Hello, Old Friend

Wednesday I had the entire day to myself to do whatever I wanted. It was a decently warm day but it was pretty cloudy too, ahwell, I wasn’t really expecting there to be much sun at this time of year. Firenze is a different place when you’re on your own, I definitely kind of liked it better being there on my own and not being attached to a schedule or other people. I began my walk, over to the Duomo, across the piazza, and down the winding streets on the other side. I first came across one of the main piazzas where the merry-go-round was and had flashbacks of DHS guys running over and pretending to ride it, as well as, the group of us trying to use the old school public telephones to try and call our parents to tell them we had arrived in there safe and sound. I stopped in there to take a few photos, and then continued on my way. Eventually I arrived at the Piazza della Signoria where the tall clock tower is along with the copies of famous statues like David and other famous ones depicting stories of Roman gods/heroes, another very familiar place full of memories, although some memories not so pleasant…on one of my trips there we had gotten lost and got to the group meeting spot like 15 minutes late and chewed out by one of our teachers…oops. From there I followed down the side street with all the statues of famous philosophers and writers like Dante and Petraca who I had studied in some of my Italian history classes during 2^nd year uni. After taking so many Italian and art history classes being back in Florence had even more beauty and significance to me, it was beautiful.

Beyond that little side road of all the philosophers is the river, this area of the river is probably one of my favourite places in the world. I reached the river and turned to the right to see my old friend, the Ponte Vecchio (in English ‘Old Bridge’) the famous Firenze bridge; colourful, lined with little jewelry shops, and crowded as always. But more important to me was the bridge beyond that. Walking down the pathway along the river towards the bridges, I felt like I was coming back to…maybe not home, but some place very familiar and comforting. That place was so full of good memories from both my previous trips there and I was just filled with this complete feeling of happiness. I walked down that old familiar cobblestone pathway along the river till I came to my bridge. I guess I should actually call it Our bridge, it was me and my 3 best friends from high school’s favourite place in Firenze. We shared some great moments there during my first trip to Firenze (which was also my first trip to Europe), it was almost sad returning there without them. I sat there on the bridge for a little while then continued on my way across it to explore more of other side of the river. I know we had gone onto that side of the river during our last tour but only to see the one big museum thing at Piazza Pitti and not much else.

After wandering down some of the main streets on the far side of the river, some familiar, some new, I stopped for some lunch at a little trattoria. There was only an Asian family and a couple people at the bar in there so it was pretty quiet. I ordered some pasta, spaghetti Bolognese, which was pretty good and then, continued on my wander. Of course I came across Piazza Pitti, it’s hard to miss, it’s a pretty big piazza that olds one of the big art museums in Firenze, we did a tour of it last time and it lasted like a hundred hours so I figured I probably didn’t want to do that again, it was one of those museums that you could only exit after you had gone through the whole museum which was very long and multiple stories. It was a pretty cool building from the outside so I took a moment to look over it again but then continued on my walk, I was walking down a little side street off the piazza and funny enough I ran into one of the American girls from the night before. She was off to class but said we should hang out later if I had the time, I said sure, she had given me her fb info the night before and whatnot. Small city though eh, you’d think the chances of me seeing one of those 3 American girls again would be pretty slim, but there you have it.

I continued on my walk, aimlessly wandering around, going down random side streets here and there and I some how ended up at the one of the main university campuses. I had passed a couple of the other smaller campuses during my wander but they had been smaller and were blended pretty well into the city, this however was a big park area that led to a couple of massive campus buildings, one of being the main arts faculty building, the façade was under construction, of course. There really isn’t much past the university on that side of Firenze so I turned myself around and started wandering back towards the centre of the city, I stopped for some delicious pizza on the way. They really do make pizza the best in Italy, I don’t know why north America hasn’t figured it out yet. The real secret is the dough, most places use focaccia bread as the base of the pizza –best bread in the entire world– and the toppings are always so fresh, plus Italian cheese is amazing.

I wandered back to the river and this time walked across Ponte Vecchio and down the street beyond it back towards the city centre. I walked only 50ft down the street before I came across another very familiar site, the Queen Victoria restaurant. It had been one of the spots me and my besties had stopped at quite a few times on our trip there. The paninis there had been really good, but even better than those was the gelato, so of course I stopped there to get some gelato. It was delicious, I had eaten that much gelato in Rome so I was definitely going to be eating as much of it Firenze as possible, that is where gelato is originally from after all.

I wandered further into the city, passing the old market place where I had bought a very European scarf on my first trip there, I stopped for a few minutes to wander through it again but this time I just looked at the pretty scarves, jackets, purses, and funny little souvenir items. This trip isn’t a touristy trip, it’s more of a “me” trip and so I’m spending as little money as possible on trivial things like shopping/souvenirs. Material things mean less to me these days, I’m learning to remove my attachment to material things and live for the experiences, and food; good food is definitely an okay thing to spend my money on in Europe. Aha. I eventually found myself back at the Duomo, I considered going up the Duomo tower where you can see an amazing view of the city but it was still pretty cloudy and I had already been walking for hours so going up a few hundred stairs didn’t seem that appealing. Instead I headed over to the train station to buy my ticket to Bologna for the following day. Yeah, my trip was planned pretty last minute but in Italy you can do that, especially at this time of year since it’s definitely not peak tourist season.

 After that I just headed back to the hostel to rest my feet, I also still needed to book a hostel and whatnot for Bologna and figure out where I was going after Bologna, I was thinking about doing a little trip to Verona before heading to Milan to catch my train to Germany, which I also hadn’t booked tickets for at that point. You may be thinking I’m ridiculous for leaving all these things so last minute, well I wouldn’t have left the Bologna hostel so late except for the fact that I hadn’t been planning on staying in a hostel, I had made an account on CouchSurfing (CS) before leaving on my big trip and I had found someone who said they would most likely be able to host me in Bologna, unfortunately the night I arrived in Firenze they had sent me a msg saying they actually wouldn’t be able to host me so, I sent out an emergency CS msg but I hadn’t gotten any appealing offers by the time I had gotten back to the hostel on my second day in Firenze and decided it was just safer to book a hostel, unfortunately since it was so last minute there was really one 1 or 2 options for hostels, the cheapest one being some place called the tourist centre of Bologna or something like that, it didn’t really have much of a description but it was the cheapest so I booked it but only for 1 night because it was still kinda expensive.

