ROME

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Yesterday my sister and I left with Valentina to Cisterna di Latina's train station at 8:20am. At 8:45 we all took the train to Roma Termini; Valentina was going to work and Sylvia and I were going to spend the day with with Alejandra, Ada Maria, and Ada (My friend Sal's relatives) to visit the colosseum (which I haven't seen in 8 years) and the foro romana (I still don't know what that is.)

After meeting up with Alejandro at the train station we took the metro to the colosseum. It was packed as hell. I felt like I was on a subway in China where they have people who wear masks and gloves and are hired to push everybody in so they could fit. I was shocked. I was so shocked I wanted to laugh because I'm sure I was one of the few people surprised since I wasn't even from there. With each stopped I hoped for people to get the hell off because it disgusted me to be skin to skin against sweaty, disgusting people.

As soon as we got out of the metro, we saw the colosseum. It is huge! And it stuck out so much as it was surrounded by everything in the year 2012. Pretty incredible. The inside wasn't that incredible because I didn't understand everything I saw since a lot of it is worn down, the seats from that day were gone, and all you could do is just walk around the perimeter of the building. If I knew more about what used to be there, it might have been more fascinating. Luckily I was able to hear something one tour guide said as she pointed at what looked like a cross carved into a wall that reached the floor. She said, "Do you see this? Some of you might think it is a cross. IT IS NOT. This used to be a water fountain." It was still pretty cool. There were a lot of tour guides there with their groups and I wondered if we could just tag along with one of the groups to take advantage of the tour without having to actually pay for it.

After the colosseum we went to the "foro romano." I don't know what it is because I haven't googled it yet, but it has something to do with emperors. I have no idea. The area was pretty beautiful though. There were some grassy fields and ruins surrounded by beautiful, colorful flowers. The paths were just hard, dusty, dried dirt that turned my sister's black sandals white. The heat was scorching there. Luckily, we found a beautiful fountain tucked within some plants growing on a rocky wall. It was really nice. On the way out of the park, there was a cobblestone path that lead out to the sidewalk by the main road with humongous rocks!!!! They were so huge some took 2 steps to get to the next stone so it was easier to slip if you had flat shoes, which I did twice.

Something interesting that I found about Italy are all the Italians that created their own jobs on the streets. There are all kinds of services that they offer. Just outside of the ruins and the colosseum there were these dirty, rough-looking Italian guys dressed in Roman costumes attracting tourists for photo ops. Most of them didn't expect these men in costume to charge them for their pictures. I saw one group of tourists take a picture with one of them and as they laughed and smiled after they got their picture, proud of their souvenir the "roman soldier's" smile disappeared and he stopped them for a payment.

They reminded me of this one guy we ran into a couple weeks ago at the Rome train station that hung out in the self-service area that was closed off by some glass walls. He looked like he was hosting all the machines in there, helping everybody and sometimes even pressing the keys for them, basically acting like the ticket guys at the counter. His help was so instrusive and elaborate that people just knew that he was working for tips and you could give him anything you want but if you didn't give him much or anything at all, I'm sure whatever happened wouldn't be good.

Well after seeing both museums, we had lunch closeby and we noticed all the gay flags in the area, including a gay store. It turns out that many gay people congregated on that street and they would have many gay celebrations there. The restaurant was beautiful, cheap, and it's food was delicious. After having eaten, we were ready to go home for a few hours and relax, as the Romans and other Italians do 😉

We were ready for another subway adventure. I love the subway because you get to stare at all the weird people there. We took more than one subway and we almost missed one of them. We ran after Alejandro to get on before the doors closed. One guy tried to get on after us but the door was shutting right on his arm so he slipped his arm back out and the bag he was holding stayed stuck in the door. First I thought, "HOLY SHIT, THAT SUCKS!" He banged on the door and we tried to get it open but there weren't any buttons you could press and the subway was starting up again. After we left the station, everyone just looked at each other surprised and thoughtful about what was going to happen to the bag afterwards, at least that's what I was thinking. This lady told us to take it out of the door because it was going to fall and we put it under one of the benches but I had no idea how the guy was going to get his bag back that way. At the next stop, one lady said to give it to her but the other said that she was going to bring it to him and she got off on the stop after that. I wonder if he ever got it back.

Well we got back to Alejandro's house and his mother treated us to various snacks, and Adita, Alejandro's blind sister arrived about 2 hours later with her dog. We all talked and laughed and at one point my chair broke right under me and we joked about how fat I've gotten that chairs break under me even though we knew it broke because Ada explained that she took it apart a few days ago and it just didn't stick together the same anymore.

The last thing we did was visit a restaurant where Alejandro's brother, Joaquin, (Sal's other uncle) told me to visit because they had really good pizza and ice cream and he worked there for 2 years. Personally, I was honored to fulfill such a favor across the ocean for someone and I was even more honored when 2 of the employees that had worked there with Joaquin were still there and talked about how great he was.

We also ran for our last train that day because Valentina called to see how we were doing and we told her we were on our way back early to Roma Termini so she told us to try to take the same train she was on because they were running late. As soon as we got to Termini we ran to that train and found that the first entrance we saw was packed, so we ran to the next one. It was even worse. So we squeezed in just like everyone else!!! It was crazy!! Even after us people tried squeezing in and I found myself doing like they did with my sister and I, telling them that there wasn't anymore room. As soon I realized that, I squeezed further in and they were able to get on. There we were skin to skin, even worse than the subway, all crammed into the entrance between the two seated carts. My cell phone rang and it was Valentina again. I told her "We made it" and some people laughed, probably because they were thinking the same thing since we all thought it was impossible for all of us to fit. After I got off the phone, I said out loud to everyone, "You all smell really great!!" No one laughed and my sister looked at me weird. Stop after stop after stop we were packed and eventually we were able to move into the seated areas, where we ran into Valentina and her husband on their way back from work!

And THAT was our day in Rome! 😉

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