’t mean to suggest that I am a tourist snob or anything (though I am), I just like more “local” areas because I have always suspected that the food is better and you can get better deals on hotels.
You know, everytime a meet a guy in New York and he wants to break the ice, the first thing he’ll ask is “So, uh, how do you like New York versus LA?” It’s shit like that that actually makes me sympathize with movie stars who find themselves having to answer the same questions over and over as they make the talk show rounds while promoting their latest crappy movie. Anyway, since so many conversations have required me to compare and contrast major metropolitan areas, I’ll take this opportunity to give you some Rome observations.
1) Toilet seats suck. Sometimes there aren’t even toilet seats at all. I don’t know what the deal is there. It’s one of those things that I think every American must notice but cannot find a polite way to ask a local about. “Excuse me sir? Do you people just, I don’t know, hover? Your bathrooms are walking nightmares!”
2) You have to add the tip before you run the card.
3) Always eat off the beaten path. Anything adjacent to a piazza is a tourist trap. Sorry kids, but I’m only paying 15 Euro for a side salad if the salad is served on a bed of hydrocodone.
4) There are NO trucks, no SUVs, and no American cars, whatsoever. Not like this is particularly shocking seeing as we stubbornly insist on driving Freudian pieces of shit, but it really hits you after strolling past your 319th Fiat Panda.
5) Hotel rooms don’t have light switches. Instead you stick your key card into this slot and it makes the electricity turn on. For this reason, you have to actually return the key cards when you check out. This is really inconvenient for ADD kids like me. On a normal basis I go through 15 to 20 key cards per hotel stay.
6) There are little fountains everywhere that look like ancient fire hydrants. They spit a constant stream of water into a waiting drain below. Romans use these to fill their water bottles, splash water on their face, or violently shove their little brother into.
After checking into the hotel, my mother decided she needed to pass out for another hour or so. I decided to wander the city alone. I had two things to do: 1) Buy a flat iron. Giggle at me all you want, but without a good straightening session, my hair looks like a place where birds lay eggs. Every time I’ve been to Europe I’ve regretted not forking over the 20 bones necessary to ensure I don’t look like a sweaty homeless person. 2) I wanted to get a tan (shut up you people know I’m from LA). NYC has left me a little gray/white…and I wanted to have a nice glow for the remainder of my vacation.
Needless to say, I strolled home 90 minutes later burnt to a crisp and clutching a curling iron that I would later discover gets hot enough to remove skin from your very own sunburned earlobe.
That night we wandered around the Piazza Barberini, found a restaurant, ordered pizza and a bottle of champagne and dug in. Shortly after we wandered over to the movie theater so we could buy tickets for the new Twilight movie. A little background on that: I’ve read the books…they’re alright. My Ma, on the other hand, is a full blown Twihard. She started watching the movies a year or so ago, bought the books, read them, bought the encyclopedia thing that tells you the background on all of the characters and mythology, read it, discussed it with us for like 10 months, read them all again…and so on. Shortly after she found out she was going to be going to Italy (about 3 weeks ago), she expressed her genuine excitement, followed by her profound disappointment that she was going to miss opening night for friggin’ Twilight.
It goes without saying that since they don’t play it in English…Italian was going to have to do.
Interestingly, seeing a movie like that in an Italian theater is actually a totally genius tourist thing to do. For starters, we were most definitely the only tourists. Secondly, we totally got to see adolescent Italians in their natural habitat. They were teenaged, awkward, had braces, the whole bit. Boyfriends were dragged along, pretending to be excited but really just hoping they’d get to touch their girlfriend’s boobs later. Girls reapplied lip gloss as though it might make their braces less noticeable (oh girl, I’ve been there). We knew the story so after about 5 minutes I didn’t even notice it was in Italian anymore. Only thing is we left thinking it was a pretty good movie, surprisingly. I have a feeling this may not be the case one I can actually hear the stupid shit they’re saying in English (I’m sorry, you do not possess the capability to “love someone for an eternity” at 28, let alone 17). I later saw online that the critic’s reviews were awful.
By the time we got out of the theater, we were so tired we were virtually unable to speak. We took the short walk home and passed out, bellies full of Italian food and champagne, and the ever-creepy Edward Cullen. Day 1 was indeed a success.
:)
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