I just chilled around the hostel after that, it was starting to rain again and it was getting colder since the sun had gone down, eventually the Aussies and everyone else started showing up again at the hostel, quite a few people had checked out that morning so we had some new people in the hostel, didn’t really meet any of them though besides a new Asian guy who was quite friendly and spoke pretty good English, all the other Asians seemed to kind of keep to themselves, not sure if they spoke much English or not. There were also 2 new Bangladesh guys who showed up later in the afternoon but soon disappeared and only reappeared later that night high as hell as kites and then disappeared into the living room area.

For some reason it was a quiet night in the hostel, no one really seemed to be around or doing anything, so it was just Nat, Mike, and I chilling around in the kitchen. We talked for along time, made dinner, drank some wine, and jammed to more random Aussie and North American music, at some point I remembered that I had a deck of cards with me so I pulled those out and we played cards for a long time. Eventually we all got kind of bored of cards, plus we were all starting to get pretty tipsy so concentrating was becoming more difficult, so we wandered out onto one of the balconies outside of the room Nat was staying in. It had turned into a clear night and you could actually see some stars which was so nice. While we were standing out there we could hear voices coming from the floor above, which was another hostel, and of course the voices were Aussie, you seriously run into them Everywhere in Europe. We stayed out there for a little while, Mike partially wanted to go out there so he could smoke although we weren’t really supposed to use the balcony for that. Ahwell. After that we all just crashed which was probably a good thing since I had to check out at 10am the next morning.

Nat and I both got up early Thursday morning, Nat because she wanted to get a bunch of sight-seeing done that day and me because I had to check out. We said bye to Mike and then to each other, she actually left a bit before I did. I got all my stuff packed up, handed in my key, and then headed out.   

Traveling On

Monday I took a little day trip by myself up to this little town about 45minutes outside of Rome called Tivoli. The train ride up there was beautiful even though it was a pretty cloudy day. I got there and had absolutely no idea what I was doing or where I was going since I had no map and all I knew about the city was that it was a pretty little down up on the hillside and the main attractions were big villas with gardens. I got off the train and followed people out of the station hoping they were heading towards the city, the station was kinda in the middle of in a weird area and I had no idea where to go, luckily the people I was following were headed for town, I had to cross a bridge thing to get to where the main part of town was, thank god for the other people or I may have never found that.

Tivoli was a cute little town on the hillside, I followed the signs towards the main villa, Villa D’Este, on my way there I came to a look out point that had a spectacular view of the city and countryside in the surrounding area. I walked around there for a while and then continued to follow the signs to the villa. Unfortunately when I got there it was closed. Apparently Monday is the one day of the week when it’s closed, damn. Why Monday? Why not Sunday? Whatever. So then I turned around and wandered back towards the city centre, there was a bunch of other signs around there for other attractions so I just started following them. I walked around the city of a long time, down little winding streets, up and down hills, on pathways down by the river, etc. Saw lots of interesting things, stopped eventually for some food and whatnot. There was another big villa/nature area I wanted to see but apparently it was closed too..until March. Finally around 4pm I headed back to the train station, when I got there I went to go buy a return ticket but the machine only accept cards and I didn’t have my visa with me. I was going to go to the ticket office but no one was there, it was tiny station and nothing there was open or working. So I decided to just give up and get on the train.

No one had checked our tickets on the way up there so I figured I’d probably be fine…and as always, because I didn’t have a ticket there was a guy on the bus checking tickets. Dammit. And I could have just told me him I hadn’t bought one but of course I didn’t do that. He came by and I pulled out my ticket from Rome to Tivoli he looked at me and said it was the wrong ticket so I pretended to search my bag looking for my ‘other ticket’ for a bit until I told him I couldn’t find it, unfortunately he was one of those white-haired, stern looking white dudes and didn’t have any sympathy at all, eventually I gave up fake-looking for my ticket, told him I had bought one but must have lost it… still nothing. So he sat down in the seat across from me, gave me that ‘it’s not my problem look’ and wrote me up a ticket. At that point I was thinking ‘ohshit’ there goes a my dinner money for the next two days, and then by some miracle he said “the charge is 7.50” and I repeated “7.50 euros?” He looked at me like I was stupid and just replied ‘si,’ and handed me the ticket. I was actually smiling/laughing on the inside. A penalty of 7.50 euros was definitely not something I was going to complain about, I paid it up and he left. Well that could have been a disaster but actually didn’t turn out too bad. I wish penalties in Canada were like that. 

Anyways, I got back to the hostel and was just chilling in the common room waiting for the boys to show up, they had gone to the Vatican together for the day. There was a couple other people in the common room with me but it was pretty silent in there until the boys showed up, they came in and we were just chilling around when a small Asian looking girl –Jess– sitting in the corner started talking to us. She was another Aussie, surprise surprise, seriously they are everywhere! But she had just finished studying for a semester in Copenhagen and was now traveling for a few months around Europe and North America, she actually studied for a couple semesters at Queen’s University in Ontario too which was crazy! She was very bubbly and a little overly happy to meet some other Aussies and Kiwis, apparently it’s been awhile since she’s heard their accents. She was a little crazy aha but in the best of ways, she was constantly recording things the Aussies and Kiwis were saying just because their accents thoroughly entertained her. Yeah, was kinda odd. We all hung out in the common room until 8ish when the free pasta thing was going on at the bar downstairs and headed down for some dinner. Jess and I had some red wine with dinner while all the boys had beer, the wine wasn’t great but seemed to get jess pretty buzzing aha. Lightweighttt. Then we headed to the super market to get some drinks and munchies for the night and headed back to the common room, man we spent a lot of timing hanging out in there. We hung around drinking in there for a while until Jess said she wanted to go for a walk and see the city at night, we had nothing else better to do so off we went, 2 bottles of wine and 3 beers in hand/pockets aha. Luckily Europe has no rules about drinking in public.

