Walk around Rome

11/4/2009

Today was a wild day. I woke up this morning with the intentions of having a wonderful last day of solo traveling. I didn’t set an alarm, which was a nice change to wake up on my own, and ended up rolling out of bed around 9:30. Two of the guys that I share my hostel dorm with are mega snorers; in addition to that, the majority of them are major stinkbugs. I went to the bar next door for a hostel discounted breakfast of French toast and a banana and also took the opportunity to use their wifi and check my email.

After breakfast, I considered taking a shower because I hadn’t done that in a while, but then decided against it because I was going to be doing laundry later on that day and iddnt really have any clean clothes to put on. In addition to that, it was a kinda grey, dreary, chilly day and I didn’t want to start walking around with Rome with wet hair.

I decided to make my first activity for the day a Grace Kelly exhibit. The exhibit was on display at a museum that was across town, but Rome is a very walkable city and I enjoyed stretching my legs. The route that I took lead me down a high fashion street, which was enjoyable to look into the windows. Once again, I find a lot of aspects of high fashion to be mind-boggling and I cannot relate to spending some of the figures that they put on the price tags on clothing items. As I started walking, I realized that it looked a lot colder outside than it really was. I had broken into a nice cardio workout by the time I reached the Grace Kelly exhibit and had to sit down on some church steps to cool down before I entered.

I really enjoyed the exhibit even though it was on display in French (why? I have no idea especially because I was in Italy). I didn’t really know that much about Grace Kelly other than she was married to Prince Rainier. Since she was stunningly gorgeous actress with impeccable fashion sense, the exhibit was just fun to look at in general. I spent about two hours looking at pictures and memorabilia from her life (this included an Oscar that she won, how cool to see one in person!). My favorite part was her dresses and jewels that were on display. They were breath taking and I found it unbelievable how tiny she was! Most of the dresses were Dior.

It was lunchtime when I left the exhibit and I had planned on eating lunch at a restaurant that “Let’s go” recommended that was located near the exhibit. This worked out nicely. The book recommended ordering the pecorino cheese that was served with honey and walnuts. I didn’t know what else to get so I made a random decision to also order a six-cheese pizza. The pecorino cheese was unbelievable. It was baked, so there were some crunchy parts around the melted middle, and the honey and walnuts were drizzled over it. After I finished gobbling it up and was waiting for my pizza, I realized that I probably over did it with ordering cheese. My pizza was ok, I was already pretty cheesed out by the time it came, which probably had a good deal to do with me not being able to enjoy it at its maximum potential. I have definitely had better four-cheese pizzas. Vegetables or a salad would have been a better compliment, but oh well. After I finished, I sat at the table and digested for a while reading my book. All in all, the restaurant was a totally winner with very reasonable prices.
After lunch I walked a ways in another direction to see the Bocca della verita. On my way, I passed a bunch of random ruins in the middle of the city and that is when I realized that I was in the “ancient” part of the city. This is the face on the wall of the church in “Roman Holiday” with Audrey Hepburn, that supposedly if you put your hand in its mouth and it bites it off you are a liar. It was a nice walk, especially after such a cheesey meal. When I finally arrived at the site there was an extremely long line, so I snapped some pics and watched some people put their hands in the hole and then decided it was time for me to head back to my hotel.

I was doing so good with figuring out my way around Rome and directions until this point. I got really turned around in the ancient part of the city and ended up walking all the ways around it. I saw a lot of ruins and got a really good look at “ancient Rome” without paying for a thing. Finally an hour and a half later from the time I set off in the direction of my hostel, I arrived back. My legs were pretty tired from walking all around the city and I was parched, so I took full advantage of the free water and wifi at the bar.

At around 6 o’clock I decided I needed to get my night going, which I had planned to fill up with laundry, a shower, another delicious “Let’s Go” dinner, and possibly to packing. This is when my night started to get interesting. When I got up to my room to take a shower and assemble my laundry, a couple of my dorm mates were asleep so I decided to be courteous do everything in the dark with the aid of my head lamp. I took a fantastic shower, great water pressure. Even though the hostel bathrooms were unisex, they had hair dryers, which evened everything out in my book. The only clean clothes I had left were some leggings and a big t-shirt, so needless to say I was looking pretty “cute” in that outfit with my sneakers too.

I decided to use my big pack to transport my laundry to the Laundromat, which was a couple of blocks away. I wasn’t planning on taking my messenger back with messenger bag with me to the Laundromat, so I took all of my essential important things out of it and stuck them in random places in my big pack. This includes my keys to my locker. At the Laundromat, the man gave me a hostel discount and said that he would do my laundry for me, which was fine with me because European washers, dryers, and soap confuse me, everything would be done in an hour and a half and all for the price of 10 euro.

