Flight, Flight, Rome

About 13 collective hours on two planes from JFK and CDG airport in Paris puts me here in an apartment on Via de Gozzadini in Rome. Thankfully one of my apartment mates woke up and found the lighter I've been looking for to light the stove so I can make myself some instant coffee.

Having traveled to places far distant a few times before I know that these first few days are going to be kind of painful. Jet lag, loud Italian neighbors and very strange sounding seagulls (that make a sound reminiscent of a baby crying) are a few things that kept from sleeping last night. It is also why I am sitting down with a nice big cup of instant coffee, sweetened with fructose.

So the flights were not bad at all. Ten hours on a Boeing triple-seven is nothing when you've been on a cramped 747 for 18 hours with only foreign movies and SkyMall magazines for entertainment. At least on this flight I had a couple of my fellow Geneseo Rome-ies with me and the Vanderbilt girl's lacrosse team to gawk at when they passed by in their short gym shorts. Go ahead and call me a pig, but what else was I going to do for 10 hours? Actually I pounded out a 300 page book that was the first thing I've read for pleasure in a long long time.

So after arriving in Rome and meeting some of the guys, I get the impression that they are a pretty cool bunch. After all of us passed out in the apartment for about four hours (the apartment is pretty kickass by the way) we wandered around the neighborhood for eons looking for a place to eat. We settled on a little pizzaria whose name escapes me for some pies and beer. Despite being a tad pricy the pies were good. They came on a crust that was paper thin, and an elusive combination of chewy and crispy and were topped with surprisingly sharp cheese, which was great when eating it with a nice mild Italian beer. Specifically, I ordered pizza napoli (I embarrased myself here by putting the accent on the wrong syllable), which was topped with anchovies. It was the cheapest pie they had besides just plain pizza margherita with the added pleasure of those oily, salty little fish.

After enjoying our good, but meagerly portioned meal, at least by our over-indulgent, oversized American standards, we bumbled around town looking for tomorrow's meeting place, Piazza Navona, which is I guess famous for having these sweet looking carved fountains and cobblestone streets. Just as a side note I apologize to any Italiophiles reading this because I clearly know nothing about Italy except that they have a bunch of old stuff over here that's cool to look at. Along the way we passed by the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica, not that I would be able to tell you anything about either one except for that, "doesn't that pope guy with the funny hat live in the Vatican?"

Ugh, I just ran out of coffee.

It was kind of surreal to see all of this stuff that, up until now, I've only heard about and all of it more beautiful than anything that textsbooks or the travel channel could have prepared me for. I'm really looking forward to actually seeing those places in daylight.

Oh jeeze, some crazy Italian lady just glared at me from the street. Did I mention our apartment is street level? Yeah, it's kinda sketch, but our door has an comically large deadbolt on it...which we forgot to lock last night.

Anyway this post is really long winded but I promise that others will be shorter, not that anyone really reads these things all the way through anyway (*cough NICOLE! cough*). I'll hopefully remember to take some pictures and stuff and make an attempt to pay attention to more than just the food (like the fact that there seems to be no shortage of gorgeous, bronze-skinned, dark-haired Italian beauties aroud).