We wandered around and eventually ended up at the Trevi Fountain, it’s definitely one of my favourite places in Rome to go to at night. We sat there for a long time, sometimes talking, sometimes all off on our own contemplating life, drinking wine/beer aha. PerrySound was acting kinda weird all night, not too sure what was up with him, maybe he was tired or a bit too drunk, I don’t know but he was acting strange, at the fountain he was staring off into the distance for awhile with his music in his ears, then he was hitting on any girl he saw within like 30ft, and then when we were walking home he was pulling shit off trees and still hitting on all the females he saw. Very odd, we got back by the hostel and decided to stop at our pizza place again before crashing at the hostel. Delicious pizza as always. We got back to the hostel, made plans with the Kiwis and Jess to hanging out in the following morning/early afternoon since I was leaving later that afternoon for Florence. As soon as we got back to the room PerrySound just passed out on his bed, still in his clothes and within 5 minutes was snoring ridiculously loud. I felt bad for the girl sleeping above him, his snoring woke her up and both her and I were trying to wake him up by calling his name and nudging him. Ohman. Eventually we all got to sleep.

Tuesday morning I had to check out by 10am but that just meant I had to give in my key and get my stuff out of the room, I put my stuff into the baggage storage at the hostel and went out for some breakfast. Decided to go to the breakfast buffet at the restaurant downstairs because I was feeling pretty lazy and all you can eat breakfast plus a coffee for 3 euros is a pretty sweet deal. Then I just went back to the hostel to use the common room’s internet while I waited for the Kiwis and Jess to show up. Eventually we all met up, only one of the Kiwi bros came with but that was alright. We went for a walk around the city, we actually saw a fair bit of the city since we had about 4 hours before I needed to be back at the hostel to get my stuff. It was a great walk, got to spend some good quality time with the Kiwi and Jess before having to say goodbye. At last though, it was time to say goodbye, I got all my stuff and headed for the train station, luckily my train was leaving from the train station just down the street from our hostel instead of the other one, which was about 25mins away. No problems on this train thank god aha. 

A couple hours later I arrived in Florence aka Firenze, it was getting dark and was lightly raining, not so fun. I didn’t really know where I was so I just asked some random person where the Duomo was and headed in that direction. Luckily my hostel was only about a 3min walk from the Duomo so it was pretty easy to find. I walked into the piazza where the Duomo stood and was amazed once again by it’s beautiful exterior. At the same time, it was almost like seeing an old friend again, such a familiar sight full of happy memories. It was kinda strange though, the first time I had been Florence I had been with my best friends from high school, the second I had been with a group of high school people I was kinda friends with, but this time I was returning solo.

The hostel was on the 2^nd floor, well the 2^nd European floor, which is actually the 3^rd floor. When I got there a very cheery guy let me in, he was speaking Italian but he didn’t look that Italian, although by now I have realized it’s much harder figuring out who’s Italian than I originally thought. He had thinning auburn coloured hair, a mustache and a very big grin, he name was Yuri –I’m still not sure what kind of name that is– he got me all sorted, I put my stuff down in room and then ran into Mike the Aussie on my way towards the kitchen. A few minutes later Nat the Aussie girl showed up too aha was like a little Rome reunion. Small world eh.

The hostel was pretty small, probably could only hold about 15-20 people at max and all the rooms had doors but they all connected and during the day they were all open so it was pretty much like living in one big flat all together aha. That could be a little sketchy for the whole privacy/safety perspective of your stuff but honestly we got to know all the people in the hostel pretty quickly and none of us were too worried about it. When I was out during the day I did have a lock on the main part of my backpack and that was probably more than I needed. Safety first of course but really, it was a super chill place.

We hung around in the hostel for a while just talking and getting to know the other people there, then headed over to the super market to get some food and whatnot. One of the other guys –Chris– at the hostel, who was also Aussie, told us that the super markets in Florence were like a maze challenged us to find tomato sauce and cat food when we went. Aha new super market game? I think so. We got there and it looked like a pretty small market, then we realized what the Aussie guy meant, it really was like a maze with a series of small connecting rooms and it didn’t seem to be organized in any particular order either. We wandered around there for a while and eventually found everything we needed, Nat bought some box wine, I still don’t understand why. We headed back to the hostel kitchen and began making dinner and cracking open the drinks.

At first it was only the 2 Aussies and I in the kitchen but not long after we started drinking in there, we were joined by a young Aussie couple, Chris the other Aussie, and a Romanian guy. We all sat around there talking and drinking eventually all started getting pretty tipsy and decided it was about time to go out. The Aussie couple decided to stay back at the hostel so it was just the three Aussies, the Romanian and I going out to wander the streets. We didn’t really know where we were going when we left the hostel but Chris the Aussie had heard about a bar near by so we were heading in that general direction. We eventually found the bar on a little side street not too far from the Duomo, the minute we walked in we knew it was a tourist bar mostly full of Americans and other Europeans but whatever, the drinks were pretty cheap and it seemed like a pretty buzzing place, so we got our drinks and then headed upstairs to find somewhere to sit since the downstairs was pretty crowded.

Upstairs there were a couple tables by the top of the stairs and then there was a skinny room with a door at each end, one by the staircase and one by the balcony for smokers and whatnot. We went in sat in there and had the room all to ourselves which was pretty sweet. Two or three cocktails later we were all pretty drunk and jamming to random Aussie music, I went downstairs to find the washroom and ended up talking to a group of American girls who had just arrived a few days before and were studying in Florence for the semester. They came upstairs to chill with us and we stayed up there talking and jamming until they kicked us downstairs so they could close up the top floor of the bar.

