So after work on Friday I caught the first EuroStar train Direct to Rome (which is just under two hours) to pick up my sister.!! I really enjoy trains and this was no exception, I like that I can sit and do what ever I want and watch the country side go by. It was a wonderful ride especially since I had a travel companion, one of my friends from school. It was actually really funny, we never knew until today but we had run into each other in high school as our Field Hockey teams frequently had matches, so we must have played against each other. I directed my sister to go to the Hotel I had booked for us from the airport as I wouldn't make it in time to greet her at the terminal, and so she met us outside the hotel. I was so excited to see her, it was far to long to go without seeing any family Skype is wonderful but no comparison to the real thing. After the normal meeting and greeting in which I squeezed the life out of her. We set our things down in the room then proceeded to explore.
My first-(well third but first time again) impression of Rome was.... that it was dirty... I mean... Compared to the cities I was used to - small Tuscan towns and good ol' Firenze, Rome was just.... dirty. The streets were dirty, the air was dirty and when we got back to the room I just felt like I was covered in dirt.
On the Bright side we saw some amazing ruins though! The first site we stopped at was Palazzo Venezia, which is a square with some very beautiful buildings. In the middle of the square is what I can only assume to be a 'tomb of the unknown soldier' they have them in every country, and they are especially prominent in Europe. These tombs are basically monuments to soldiers who died and were either never found or were buried somewhere and no one found them, These monuments are a that is given to these soldiers for their bravery and sacrifice they made. Most of these monuments have armed guards, some sort of eternal flame(which can represent either that they will never be forgotten or that the it will keep burning until they are found) and maybe a plaque describing why the monument was built. The one in Palazzo Venezia is huge and made of white stone, two armed gaurds standing sentry, a basin of fire and had black wrought iron fences all around. It was a striking figure a midst all the warm orange, salmon and taupe buildings. I really liked the carvings on the building and was a little sad when we had to leave so quickly... Those feelings would change later as legitimately, it didn't matter which direction we turned in or what street we went down... If we got lost(which we did - a lot) we would end up in Palazzo Venezia... Every. Single. Time. I was in this Palazzo no less than eight times in the course of two and a half days. And only once did I actually want to be there.
Then we walked into a couple churches to admire the architecture and fresco and various other attractions. All the churches were beautiful and the insides were just amazing. As this was my third time in Rome I tried to give editorials, the best that I knew of, of all the little things I know about Rome. This is actually perfect because my head is filled with random facts, nothing that will ever assist me in life unless my life problem is figuring out why: in America beautiful Cathedrals can be found in slums, or why red doors are popular or even why men's and women's pants button on different sides. When you find that job let me know. But I tried. Rome is chalk full of history and ancient artifacts, so much so that you often see ancient buildings with brand new buildings built around or out of them. Every where you turn there is a different monument or interesting fact to glean. You ever hear about someone finding buried treasure? That's exciting right? Not to Roman's its not. I heard a rumor that Romans hate digging up their back yards because if they actually find something like a roman coin or artifact that they have to do so much paperwork and then depending on the find their property might be turned into a landmark and the whole thing is just one great big head ache.
We stopped for dinner and everyone was starving so we went to the first place we could find... Mistake. I meannn it wasn't bad, but it such as heck wasn't the first Italian meal I wanted my sister to enjoy (although we will make up for it later). It was a tourist trap..
Saturday we rose bright and early to take full advantage of the day, we went to the coloseaum, looked at the Roman forum, wove through side streets. We actually passed the random hotel on that one side-street my mother and I stayed in four years ago. Weird! I took a picture of the church. When my mom and I did Rome, we were there on a Sunday and she hear the organ playing, so she stopped in and then told me to sit somewhere while she talked with the organist. We didn't leave for three hours, she was having a fantastic time listening to the pipe organ.
