When Alan and I realized we would be going to Cambridge, we were ecstatic (as could be expected). We understood that this was the opportunity of a lifetime; we would never ever get to be able to do anything like this ever again. We decided that to take full advantage of this, we were going to try and travel other places, too (our minds full of dreams about Rome and Paris and Munich and Ireland, you know, the places that everyone talks about).
Time constraints, however, have limited our travel options, and we haven't been able to go to as many places as we'd like, so we chose three cities that we most wanted to visit before settling in Cambridge finally.
This is how we found ourselves first, in Rome, Italy.
Alan and I have different ways of thinking about things. Alan comes into every situation with a clear expectation of the proceedings therein. I kinda just go and see how things pan out (after The Sorcerer's Apprentice with Nicholas Cage, I've been careful not to have expectations about anything, lest they be disappointed severely). So if you were one of the people who asked us if we were excited for our trip, most likely, Alan's enthusiasm was due to the grand picture in his head that he had formed of what it would be like, and mine was completely fake, because I had no idea if it was going to be good or bad, and no expectations either way. So just imagine our surprise when both of us turned out to be entirely incorrect. Even me, having no expectations whatsoever!
We landed in the Rome airport, and were astounded to find that we didn't understand anything anyone was saying or anything written on any of the signs. We had not anticipated this. We quickly learned to stumble our way through security (which pretty much consisted of a guy looking at my passport picture, looking at my face, and then just stamping) and customs (where no one was even present to watch us walk through, I mean seriously--we could have brought freaking anything into their country, and they didn't care!) and we got ourselves bus tickets and made friends with other Americans who also had no idea what was going on.
Once we got off the bus, we acquired a map (through great trial and stumbling, as goes much of our story) and were off to see the sights. We had decided long before coming that we would walk everywhere, and take buses as infrequently as possible (after all, it's by walking the streets of a city that you come to truly understand its heart). There are many things I would like to be able to describe about Rome, but I don't think that any description I ever give will come even a little close to being anything like the actual city. So here are a few things that I loved as well as found exceedingly strange about Rome:
First, nothing is built on any sort of grid. Like, what happened to the Romans who demanded order and organization?! Nope. The streets go every which way and they often meet up in little circle/squares called 'piazza's. This makes it difficult to find anything, even with a map. The street names are engraved on the buildings, which are all at least 5 stories high, sometimes more, so you have to look very carefully and sometimes move out into an intersection before you know which road you're looking at. Thank heavens for the little signs they have pointing to different tourist attractions (also, McDonald's).
Second, Romans don't give a crap about their monuments being set apart from the city. Like, the Trevi Fountain (from the scene in The Lizzie McGuire Movie where we meet Paolo for the first time, yeah, don't lie, that's a big part of the way you imagine Rome, at least, it was for me) is in a teeny, cramped little piazza and the movie doesn't really capture that. The ratio of people to space in the place is ridiculous. If this was America, we'd clear everything out within a mile radius and build parks and drinking fountains and information booths and free bathrooms. None of that in Rome. In Rome, they show respect for their monuments by living around them, making them a part of their every day lives (also if they cleared everything out within a mile they'd clear out four or five other historical monuments as well). It's really cool, actually (except for the part where you have to pay for water and bathrooms--thank goodness for McDonald's, which is a sentence I never thought I'd say in my life). The Colosseum is really the only monument in Rome that's any sort of set apart, and that's just because the thing is so immense (also because it's falling apart and surrounded by a bunch of old structures that are also falling apart and there's excavations going on still).
Third, because the streets are so narrow and the buildings are so tall, cars and pedestrians often occupy the same space. At first, it freaked me out that people were walking in the middle of these busy piazzas and intersections, or that cars were shoving their way through such little streets, but it's hard to stay freaked out when it happens literally always. Some areas are roped off for pedestrians (and apparently motorcycles count as pedestrians), but most stuff is just free game. Sidewalks are usually single-file only, which is fantastic when you meet someone going the opposite way and there's a car parked next to the sidewalk.