We went and found a table downstairs, by then it was around 1:30am so the bar was pretty empty, it was a Tuesday night after all. Chris the Aussie headed back to the hostel because he was leaving early in the morning but the rest of us and the American girls hung around awhile longer, eventually around 2am the bar guys wanted to close up so we left, we were considering going to another bar or something but it was Tuesday and it was freezing/windy outside so we just headed back to the hostel. Back at the hostel there may have been some silly drunk shenanigans. 

La Dolce Vita in Roma

Saturday morning I decided was a good time to go see the Vatican so I headed over to the bus station to try and figure out how to get there. There's 2 buses that run the Vatican route so I found the closest one and bought a ticket from one of the machines at the stop, then realizing that the metro and bus tickets are the same tickets... hmm interesting. I got onto the bus but had no idea what to do with it, I later learned you're suppose to pop it into this machine thingy, however I didn't and so I had a pass kicking around for the next time I wanted to take the metro, sweet. When I got on the bus I heard a bunch of english speakers which almost kinda surprised me, there was a group of 3 American guys who were all studying in Rome for the year and then 2 american girls from Massachusetts who were just traveling through. I talked to them for a bit but then they all got off at a stop near the university and I stayed on.

I got off just before the Vittorio Emmanuelle bridge, it was right next to the bridge of Angels which leads to the Castello de los Angeles, the big circular building in Angels & Demons, took some pictures and then crossed the bridge heading for the Vatican. Got to the Vatican, took some pics, wandered around the square for awhile but since I wasn't doing the tour there wasn't too much to see/do. I saw a sign pointing towards the villa with the the famous frescos of Raphael and followed it. I walked down some side streets and eventually ended up at the main street that ran along the river and followed that for awhile, I was kinda interested in seeing the villa but mostly I was looking for the Trastevere neighbourhood which was in the same direction. Eventually I found the villa, I wandered around the grounds, there was quite little gardens and the buildings were pretty but I didn't want to pay to go in so I continued my wander towards Trastevere. It was early afternoon by that point and I was pretty hungry so I stopped in this little pizzeria to get some lunch. It was cute and not too expensive and the pizza was So good. The guy who owned the place a nice bald italian man, looked like he was in his early 40s or so, was friendly but kinda quiet. When I went in there was only 1 other couple in there and eventually they left so it was only me and the owner. He disappeared into the back room for awhile so I had some peace and quiet for a bit. As I was getting ready to go he reappeared from the back room holding a map of Rome. I was pretty confused at first, he was speaking italian and at first I thought he was asking me if I had a map or something, when he realized I didn't really understand he spoke a bit slower and I realized that he was asking me if i Wanted the map, ohhhhh. Well chyea! He said someone had left it there the day before and asked me if I wanted it since he had no use for it. It was super sweet of him and it was a really good map! One of those super big road-map type ones, double-sided and super detailed. I thanked him a couple times and continued my walking journey. Eventually I found the main centre of Trastevere, I wandered through the cute little streets for awhile, eventually running into all the main little piazzas and fountains and things. I stopped at a cute little cafe to get a cappuccino, sat in front of a fountain for awhile, etc etc. I wandered there for a couple hours more and then wandered back towards the centre of the neighbourhood to find some pasta. Went to this fancy little restaurant, so italian omg. It was old and wooden on the inside, all the decór was green and red, little candles on the tables, little twinkling lights hanging from the ceiling, random little paintings and metal work objects hanging on the walls, etc. Got some really good spaghetti bolognese and a glass of red wine. So delicious I can't even tell you. It was a little expensive but I didn't really mind to be honest. 

After that I figured I should start heading back towards the hostel so I wandered back to the main street that ran along the river and began following in back towards the Vatican. After a couple blocks I realized that all the bridges had staircases leading down to the river where there was pathways, so kool!  I crossed the river since I was going to end up on that side anyways and headed down the stairs. The stairs smelled kinda like urine and the bottom 7 or 8 were kinda covered in dirt/mud, hmm. I got the bottom and started walking down the path, it was kinda uneven cobblestones and was covered in leaves/branches.. maybe going down there wasn't the best idea.. things got even sketchier when I approached in the next bridge and found 2 hobos and a random assortment of boxes/beds/tents underneath the bridge, they were standing by one of the tents talking in italian, I quietly walked as fast as I could as far away as I could behind them and scurried past them further down the river bank, after that I looked across the river and realized that on the other side there was a paved bike path and a smoothed out cobblestone walking path which looked a little nicer and safer so I walked to the next bridge, went up the stairs, crossed over to the other side of the bridge and then went back down to the river bank. Before crossing over tho, I stopped along the sketchy river bank side where there was a bunch of graffiti and decided to leave my own, I had a sharpie in my bag so I pulled that out and wrote my initials w/ Canada and the date. Now there's a piece of me on the Tiber river too. 

Anyways, I continued my stroll along the Tiber river, it was so peaceful. I'm going to get a little more personal now, because that walk along the Tiber river and everything leading up to that point has had such an impact on my life. When I started my journey I honestly wasn't too sure how well I was going to handle the whole 'being alone' thing. I've never been very good at being alone, 90% of the time I am or want to be around people, of course there's that 10% of the time where I get fed up with life and just want to be alone but that's a whole different thing. I just didn't really know if I knew how to be alone. Being in Rome alone was definitely a new experience for me, the first couple days were kind of strange, I wasn't really sure if I liked being alone, I don't think I've ever been so quiet in my entire life. But by that 3rd day, I was growing an appreciation for quietness, I was listening to the sounds of the city and people around me, I was beginning to find inner quiet and loosing the need to talk or have human contact. I was realizing that I now had the luxury to reach out to other people if I wanted to but I could also just as easily keep to myself and be content. The whole eating along thing used to make me feel kind of weird and insecure but I have since moved past that as well. I continued to walk along the Tiber, just admiring the seagulls flying around, the runners and bikers who passed by me, the flow of the river. I've never been in such complete and peaceful silence, down there by the river all the city noise was gone and there was nothing but the quiet sounds of nature around me. Definitely one of the best experiences I've had since being here in Europe. 

