The eagle has landed! We have arrived in historic Rome, and here is everything I have learned about Rome in five hours, plus some comments about our journey over here.
We left San Francisco at roughly seven pm Sunday night. This seemed like a perfect plan: Tristan would eat dinner on the plane and then fall asleep for the rest of the flight. Like many of the best-laid plans, this one fell through. Sure, Tristan helped us eat our string meat (yes, even in business class, the meat sucks…at least we had free booze to wash it down,) but sleep was not on his schedule. Tristan fought and fought and after two hours of pissing off both of his parents and the nice English gentleman next to us, he finally fell asleep…in the middle of my seat. I snuggled in next to him to get as much sleep as I could manage while sucking my gut in. (Just in case you were curious, that’s about tgree hours of fitful sleep. The icing on the cake was that every time I woke up, I had to lay perfectly still since Tristan had managed to get his head on my arm. Will we be flying with a lap baby again? No.) About 80 minutes before landing at Heath Row, they turn on flood lights in the cabin to wake everyone for breakfast. Lovely. We enjoyed a plate of baked seasonal fruit (currants and canned peaches are apparently in season in England) and had an uneventful landing.
Our stopover in London was thankfully boring, unless you count a massive BM by Tig.
Now, it was time for the second leg of our journey: a quick jaunt over the Channel and across the Alps to Roma. As if Tristan was trying to foil our plans for conquering jetlag, he fell asleep about .00348 seconds after lift off, like this:
(While I joke about his poor choice of sleep timing, guess who is sleeping and guess who decided to blog at 4:45 am.) Since Tristan was not awake to entertain us for this flight, I got to enjoy my favorite dairy product, with the most unfortunate name: clotted cream. For those of you who have not enjoyed this very British treat, it is kind of like butter, only wetter and sweater. The large portion of my affection for the stuff is that I only get to enjoy it every few years when I am in England or happen to fly through London.
With tea service complete, it was time to land in Rome. Tristan woke up a few minutes before landing in a great mood, which turned out to be a blessing as the baggage claim process took a little more than an hour. While Glenn was searching for an ATM and getting our checked bags, I entertained Tristan with shoulder rides, jumping, and my hat which was the only thing keeping me from completely looking like Gary Busey at this point. We also practiced saying, “Ciao!” to all the passers-by as well. (At this juncture, it is critical to issue an apology to everyone on the flight from Beijing at the neighboring baggage carousel: my son was trying to immerse himself in the Italian culture, and not trying to make racist assumptions about people’s names.) After about thirty minutes, we had all our checked bags, except for Tristan’s stroller. As all the other passengers from our flight made their way to customs, we realized the stroller may have decided to take a detour to London, so Glenn went off to search for baggage claim services for another thirty minutes or so. At this point, Genius McJetlagpants (this is how I will refer to myself for the rest of this post) should probably have thought to remove the shrink wrap from the car seat, but, in the interest of having better stories to share on my blog, I chose not to. See what I do for you people! You will have to wait for this story, though, because Glenn was back with the stroller, which he found in the over-sized baggage area. Only in a country where the Fiat is the national vehicle is an umbrella stroller considered “over-sized.” We loaded up our bags and pushed our way through customs to finally set foot on Roman soil.
Hail Caesar!
We found the taxi line quickly thanks to the jetlag-friendly layout of FCO (that’s Rome International Airport and not the local futbol team.) We stepped out into the night air to be greeted by a crowd of Italian stereotypes. Seriously, I think they hire old men to stand around in sweaters smoking and yelling at one another while sweeping their arms through the air. And let us not forget the ladies with tight pants (not always an age-appropriate choice, by the way) and brassy bleached hair, hunched over from the weight of large gold necklaces. To put it simply, I was in love.
The wait for a taxi wasn’t too long, but it still didn’t dawn on Genius McJetpagpants or Mrs. McJetlagpants (Glenn) to unwrap the car seat until we were at the front of the line. When our cabby saw that he had drawn the short straw, he rolled his eyes and I think he may even have crossed himself. This man was a talented individual, however, and managed to get our mountain of luggage into the back of his Fiat in about a minute. Meanwhile, Genius and the Mrs. (maybe I should have gone with Captain and Tenille) struggled for five minutes to get the car seat out of its plastic prison. Not even Tristan’s “Ciao!” could get the cabby to crack a smile, which conveys how miserable he must have been. We eventually got the car seat in and Glenn gave the driver our address and the meter was ticking. Thankfully, I am married to the most wonderful, non-socially anxious man in the world who kindly reminded the driver that the fare to Rome from FCO is a flat 40 Euros (45 if you include some weird charge.) Don’t mess with the tourist who has platinum status at multiple hotel chains.
Now, it was time to relax and enjoy my fist Roman sights on the way to the hotel. Only Tristan decided he was going to kick the back of the cabby’s seat. I quickly turned on my phone and got Tristan watching “Yo Gabba Gabba” while I whipped out the phrase book to look up, “Please don’t put your cigarette out in my eye,” just in case I would need that phrase when the cabby had had enough of the Supremes (there are three of us and as Tristan was not jetlagged, we needed a new touring name.)
My first thought as we zoomed down the highway was that Rome was remarkably flat. For some reason, I was expecting rolling hills crowned with cathedrals and Roman ruins. Instead, it was Kansas with the Martini factory. Once we reached the city proper, it started to look a lot more like what I expected. Being an old city, Rome is definitely different that almost every city in America. When I first moved to San Francisco, I was shocked at how short the buildings were compared to Boston and New York City. Well, San Francisco looks like Brigitte Nielsen standing next to Vern Troyer when compared to Rome. Not only were the buildings shorter, they were covered in graffiti and some of them show their age. It actually reminded me vaguely of Puerta Vallarta. Oh, but then you see the Coliseum. That’s right, one second, your looking at row after row of pharmacies and cafes and discos, and then, BAM, there’s the Coliseum. I was truly in awe as we wound our way around the massive structure, and then comes the real surprise: “Anno VII.” For those of you who didn’t really pay attention in fourth grade when you were learning Roman numerals, that’s “Year 7.” Good lord, they’ve been persecuting Christians for a long time in this city.
The rest of the cab ride couldn’t really compare to this sight, so let’s fast forward to dinner. After checking in at the hotel (where we were upgraded to a suite bigger than our condo…score!) we went out in search of dinner. It was about 9:30 at this point, so I was not thrilled about our prospects. Also, I am pretty sure I was digesting my own organs at this point, so being told we were not getting room service had me less than pleased. We walked about two blocks from our hotel, found nothing reasonably-priced, crossed the street and started walking back. We found a modestly-priced gelateria/ristorante to enjoy our first Roman meal. We must have found the only ristorante on the Via Venetto staffed by Filipinos (though there was one Italian Ali G. look-alike with whom we will hopefully get a picture before we leave for Barcelona.) I came half-way around the world to practice my Tagalog…super.
We ordered a pizza and a salad and started to eat. The funny thing is that when you’re jetlagged and starving, your body enters this state of numbness. Your hands and feet become like distant satellites that somehow affect the movement of your body (yes, in my case, a heavenly body,) but you’re not quite good enough at physics to understand the whole equation. Then, you eat and feeling returns to your extremities. You actually feel the protective layer of sebum and dirt that has accumulated on your skin. You feel each misplaced hair spinning out of orbit making you look like an ordinary lunatic. This is when you realize it’s time to call it a night, which we did.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I can’t promise there will be more of this length on our trip as I will hopefully not be waking up before five every day. Until my next post, ciao!