At this point, I realized that I cant find my keys so my locker. I didn’t see them in the pocket of my pack that I remembered putting them in. So I decided to go to dinner at this time and just worry about the keys later on. The restaurant that I want to go to is across town, near where the Grace Kelly Exhibit was. On my way over there, I stopped back at my hostel to see if I had left my keys sitting out on my bed, but no luck. I also realized at this point that I had locked my cell phone in my messenger bag in my locker and it would be nice to have in case my mom called me with an issue on her way over here.

So time is ticking away as I am power walking to the restaurant across town. I need to get some more Euro, so I stop at a random Bancomat on my way to the restaurant. As I am nearing the restaurant, the skies decided to open up. I do not have my rain coat or umbrella and so much time has passed on my walk that I realize I will only have about a half an hour to enjoy my dinner. I didn’t think that was nearly enough time, so I decided to try to catch a bus back to the Laundromat part of town and get dinner after I get my laundry. While I am waiting for a bus to come, the rain really starts pouring and I am quickly becoming drenched. I probably stood out in the rain waiting for a stupid bus for about 20 minutes and it never came. At this point, I felt like it was a reasonable decision to take a taxi to the Laundromat. Not only would it get me there in time to pick up my laundry, but it would get me comfortably out of the rain.

As I pull out my wallet to pay the taxi driver, I realize that my credit card is no longer in my wallet. At this point I looked up at the sky and wondered if the night could get any worse. I gathered all of my laundry and ran back to the hostel with my pack on my back so that I could #1 hopefully not get any wetter and #2 get a move on trying to find everything that I had misplaced this evening.

I storm into my room soaking wet. Thank goodness my roommates are up and I can search with the lights on. They all look at me like I am crazy, but when I explained to them what I was going through they all ere very kind to me, helpful, and tried to calm me down. Stuff like this hardly happens to me and when it doees, it is the absolute worst! I attempted to poke around in my locker by sticking my fingers through the cage holes and see if I had accidentally locked my keys in there. One of my roommates even lifted our bunk beds to help me shift things around, but no luck there. I am starting to panic and hope that the hostel has metal cutters for situations like this. Eventually, I do an extremely thorough search of the pocket of my pack that I thought I had put my keys in, and low and behold, there they were hiding in the very bottom.

With my keys found, I could start to calm. The first thing missing is found. I got my laundry sorted, checked through everything to see if I put my credit card in any random spot or it fell lose some where, and then got sorted to retrace my steps. Luckily, the last time I remembered having my credit card was at lunch so that gave me a shorter time frame of possible places where I could have lost it. I had only brought my wallet out three other times since lunch, at the Laundromat, ATM machine, and then in the cab. That left me with a good path, yet very long to take to retrace my steps.

I first went to the Laundromat, no luck there, but I left my name and where I was staying in case it did turn up. Then I rewalked the path I took to where I decided that I needed to turn around so that I could check the ATM machine, no luck there. I was really hoping that it had fallen out of my wallet there and by some grace of God it was still sitting on the wet side walk. At this point I am starting to lose hope because I knew there was no way I would ever be able to locate the cab I took and if it had fallen out in the cab, it was a goner. I decided to check the restaurant that I had lunch in just in case. It was a really long walk to get there, but I made myself do it just to be positive that I looked everywhere.

When I got to the restaurant, I explained to them that I had eaten lunch there and since then I had realized I had lost my credit card and was wondering if I possibly left it there. The man said that they had one credit card left there from lunch today and if I would please sign a piece of paper he would compare signatures. I saw a light of hope and in my excitement I did not sign a very good signature. My signature normally varies on a daily basis and with this guy, the language barrier, and my messy signature, he said that he could not accept it. So I pleaded with him, the card I left was a capital one card and I had my receipt with me, would that suffice? By the luck of the Irish, he did have my credit card! I swear that I am never that lucky. When things like this happen to me, they are goners. All of the speed walking around town was totally worth it and I thanked my lucky stars.

I decided to head to the original restaurant that I was going to go to for a celebration dinner. I had a serious skip in my step when I walked, despite how tired my legs were and how much my foot hurt. When I got to the restaurant it was closed, which I thought was weird because it was supposed to be a pub that stayed open till three. I have a feeling the place might have closed and there was a new place there instead. So now that it was 11 o’clock, which even for Italians is on the later side to go to a restaurant, I decided to go to the closest place that was open.

That ended up being a very reasonably priced restaurant down the street a bit. I asked the waiter what was good and he recommended the carbonara, which I got with grilled veggies and wine and water. The waiter started talking with me, which I greatly appreciated because I was dining alone, but then another waitress said a snide comment to him and that was the last I saw of him that night. The mean waitress waited on me for the rest of the night and she had a serious attitude problem. The carbonara was ok, not my favorite, but the grilled veggies were very good. I ordered chocolate moose thar was so light and tasty. It was really the icing on the cake. I didn’t finish my bottle of water and tried to take it with me for later on in the middle of the night, but once again the mean waitress shot that down.

I was luckily able to catch a bus back to the hostel. When I got back to my room and informed my roommates that I found my credit card, we all did a victory cheer. At this point I was exhausted from walking around the city three times that day and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was fast asleep.