Eventually I came to the bridge I needed to cross to get back into the city so I said goodbye to the river and headed up the stairs into the city world. I wandered down one of the big main roads of Rome heading back towards the city centre, after about a half an hour of walking I came across a small caffé so I stopped to rest my feet and grabbed a cappuccino. It was a cute little place, only about 5 tables, the décor was all light blue and white colour schemed. I sat in a little corner table drinking my cappuccino and flipping through an italian newspaper that someone had left there. Was definitely one of those 'omg my life is so italian' moments aha. I sat in there for awhile and people watched, there was 2 italian woman at the table to my right gossiping, 2 french men at the table diagonal from me writing postcards and things, a teenage girl right behind me just chilling around and texting and then a blond couple in the far corner by the door sharing some desserts. It was a quiet little place, the guy running it was a nice older italian man, balding with round glasses and big round belly, so adorable. Eventually, I made myself get up and continued on my walk, somehow I ended up at the Pantheon. Last time I was in Rome I only saw it from the outside since we found it at night, it's fairly pretty on the inside, very..religious, the only real reason I really wanted to go in was to see the oculus and to sit down for a bit to be honest. Every 10 minutes or so there was an announcement asking everyone to be silent since it was a holy place...yeah. 

I sat in there for a while to rest my feet and then began to venture back into the city. I stumbled upon the column of Trajan, which just happened to be on the side of one of the main roads, super convenient! I wandered up the main road and eventually hit Piazza Venezia and wandered up into another main plaza where I discovered there was a movie theatre. So I just walked in and bought a ticket for Cloud Atlas, why not eh? I was supposed to be meeting up with another couchsurfer guy that evening but we hadn't really set a time and whatever. I messaged him saying I was watching a movie that evening so we made a rough time to meet up and he told me to just message him when they movie was over. Unfortunately while watching the movie my phone battery started to die, on top of that, my internet/phone service since being abroad has been pretty sketchy (not to mention kind of expensive) and didn’t seem to really be working either.

I really liked the movie Cloud Atlas, it was very different, fairly intricate and interesting. There were some parts I didn’t really understand, mostly due to the fact that I was watching it in Italian but I will definitely watch it in English one of these days and probably enjoy it even more. After the movie I tried messaging the couchsurfer guy but my phone was almost dead and my service was just failing. I felt so bad, I went around looking for somewhere to plug in my phone but finding an outlet in Italy is nearly impossible I swear. I went into restaurants and coffee shops, the metro, this little mall area thing, couldn’t find one to save my life! Eventually I just gave up and went to find some dinner because I was starving. Came across this restaurant one of the side roads near the Colosseum and stopped in there for some pasta, it was pretty good lasagna. The only problem with Rome is that it’s kind of expensive and they’re always trying to charge you for extra shit. I ordered water but of course they gave me a bottle and charged me like 2 euros for it and then asked if I also wanted bread which I said no to because I knew they would have charged me for that too. Such Bullshit. Anyways, got out of there as soon as I could, the guys working there were a little sketch too, and then wandered down the street till I came across a gelato shop. YUM. After that I happily wandered back towards the metro line outside of the Colosseum and got myself back to the hostel. I wasn’t really planning on doing much with my night but when I got back to the hostel and walked into the common room there was a ton of people hanging around drinking. The two Kiwi boys I had met earlier were chilling in there with a couple bottles of wine along with a blond guy and bunch of other randoms. I went in and joined them, didn’t have anything to drink though but they offered me some of their wine since they had a few bottles kicking around. The blond guy as it turns out is from Perry Sound, Ontario, like what are the odds, one of the few Canadians I’ve met traveling and he’s another Ontarian. A few minutes later we were joined by a blond Aussie, it was quite the party. There was a bunch of other people in the room as well, many of whom we soon got to know.

A few minutes after sitting around with the boys we noticed these 3 Russian guys sitting on one of the couches near us, one of them was very, Very drunk.

That soon became the entertainment of our night. We were all hanging around drinking and this crazy drunk Russian guy started wandering around the room talking to us. He had long hair tied up in a ponytail, was wearing a suit, and had the funniest drunk grin on his face. He had a pretty think accent but could speak English good enough, although he kept trying to convince us he was American because he’s been living there for 2.5 years and he has a gf there. Yeah..definitely not very American. He kept saying things like ‘you’re a funny guy’ to one of the kiwi bros who was talking to him, sometimes the kiwi was pulling the Russians chain but sometimes he was being serious and the Russian still thought he was making fun of him, ohman, he also called us things like ‘my dear friends’ and ‘mademoiselle’. He was hilariously drunk, he then told us that Russians weren’t funny but he had one VERY funny joke..I don’t really remember what the joke was, but no one really thought it was funny or even understood it..awkward ahaha. He then told us one of the Russian guys was playing a gig with his guitar just 2 minutes from the hostel, apparently his friend ‘is ze best rock music guitar you ever hear’ at first we thought it was an actual gig somewhere, and then we realized his friend was going to be playing on the street 2 minutes away from the hostel ahaha. Eventually the whole room was buzzing with crazy conversations and at some point on of the Russians was going around with a video camera, we later watched the video, so funny, felt kind of bad for some of the people who were in the common room just trying to use the internet in peace.

Eventually the 2 other Russian guys got pretty annoyed with the really drunk one and left to go for a smoke. We were trying to convince him to go join his friends but he wasn’t having it, he also kept asking us for some of our alcohol but we wouldn’t give any to him since he was already too drunk. The funniest/worst part of this situation was that he had to get up at like 6am for a flight back to the USA ahaha. Eventually he calmed down and just sat in his chair in silence, eyes mostly closed and that hilarious drunk grin on his face, then all of a sudden he said he would ‘be right back’ and disappeared. A moment later we realized he had taken off with the Aussies sweater because he had been sitting on top of it and after he left it was no longer on the chair. One of the kiwi bros went after to him to retrieve the jacket, eventually he found him half passed out on the stairwell, when he tried to take the sweater back the Russian began arguing and was determined that the sweater was his, luckily one of his Russian friends was there too and helped to convince him to give the sweater back. After that the 2 Russian guys dragged him to bed –he also happened to be sleeping in my hostel room aha– what a guy. 