This time around we did actually stop in a church but not with the intention of seeing a mass. it was just accidental. When we stopped into Santa Maria, there was a prerecorded mass happening(which I totally don't get) and so we sat and listened for ten minutes, the choir was gorgeous, combined with the paintings and the little Italian I knew it wasn't half bad. In fact there was this panel on one side of the church with a fresco on it and then all of a sudden the fresco started moving down. This obviously startling to us and behind it was the sacraments. Right about then I started thinking again. A dangerous past-time, but that's a risk I am willing to take. Now by my count there was about twenty people in this amazing church, I would bet my last euro that not one of them was fluent in Italian and less than five had a basic understanding of the language. Then I imagined my home, my hangouts and my churches. How disrupting it would be to be sitting there, praying, eating, hanging out, and having people all the time running around taking pictures, talking during a service, interrupting things, I don't know... It just struck a chord with me. Tourism has a long and very interesting history, the actual word tourism wasn't coined until the early 1800's(Thank you Global Studies).
We went to the Vatican but the line was literally wrapped all the way around St. Peter's square and it would have taken us hours to get in, so we came to the consensus that we would all be ok just looking at it from the outside. Which was an unfortunate turn of events, but it was a really long line. This was then replaced with walking arround Vatican city which was a pretty walk. We continued along until we hit as many monuments as we could possibly find and by that time we were exhausted, hungry and I am 90% sure that my legs were ready to fall off. The important part was to try and see everything because Sunday we were going to Perugia to see the International Chocolate festival!!
Now. I am going to take a few steps back for a second, I had a month's notice before my sister was coming so I was excitedly trying to plan the MOST AWESOME BREAK EVER. Only, it was very nerve wracking as I have never independently planned a trip before, I have collaborated with peers to go places but never just planned a trip for someone else. Here is where I show my more vulnerable side, I was so excited my sister was coming to visit, but I was wanted to show her everything and then what if she didn't like it. So there was a lot of late night rough draft sessions trying to plan everything perfectly so she could go home with the best possible experience, having a fun packed schedule that wasn't so bust she didn't have a moments peace. I finally settled on an itinerary just days before she got here and to be fair, it was the most kick-ass itinerary every. At this point in the trip I had forgotten all my nervousness as I was just trying to navigate Rome with her and my friend Katherine.
On a map you can see that Perugia is on the way to Florence so I figured we would just take the train to Perugia for the last day of the chocolate festival and then make our way to Florence.... Only there was a minor flaw in my plan... I did not account for the fact that my sister had luggage. Now again, the international chocolate festival is packed with people, you have to take a small transfer bus from the train station to the festival and then the festival is at the very tippity-top of this giant hill... Again, something I did not realize. So in the middle of October I was walking up this hill with a giant bag and my own overnight bag and stripped down to just a tank-top because I was so hot. This caused a bit of a ruckus as most Italians were wearing these huge Parkas with scarves and mittens. Now on another side note, this has been a reoccurring problem for me. As a human being I tend to run on the warmer side, so I generally wear less layers in winter than other people, I don't like to get over heated. Here in Italy because they are so close to the equator the winter is very mild, and it only snows in the mountains, most places like Florence and Rome and other cities just get freezing rain and high winds during the winter months. This to me feels like nothing so I have been leaving the house in jeans a tee-shirt and a small sweater(unless its raining then I bring a rain jacket and umbrella). But I find it to be like a pleasant fall day, and the Italians look at me like I am a mad woman. Like I said, they have been in Parkas since late September, I recently started wearing my coat but its been infrequent and usually at night as its really the nights that are cold. But I either get stared at for my lack of a coat or get asked "hia freddo?" or 'are you cold?' and I say no, they call me crazy and walk away. I honestly have been just saying I'm from Canada so people will accept the fact that 65*-70* is not all that cold.
Anyway so we trekked around the chocolate festival and I lost Katherine and Elizabeth because I had the bags and couldn't navigate through the hundreds of people so I just waited for them in this spot we had taken photos at earlier. Honestly Perugia is a beautiful town I am definitively going back sometime, but the chocolate festival is crazy and there is just so many people. So we made our way to our train and headed back to good ol' Firenze. I have never been so glad in my life and my sister and I did our first walk about of Florence!
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