Rode Hard and Put Away Wet
Greetings from Italia, home of heat, side streets, rain, and the Jersey Shore.
This week was the middle of my trip, and it sure seemed like it. I had midterms in the beginning of the week, which went well. Then on Wednesday, my whole program went to the Papal audience, because our school was being mentioned in “noteable attendees” … or a “special blessing”. I thought us getting to see the Pope speak and hold mass was a big deal, and then I found out it happened every Wednesday (when the Holy One is in town). I would love to say that I cheered like a sinner when the LUC John Felice Rome Center was named… but I was asleep. The heat and Midterms really wiped me out. But don’t worry, the trip wasn’t a total bust for me, Loyola took us to lunch at a pizzeria after. The later half of the week was nothing special, went to class, planned on working, but took a nap instead.
People from our program went on a program-sponsored trip to Asissi on Saturday. The town of Asissi is a medieval mountaintop town, three hours north of Rome. The population is around 6,000, most likely half being nuns and priests, since the St. Francis of Asissi church is there. We went on a walking tour around the town, and visited the church. The priests and nuns who are with the church have taken a vow of silence, so obviously the church is pretty quiet… except when someone’s alarm goes off on their cell phone. Leave it to a Loyola student to make a ruckus in a church that has been pretty much silent for hundreds of years. I wasn’t the nimrod, but I did have to spend the rest of the weekend with her.
After we finished in Asissi on Saturday, me and two girls went on to Florence for the night. We took a two hour train ride into the city, and then got to the hostel. Our cheap accommodations were quite lovely; it looked like an Ikea ad, rather than a military barrack. It wouldn’t really had mattered anyway, since we got there around 9pm and had to check out at 10am the next morning. We got dinner, and learned that pretty much all over Italy, you will be served frozen food if you chose to dine in a main piazza, otherwise known as a tourist trap. It’s not a big deal though, you just need to find smaller restaurants on side streets. After dinner we walked around for a good two hours, and a good hour and half of that was spent being lost. Florence is one of the most confusing cities I have ever been to. There are so many side streets that aren’t on maps, and so many piazzas that look the same. It was ridiculous. We finally decided to just turn around and walk back the way we came. It turned out to be fine since there was a plethora of gelato shops on our route.
The next day we ventured out to the city again in search of the famous leather market, and other shops we saw on our confused tour of the town from the previous night. Being that we were there on a Sunday, many of the shops didn’t open until later or not at all. We putzed around, making sure to stay with the “in-crowd”, also known as the crowd who weren’t boneheads and actually knew where they were going. After a few stores, we decided to try to find the pizza shop that the cast of The Jersey Shore was working/filming at this summer. After doing some research the night before, post jaunt around the city, we found it pretty easily. The idiots from The Shore weren’t working that day, but we still got pizza, it was probably one of the best I’ve had so far. After we scarfed down the pizza with spicy salami, we then went to find the leather market. Naturally we got lost again. This time we ventured past the center of town to the outskirts, with only locals that spoke no English. The outskirts of Florence looked much like Cabrini Green, or how I would imagine it looked like in its prime. Thankfully we found a street name that looked familiar and that could be found on a map. After a little navigational genius, not involving me, we made it back into town, and the leather market.
Unfortunately no merchant had a pair of leather chaps for me to buy, so we headed out and strolled the streets a little more, because it always worked out so well for us earlier. And then much to our surprise, we randomly stumbled upon half the cast of The Jersey Shore sitting on the street being filmed. None other than Vinny, Pauly D, J Woww, The Situation, and Ronnie were just hanging out outside their building. There was a small crowd, most likely populated by dumb Americans, and a whole squad of security. The Jersey idiots started walking, so we obviously followed… staying a good distance behind, in hopes of not catching any diseases they were dishing out.
Then not even a block later, it started to rain. The cast and crew stopped to hide under an awing. And then a downpour occurred. After a little schmoozing with a security guard, who happened to be a “runway model” in California, my girls got two ponchos from him, while I was stuck with a dilapidated umbrella. The rain came hard, and my regret of sticking around for these Jersey juice-heads came even harder. As soon as it started hailing, they all ran, while we were stuck in an apartment building’s lobby, but the girls and I were able to hail a cab in the monsoon. Since our train back to Rome was in two hours, we headed to the station early to avoid the rain. Needless to say, I was a bit soggy, but thankfully I had an alternative change of clothes, which I put on right away. Because it rained hard for the entire two hour wait, when we went underground to get to our train platform, we had to walk through mid-calf high water. Not great.
I arrived safely back in Rome, after an hour and half train ride. The trip back was a bit uncomfortable, since the Italian couple I sat next to obviously judged my Pringle consumption. Pringles are sold like water in Italy, and I’ve definitely taken to the cylinder packaged snack. I have no plans for the next week, but I’m sure I’ll end up embarrassing myself in some way. I hope all is well back in the U. S. of A. and I miss all of you… along with Mountain Dew.