We were all getting pretty loud so the front desk guy asked us to either quiet down or leave, by then we were about ready to head out anyways so finished our drinks and headed out in a pretty big group. There were the 2 Kiwi boys, the Canadian guy, Aussie guy and girl, 3 guys who were Chilean/Argentinean, and I. We headed out not too sure where we were going, some of us wanted to hit a bar, some wanted to find more a club type thing, the crazy front desk dude Mario told us to go to this place called the Statue, it was kinda far, some of the South American guys wanted to go but the rest of us weren’t really on board so we just ended up wandering down one of the main roads and came across an British bar where a dude was playing some live music which was awesome! He was playing Wish You Were Here when we walked in, unfortunately that was his last time, fail timing on our part. It was pretty crowded in there so we chilled around the bar for a bit but eventually a big group from the back left so we went and grabbed their tables. We sat back there drinking and talking until the workers kicked us out because they were closing, we were kinda surprised since it was only like 2:30 on a Saturday night but whatever.

So we all left the bar, some people wanted to go to another bar/club, the rest of us just wanted to head back to the hostel so the group split up into 2 groups. The Aussie girl Nat wanted some food and there was a McD’s right up the street from the bar so we stopped in there for her but when we got there they said they had already stopped serving food. Who knew that McD’s actually closed? Only in Europe I guess. The woman said that the McD’s by the train station was still open tho. So we wandered over that way, unfortunately Nat was the only one who claimed to know where that McD’s was and her direction led us to the opposite side of the train station from where the McD’s was –fail– at that point we just gave up on that but then discovered a pizza place just across from the side of the train station we were on so we went into there. That place definitely had some of the best pizza I’ve had in Europe so far. After some very satisfying pizza we all headed back to the hostel and crashed.

Sunday I decided to have a bit more of a chill day, I had done quite a lot of walking the day before so my feet were still a bit sore. I wandered my way down to the Spanish steps which were just as big as I remembered them, I actually got there by following a path which brought me to the street above them which kind of surprised, so instead of having to climb up them, I walked down them instead to the main street. On my way down I could all this annoying dog barking –yapping– and as I got closer to the bottom I discovered a big group of people chilling there in a big group with their dogs, mostly all wiener dogs and all of them wearing some version of ugly dog sweaters. I don’t know what the hell that was all about but it was pretty weird and funny to see. From the steps I continued down the main road until I got to Piazza Popolo. I sat around there for a while, admiring the sites and fending off the guys walking around trying to sell roses. I didn’t really have any more plans for the rest of the day so I just slowly made my way back to hostel.

I hadn’t had anything besides some cereal and cappuccino in the morning so I was pretty hungry by the time I got back to the hostel and went looking for food. I was wandering down one of the streets near the hostel when an iranian guy outside a pizzeria started talking to me, he asked me where I was going and I said I was looking for some food so he bustled me into the pizzeria, but before letting me order he made me sit down at one of the tables with him and started asking me questions like where was I from, what I was doing in Rome, if I was traveling alone etc. And then asked me what I was doing at that night because he got off work at like 6pm, I told him I was going back to my hostel and had to skype my parents and do whatever, he then asked me what I was doing at 10pm and I told him I had plans with some of the people in the hostel, he kept telling me I should come back and meet up with him later that night, eventually I just said I’ll see and asked him why he was being so persistent, it’s not like I even knew the guy. He just said he found me attractive and wanted to see more of me etc. I told him I was leaving the following day, which I was wasn’t, but eventually just said I’d see what was going on later. Finally, he left me alone and let me go order some food, he told the guy to give me a discount too which was kinda awesome, so I ordered the food and then while I was waiting for it he got me to come outside the pizzeria with him to talk, I was pretty hesitant at first but it’s not like he was going to leave me alone. we stood outside the pizzeria, he told me got off work at 10pm, he gave me a business card with his phone number on it and told me to come meet him there at 10pm or call or text him if plans changed. I was like sure… then disappeared back inside to get my food and pretty much ran back to the hostel. Of course I didn’t go back or text or call the guy, he was probably almost twice my age. The pizza from that shop was really good though.

The rest of the afternoon was kind of rainy so I just chilled at the hostel uploading pictures, catching up with friends, sending emails, etc etc. Later in the afternoon all the boys showed up and we all chilled around in the common room. It was one of those lazy kind of days, eventually we walked over to the supermarket close by the hostel and got some alcohol and snacks. A few of the other hostel people we knew showed up in the common room and some new ones as well so it was a good time. At the hostel they have special deals with the bar downstairs, one of them being ‘free pasta’ from 8pm-9pm every day which means you have to buy a 3 euro beer or class of wine and then get to a free plate of pasta. Whatever, we were tired and lazy so we went down for some pasta, it was decent, they had 2 different kinds and it was self-serve that night since there wasn’t that many people. Usually they ration it and serve it to you or something. After we just went back and were drinking in the hostel with peoples, eventually the dude working at the front desk got mad at us for being too loud and whatever and eventually asked us to be leave or be quiet, it was only like 11pm or something.

We were trying to decide what to do when Mike the Aussie piped in that he was in his room all by himself, and it was a room with 6 beds which he was planning on pushing all together that night when he slept so went up there and had 5 of the 6 the beds pushed together and were chilling up there drinking. All of a sudden there was a knock on the door, we just kinda sat there, a second later there was a key in the door and the dude from the front desk walked in followed by a tall brunette girl. Ah shit. He saw the beds and kinda flipped his shit. He was from Bangladesh –there were a lot of Bangladesh workers in the hostel/Rome in general– and didn’t speak great English so he was trying to convey that he was working on his own and that if more people wanted that room there would be a big problem and kept saying we weren’t sleeping in that room so we should leave because it causes him a problem and whatnot. The poor girl was kinda just like wtf is going on? Eventually we assured him we would leave and Mike assured him he would fix and whatever to get him to leave. The girl was Spanish from Sevilla, which was pretty kool, I talked to her for a bit in Spanish while the boys drank some more beer but she said she was tired and wanted to go to sleep so we had to relocate again.

