SPRING BREAK MEGA-UPDATE: v.Roma

The Spanish countryside rolled past. I thought I saw a cow. I looked at my watch, and promptly began to freak out. Girona, apparently, is in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but luckily almost as soon as I woke up I saw signs for airport parking.

We made our flight, but it was close. There was a lot of hustle. This was to be a common theme for the rest of our time in Europe.

Rome. First priority was registering for classes at Georgetown, which I did in an Internet Café next to the train station—again we had flown into some BFE airport that was only accessible by a bus or a €60 cab ride—while Daniel booked us a hostel in Naples for the night. After grabbing lunch in one of those red-checkered-tablecloth-accordion-player stereotypical Italian streetside cafés, we hopped a southbound train and promptly fell asleep.

When we got to Naples, we didn’t really know where to go. We had a street name for our hostel, but couldn’t find it on any maps; we called the hostel, but we couldn’t understand the directions. We had figured out that we needed to take the Circumvesuviana, the Napoli Metro system, but our vague approximation of what the stop had sounded like over the bad payphone at the train station could not be found. We got off at a stop that was more or less close in sound, and then looked lost until a very nice Italian man asked us, “Fabric Hostel?”

Apparently they get that a lot.

Through a mix of Italian, English and very demonstrative sign language (e.g. take a right at the THROWS HANDS IN THE AIR [fountain]), he gave us great directions and we miraculously found our hostel, which was very funky and fun. After an amazing shower and another nap (seeing a pattern here?), we walked around southern Naples for awhile. We found a small restaurant where we got the best pizza I’ve ever had—a €4 margharita—, got some gelato, and went to bed.

The next day was reserved for Pompeii, a 45 minute Circumvesuviana ride away. €11 got us a ticket, a map and a guide book, and we spent a few hours running around the grounds of the ruins. I had expected little tiny houses with ashen-colored outbuildings filled with mummified mothers in fetal positions or something, but the reality of Pompeii really surprised me. It was a surprisingly large city, with its constructs extant in a similar fashion to the Roman Forum: bases of temples, many buildings, roads and archways remain. It’s a lush historical site, filled with trees, flowers and thick grass. All the mummies have been removed, but plaster casts of some are on display. A lot of the city had been destroyed in a powerful earthquake just a few years before Vesuvius erupted, so even in its preserved form it was not at full strength. Daniel commented that he could see why they picked there to live: the whole right-next-door-to-a-volcano-thing aside, Pompeii is in the heart of a beautiful, mountain-ringed valley.

That afternoon we took train back to Rome, and found our hostel, which was four flights up in an old building on Via Cavour. Kiana, who had never been to Rome, left to see the Forum and the Coliseum; Daniel and I, both having been there before and beyond maxed out on ancient Roman historical sites, wandered through the streets of Rome to Campo di Fiori just as it started to pour. We spent a few hours huddled in a café—him doing Econ, me reading for my “book report”—waiting to meet up with Kiana at 8pm. When she didn’t show, we nixed our contingency plan (Trevi Fountain at 9, Spanish Steps at 10) due to the thunderstorm, figuring she would have headed back to the hostel, grabbed a quick dinner and sprinted back ourselves. She wasn’t back, however, so Daniel headed out on a run to the Spanish Steps to find her while I stayed in the hostel, damp and without any hot water for a shower. While he was gone, Kiana returned. She had bought an umbrella and wandered around the city during the rainstorm. Oops.

Daniel came back after his trek, soaked and exhausted, and passed out; he would spend a very long night shivering into a fever that would last him until France. These four-hour nights were starting to get rough.

We had another 8am flight to Marseille that morning, and I had looked up the bus schedule back to Ciampino Airport in the suburbs of Rome. Our plan was to take the first one at 5:52; we couldn’t force ourselves to pay the €60, so we would just cut it close. But after an early wakeup and a misty walk to the train station, we found the posted schedule was different than the one online; there had been one at 4:30, and the next was 6:45. We had to find another way. We ran over to the Metro station, which was just opening its doors at 5:20. Our new plan was to take the Metro as far as we could go and then either take a bus or a taxi. Time was running short as we sat underneath Rome and waited for the first Metro; it came at 5:55.