Ciao everyone! I went nuts with my scribbling on loose sheets of paper today, so here’s a smidgeon of my crazy, al dente. (as always, when I’m traveling, the pics won’t cooperate, so please take breaks while reading, and imagine pretty stuff, thanks)
Expectations of Rome: Huge, lots of yellow and orange and red tones/lots of sun, very expressive people, too many tourists, great gelato, rushing a bit/a bit of a rush, friendly atmosphere, painfully stylish Europeans… Me, water, an apple, some gelato, minimal stress, and seven and a half hours of strolling through cobblestone streets.
Scribbled thoughts:
*I feel again like I missed everything. Rome-not built in a day. Me- calmly sitting on a park bench with the jacket I almost lost because I ignored the boy who said “Scusi!” to let me know I had dropped it.
*Thinking about all the museums I didn’t go to, all the art I didn’t see. Nope, not cultured. Just sitting here on a park bench in some random part of Villa Borghese, watching a dad play soccer with three boys. The little one is determined to get the green and yellow ball into the fountain. His brother is thinking about killing him, and I’m thinking about the dynamics of this curious foursome. Are they all brothers? Do they get along? Is their mother alive? Maybe that older lady that just chatted with the dad is one of their grandmothers, or maybe the dad is the uncle, or a family friend.
*I’d like to be a traveling writer in this moment. I’d like to have observing and feeling and recording as my only responsibilities. Let’s move to Europe and write a few books!
*I need to be honest right now and admit that I travelgasm. Today I Colloseogasmed and Forogasmed and Treegasmed and Villa Borghesegasmed. Some people (hi mom) might find this way of expressing it distasteful, and I understand that. Part of me also reaches back to those puritan roots and distrusts pure bliss because I unconsciously associate it with gluttony. This uglifies it and makes the idea dirty. However, I try to accept the “-gasm” suffix as pure and fit to be used in this blog.
*I’m deeply considering making a real website because this address is too hard to remember. Crazy Julia is also super fond of the idea of the traveling blogger, who scribbles loose thoughts on a google maps printout of Via dei Fori Imperiali meeting Via dei Corso, and people read it even though she left her camera in Seville. (No worries, I borrowed my friend’s cam today)
*There’s music coming from speakers (I later found out it was real people and real instruments. Also, the statue of liberty was there. I think she was a guy.) in Piazza de Popolo. I found another fountain and one of the rarest sights in springy Rome: Yup, you guessed it. A young couple deeply engrossed in making out.
*A stampede of students just went by, and I think it’s time to find the subway and my way home. I’m expected back for dinner 🙂
A summary (not in order.. at all :B):
I saw the Forum and the Colosseum. I now have a very strong urge to watch Gladiator. I saw about five gazillion Piazzas and Rome’s “fifth ave.” I had the best gelato in town, as recommended by my lovely Italian friend. I saw a beautiful park with lots of cherry blossoms and children and couples. There were a bunch of pretty dogs. Some Bangladeshi guy with a bunch of roses called me pretty and made me buy one for two euros because he is poor. What was I supposed to do? I gave it to Sara when I got home. The subway is not hard to use, but it’s clogged because every time the Romans try to dig another subway tunnel they find new archeological digs that they also can’t afford. The Roman statues were all beautiful, and the Palatine Hill museum was quite cute, with its many severed statue heads and missing male genitals. There were way too many people at the Trevi Fountain and on the Spanish Steps, but I took pics of both anyway. Easter=crazytime for everything remotely Catholic or even slightly into the Pope (my grandma once served him food in one of his friend’s houses before he got all papal, by the way. She’s super proud.) Rome is gorgeous. There were a lot of people on bikes and motorbikes and in cars on the side streets. I felt close to death only once. Go me.
Way too tired to work out tonight or make sense of this gibberish, so soak it all in. If it’s not enough, come to Roma yourself!!! 😀 Comes highly recommended from this end. I am def coming back, and then I’m doing an Italy trip with Sara.
It’s going on the long list of the impossibly possible life journeys and travels I still have ahead of me. Right below a weekend visit to my Spain roomie and her Basque lover in Montreal, a day trip to Washington, D.C. with my best friend, a wedding in Brazil, a Bed and Breakfast in Ireland with my cousin, a summer in Colombia with my NY roomie, the peace corps in.. wherever they send me, China with… well, everyone I know in China, and every other place that I haven’t mentioned yet. India?
Shutting up now. Oh and I also have boy problems (yes, I am turning 20 next month and I still use that term). Go figure.
Buonanotte!
Julia
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