We took and drinks and went wandering around the neighbourhood eventually ending up at the same pizza place we had been the night before, seriously best drunk food place ever. We chilled there for a while, one of the Kiwi bros kept spilling his box wine (yes he was drinking box wine in Italy, and it was Awful shit) so we figured it was time to leave. We headed back to the hostel and were ¾ of the back to the rooms when we just heard this ‘smash’ sound of a glass bottle breaking, uh oh. We turn around and Mike had dropped his half full bottle of wine on the stairwell platform thing between the 2^nd and 3^rd floor. There was wine everywhere, it was running down the stairs and dripping off the platform onto the platform below, ohmygoodgod. So. Much Wine. The stairwell stunk of wine for a while after that too. At the time though all of us were just killing ourselves laughing and Mike was looking around dumbfounded trying to figure out what to do. We grabbed like 3 rolls of toilet paper and the garbage can from the 3^rd floor bathroom and helped Mike clean it up aha what a mess though. 

What a weekend, ohman! 

Ciao, Roma!

I arrived in Roma around 8pm, the directions to the hostel told me if I landed in the 3rd terminal of the airport I should just taxi it over since it wasn't that close to the bus or train stations that were by the other terminals. Yeah, bad idea, I should had just walked over to the bus station, pretty sure it wasn't that far from my terminal, but ohwell, the taxi ended up costing 50 euro. OUCH. But hopefully that'll be one of the biggest expenses on my trip, well that and my 5 day hostel here in Rome which costed around 60 euro. 

 Anywho, got to the hotel, attempted to speak italian but was honestly too tired and just defaulted to english, luckily the dude at the front desk spoke good english. Front desk dude's name is Mario, he's an awesome dude with an Afro and a hilariously italian accent. He kinda looks like the dude from LMFAO when he wears sunglasses. He was super nice and energetic, definitely an entertaining character. He asked me what my plan was for the night, I just said food. I was starving since I hadn't eaten anything since lunch time and it was now around 9pm or so. He directed my downstairs to a restaurant/bar that is literally right next to the hostel, of course the hostel and the restaurant work together so they give all hostel residents a 2 euro discount on food which was nice. The food was pretty good, got my first italian pasta, carbonara, yummm. After I had dinner I was trying to decide whether I wanted to go out or just go to bed, well the night was young so I figured I'd take a walk around the area at least. On my way out of the restaurant I asked one of the guys who worked there which way I should go for my walk, he asked me what I was looking for, I just said I didn't know. He suggested going to a bar if I felt like getting a drink or just having a chiller night and that there was 2 near by that were pretty decent. So I said sure and asked him how to get there, he tried to explain but in the end just said that if I wanted to wait 5 minutes he'd show me where they were. Well why not? So I waited around with him, in the meantime while we were waiting for his friend to show up, we had some shots, it was some kind of italian liquor..honestly not too sure what it was but it was pretty strong and kinda cinnamon-y tasting. 

At first I wasn't sure if I should go with him since he said he would drive me over to the bars, getting in a car with a strange european guy? Well, he seemed like a kool guy so I went for it. Turns out he's an Albanian boxer, or was, he came over to Italy trying to get into the professional sport here, never made it, but has been in Rome every since. We got to the area with the 2 bars, both were pretty empty, it was only 10ish after all, so he drove me back to the hostel and went back to work, I but on an extra layer since it was kinda cool out and went out for a little walk. I ended up back at one of the bars, by then there was a few more people there so I decided to go in and a get some wine. Got a good class of pino grigio and sat at one of the high tables near the bar. There was a few other full tables of people around and a bunch more people standing outside, I wasn't feeling overly social so I just sat and sipped my wine for awhile and watched the bizarre italian music videos playing on the tv in the corner. 

All of a sudden there was a guy and girl at the bar having a pretty loud conversation, both seemed to be pretty tipsy and they were conversing in a mixture of italian and spanish which is what actually caught my attention. They were moving around a lot and kinda ended up over by my table, I somehow got integrated into the conversation and then was pulled into doing a round of shots with them, and then another round, and then the guy disappeared to I started talking to the girl -Milly- for awhile. She's from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, hence all the spanish speaking. She was obviously fluent but told me that it wasn't actually her first language, she speaks some kind of island dialect natively, and then Spanish, and a bit of tagalo -she's half Philippino- and was now fluent in Italian as well, and was beginning to learn english. A girl after my own heart, language nerds ftw. She was a hyper kind of girl, very jumpy and loud aha I liked her, definitely very entertaining and quite intelligent as well. We conversed for awhile in spanish, occasionally switching into english and italian. She had a similar story to the Albanian, she came over to Rome after she finished school 4 years ago and just never left. She'd been working at the bar for about 2.5 years now but is now thinking about moving to England to learn english. The guy returned and a russian couple showed up who she apparently knew, lots of jumping and hugging and loudness ensued. We then had a round of shots of something called Felicidad, it was bright blue and was lit on fire, it tasted decent too. By this point was starting to feel a little tipsy, and a round of tequila shots followed, by then I was drunk enough to say, 'por qué no?!' Ohman. Then a group of italian girls showed up, one had a dog, so random, and they all seemed to be friends with Milly, again lots of enthusiastic italian greetings and conversations. 

I stayed there for awhile, talked to lots of random people, and around 3am decided it was time to wander back to the hostel. Luckily it was a pretty straight forward route home, thank god, I'm not sure how well I would have been able to somewhat drunkenly navigate my way around if it was more complicated. 