Fourth, Romans and Italians in general are so nice. No one ever gave us crap about not speaking Italian, and the one time I almost stepped out in front of a motorcycle, he didn't yell--he just pointed to his eyes as if to say 'make sure you watch,' but in a polite way. People in restaurants always were patient with us, especially when we didn't understand the money or the menu choices or the manners we were supposed to be using. We've had people offer to give us directions, offer us English menus when we couldn't read the Italian, and even help us understand what to do at the train station (they are VERY different from any train station I've ever been in).
Fifth, everything smells like cigarettes and perfume, and the mixture sometimes smells a little like chocolate. The first night, I laid in bed after showering and I still could just smell the overpowering mixture of smells. On the streets--cigarettes and perfume. Everywhere you go--every restaurant, every store, every church. All of it. It was quite a change from Provo, Utah. Also coffee. Everywhere. Coffee is the cheapest thing in Rome, and the smell is ALL OVER.
Sixth, the color palette is extremely bizarre. It's all green (but bottle or olive green, not forest or kelly green) and golds and reds and oranges. So many trees, but not like pine trees or maple trees (though we did see one maple as well as a type of magnolia tree). Every single house/building has shutters. Every single one. And they work. And no one has screens. And everyone hangs their laundry out their windows. And everyone has plants on their balconies and windowsills. It's very fairy-tale-ish. One street we passed had trees all along either side and they grew together, making a green, leafy canopy over the entire street. It was so beautiful.
All of the things we saw were incredible (except the freaking Trevi Fountain, which was dried up and covered in scaffolding for renovation). The Colosseum was enormous and remarkably well-kept for a building that old. The Roman forum was pretty awesome (it satisfied my need for a grid in Rome's set-up) and the Spanish steps were exactly like they look in The Lizzie McGuire movie. Our favorite parts were the churches. The first place we stopped was a church called Santa Maggiore. Because our arrival happened to be on a Sunday, we walked in on an actual Catholic mass, which was pretty cool. The architecture is so different than anything I've ever seen in America, and the paintings are literal masterpieces, just sitting on the walls of a church that's in use every single day, and not just as a tourist attraction. The Pantheon was the same way. It's pretty awe-inspiring actually. I watched "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" on the plane ride over, and something from the movie just plowed me in the face. When Walter is sitting next to the photographer on the mountain, waiting to take a picture of this elusive snow leopard, the photographer says "beautiful things don't ask for attention." I think this is why people still find places like Rome incredible--because neither the structures themselves or the people around them ask for any sort of special attention. They are quiet and reverent and beautiful. And graffitied all over. I mean, seriously. Roman teens are just the worst.
When we arrived, we had no idea where anything was, and when we left, we could have gotten anywhere we wanted without a map. When we arrived, we smelled like soap and excitement, and when we left, we smelled like sweat and exhaustion. Our bodies were sore and tired (because we didn't just walk everywhere, we walked everywhere with backpacks containing our belongings for the next ten weeks in them, and the first day, neither of us thought of putting the straps around our hips as well as our shoulders (though that makes me quite proud of everything we accomplished that day, really). My feet are blistered pretty much everywhere (not because my shoes suck, but because my feet soft and unused to walking three or four miles a day), and Alan and I pretty much limped to our hostels at the end of the day, exhausted and jet-lagged. But you know what? I think it's been more than worth it. If nothing else, seeing a different world than my own has been an immensely enriching experience, worth more than I could ever explain. I've realized a lot of things about my life and myself that I could never have realized if I hadn't found myself in Rome, Italy. Alan's expressed similar thoughts to me, as well.
If you do find yourself in Rome, ever, here's my advice to you:
FIND AN ITALIAN TRANSLATOR for your phone that doesn't need wifi, because trust me, you are never going to have any wifi, and you are ALWAYS going to need that translator.
BOOK YOUR HOSTELS IN ADVANCE. Alan and I couldn't do it any other way because we flew standby, but it really really sucked. I think we found the last bed available in the whole city (also because there was a Rolling Stones concert that night, too).
BRING A MAP. They will do their very best to rip you off at every tourist information booth in the city. If you already have one, either printed out or bought for cheap elsewhere, you won't have to worry about it.
DON'T FORGET WATER. Our first day, we had to buy several bottles because we had forgotten to fill our own up at the airport. That was awful.
Amen.
