Well, Rome again leaves us without a reliable Internet connection in our hostel. Funny how we had some of the best reliability and speed of any hostel in Gimmelwald, high up in the alps, but urban Rome comes up lacking. The connection is good enough to post anothertext-only entry, but still no beans on attaching any photos. I'd really like to, since Riomaggiore was beautiful and Rome's been very cool so far. Maybe we'll have better luck in the morning. We're also in a private room again because they "upgraded" us to accomodate for a large tour group that they wanted to keep as close together as possible. Oy!
We took an express train into Rome this morning, arriving in the early afternoon. After checking into the hostel, we were greeted with the news that today is a Roman holiday- the festival of St. Peter and Paul. The vast majority of the city closes, including the grocery stores and the like. We wound up discovering another pizza place nearby and had pizza for dinner. Here, it's a very different style of pizza. In Cinque Terre, pizza was on thick, hearty foccacia. Here, it's on a paper-thin crust that's baked dark in a wood-fired oven. Very tasty. The fellow who works in the hostel had told us of fireworks downtown in celebration of the holiday, so we got directions there and back by bus and set off. The bus ride itself was like a tour of the city. We saw the Colosseum, and ruins upon ruins. The city positively drips with history- remnants of ancient Rome are absolutely everywhere- buildings are built in, on, and around them. It makes me wish I knew more ancient history, just so I could associate more events to what I'm seeing.
We arrived and began to notice there was much more than a fireworks display! There was a whole street fair, complete with a flea market-type area, plenty of food vendors, gift vendors, and public performances. Marc and I decided to get a bunch of dried and candied fruit- I spent about 10 euros on mine, but it's sweet enough that it will take me more than a week to get through the pound or so I bought.
We continued our walk and stopped to watch some of the performances. We first caught the end of a poetry reading, which was interesting to hear despite not understanding the words. We saw a magician/comedian, whose tricks were good but whose jokes were not (to us at least) because they were all in Italian. Next we saw a small-ish runway fashion show narrated half in Russian (!!) and half in Italian. It apparently celebrated Bulgarian fashion in Rome. I never thought I could enjoy such a thing, but it was pretty interesting to see the organization and design behind the whole thing. At least it was girls our age or older, nothing gross like Little Miss Sunshine.
We pressed on, never finding the fireworks, but encountering music coming from the banks of the Tiber river. We descended the stairs to the riverside, expecting to find karaoke, but it was actually an Italian woman singing Sheryl Crow in English, backed by guitar, bass, and drums. A girl from the audience joined for a while and sang a few numbers, culminating in a great duet rendition of Summertime from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Hearing English songs sung in a thick, gravelly Italian accent is kind of funny. Interesting to see how American culture has spread.
Our final adventure was finding our way back to the hostel. We had intended to walk, but ultimately decided to take the night bus. The first leg of it was easy, but then at the Rome Termini train/bus station we encountered a mob waiting for our transfer bus. When it arrived, people were already packed like sardines into every available nook and cranny. Michael and a few pushy folks made it on, but Marc and I couldn't manage (we were too polite, for one thing). Michael shoved his way out to meet us, and we waited for the next bus to come around, which was considerably less busy. We stopped as near our hostel as we felt comfortable without overshooting it, and hoofed it the rest of the way. A great start to Rome without a doubt!
What tomorrow? The Vatican? Roman ruins?
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