Friday morning I got up around 10:30am and headed for the Colosseum. I was wandering through the streets, map in hand, and of course it started to rain, it was just a light rain luckily. I wound through the streets, and realized that there was a couple of American girls walking behind me, seemingly going in the same direction. At one point I stopped to check the street names and the two girls passed me, then it back the weird situation where I felt like I was following them. Eventually we all stopped at the same corner waiting for the light, I looked to the left and realized the Colosseum was right there and without meaning to said out loud "oh, there's the Colosseum." The two girls looked at me and then saw it too, they seemed pretty ecstatic to have found the Colosseum and another english speaker. We started talking and wandered down to the Colosseum together, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do the whole Roman Forum/Colosseum tour again but decided it might be kinda kool, last time I was there was with DHS and the tour guide, I honestly rather site see on my own, so all 3 of us went touring around together. There was some sunshine for a bit while we wandered through the forum, then some sporadic bouts of rain but over all it was a decent day, I really enjoyed seeing the forum again, we wandered up to some gardens and the house of agusto and things I hadn't seen the last time I was there which was really kool too. After that we headed for the Colosseum. We got the Colosseum and since we had entrance tickets for the forum and Colosseum, we didn't have to wait in the line. 

Unfortunately, one of the American girls couldn't find her ticket.. Me and the other girl had started heading into the Colosseum when we realized she wasn't with us so we turned around and found her back at the entrance desperately searching for her ticket. Finally she just gave up and was gunna go guy another one but I told her not to bother and just gave her mine. I've already done the whole Colosseum tour so it didn't mean that much to me, plus waiting in the ticket line up would have been such a pain and the Colosseum was only open for another hour or so. We agreed to just meet back at the entrance in 30-45mins, I was starving anyways so I went to go find some lunch. I found a little restaurant on one of the small streets not too far from the Colosseum, it was a cute little place, a little more on the expensive side but it's Rome and sometimes you gotta pay for good quality food. I got some 4 formaggi gnocchi and a cappuccino, so goood. 

About 40 minutes later I went back to Colosseum and walked over to the entrance, by then it was closed since the Colosseum was closing in about half an hour and I realized there was multiple exits, ah shit. I waited around there for about 20-25 minutes, it then started to rain again so I just gave up on waiting and headed back to the hostel. And that was the end of my journey with the 2 American girls. 

I went back to the hostel and took a short nap, I was kinda feeling under the weather, mostly from lack of sleep and the rain I think. Although I did seem to pick up a bit of a cold when I was in Barcelona. When I got into the hostel rooms there was 2 ginger brothers hanging out in there. One was kinda unpacking (K) and the other was half passed out on the bed T), I started talking to K for a bit, turns out they were traveling through Europe together because K was starting school the following week in Copenhagen for a year of exchange and his bro had just finished high school they were traveling around together in Europe before K started school. Talked to K for awhile and then I passed out from about 6pm-9pm. Had to get up at 9pm because I was meeting a local italian from couchsurfing at the Colosseum at 10pm. As usual I was running a little late but luckily my whatsapp/internet was still kinda working on my phone so I could msg V and tell him I was gunna be a bit late. We met up just outside of the Colosseo metro stop. V was a kool italian guy, in his late 20's, originally from a small town in the south but had moved to Rome to pursue a career in journalism. He actually does work in for a fairly popular paper in Rome which was pretty impressive. We took me on a little night walking tour of Rome, starting at the Colosseum, then down the Imperial street where there's ruins of an old market and other random buildings,  across to the Vittorio Emmanuelle II building, up to the top of the steps to see a nice view of the city, over to this little side street that over looked the forum which was beautiful, then down some little side streets, we passed a few churches and eventually ended up at the Trevi Fountain. I love Rome at night. There's something so beautiful and enchanting about, especially at this time of year when it's not overly busy with tourists and whatnot. 

We sat by the fountain for awhile and then he had to leave to go meet friends. So I sat by the fountain awhile longer by myself, through some coins into the fountain and then began just aimlessly wandering around the area. Eventually I was pretty lost but about midnight I figured I should probably start finding my way back so I wound my way back to the fountain and started heading for home. When we originally went to the fountain we took a bunch of back streets to I didn't exactly know how to get back to the main streets so I kind of just followed my instincts and headed roughly in the direction we had come from. Eventually I hit a main street but I still didn't really know where I was, everything looks for different at night. I wandered down the main street till I found a little pizza place, went in and grabbed a drink and then asked the pizza guy where the Colosseum was. He told me to go through this big lit up tunnel that was right by the shop and then go left. I was kinda uncertain since the tunnel seemed like it was the opposite direction from where I thought I was going but I tried it out anyway. I walked through the tunnel and got to the other side, took a left and still had no idea where I was, so I turned around, went back through the tunnel and eventually found a main street that I could find on the shitty map the hostel had given me. I made my way back to the Colosseum and was going to just metro it back to train station which was literally 3 minutes from my hostel but all I had was a 20 euro bill and the stopped machine kept rejecting it. Eventually I just gave up, there was group of italians coming through, I asked a couple if they had change for a 20 because the machine wouldn't take mine but that was fruitless, I then considered just hoping the subway thing but decided that I probably shouldn't since getting arrested or fined in Italy probably wouldn't be the smartest idea. So, I just gave up on the metro idea and started walking home. Luckily I knew where I was going since I had walked all the way to the Colosseum earlier that day, it was a pretty straight forward route. Along the way I stopped to get some pizza, it was Delicious. They really do make the best pizza here in Italy. North Americans just can't compare. I'm seriously going to miss it when I leave. 

Eventually I got back to the hotel, was exhausted, the bar/restaurant beside the hostel is apparently also a small club on weekends. The Albanian guy was standing outside and asked me if I wanted to come in, I said I was gunna go drop my stuff off and might come back down after. I never made it back down. I was so tired by the time I got up to my room, I got ready for bed, went down to the common room to check email/facebook for a bit and then went to bed. Was so tired after all the walking.