Month: August 2005

Italy: Days Two & Three

Jul. 21, 2005

Thanks to having Internet Access at our Hotel in Rome, I wrote a detailed (well, sort of) post about the trip to the Vatican here. I already posted a photo of judiang and me at the Vatican in this post. However, I forgot to mention that we saw a “gypsy marching band” perform that evening in the streets near the Pantheon. Knowing nought about gypsy bands, however, I reserve judgment. They were lively and fun, however, and that’s all that matters with a marching band. (Oh, and don’t go picturing trombones & stuff – strictly percussion.)

Jul. 22, 2005

I only had 9 minutes, however, to write about our day exploring the Roman ruins and Colosseum. And there is very little in my hand-written journal about the day, so I’ll see if I can expand upon the day some.

Our main goal of the day was to see the Forum and the Colosseum. We stopped at a cafe for lunch where I had a small sandwich and some of Judi’s Gatorade. People at our table felt so guilty that the sandwich was small they kept giving me more food. I certainly won’t complain about that! Gosh, I’m trying to remember what the gelato of the day was. I know I had some after supper, but was there afternoon stuff? I seem to recall a gelato shake made of chocolate ice cream – I’ll bet that was it.

Rather than going off to St. John Lateran and another basilica, Judi and I headed back to the hotel with a few others. I did some shopping while Judi napped (or did I do that the day before?) Anyhoo, at some point either Thursday or Friday, I bought a cute little wooden clock that was shaped & painted like a kitty cat. I also got a wine cork for mom & dad with the same kitty design. Only €17 for it all. Oh, with regards to the cat, the tail is the pendulum of the clock. (Like my plastic Kit Kat clock, but without the moving eyes.) I think it’ll be good in my Reading Room once I have the floor to ceiling bookshelves in place.

I actually wrote about the supper that night in my paper journal. So I’ll reprint that here:

…We finally found a non-tourist trap restaurant. Las Maddalen (which I think was a Zio Ciro restaurant) was just off the square where the Pantheon was located. I ordered too much – brushetta and a pizza, when the pizza would suffice. They let us sit inside together while they got tables together outside. They brought out two €25 bottles of sparkling white wine for all of us to drink while we waited, gratis. Very friendly, very accomodating. BTW, I rather liked that sparkling wine – go figure!

Everyone agreed it was the best restaurant we stayed at. Only €1 cover charge person, less than 10% service charge, and we were happy to tip well.

For gelato that evening, I got half crema and half ferrero rochere (chocolate hazelnut). The crema had a slight lemon flavor, as did the one I had at another gelateria the night before. So I’m guessing crema must have slight lemon flavor… Will not be tempted to order that again, I think.

The best news of the day, however, was the arrival of Judi’s luggage that night! Yes, the night before we were to leave the hotel, the luggage finally arrived! Yay!

The Gypsy Marching Band!
The gypsy marching band. Or something. Whatever it was, it was lively and fun! And had a great cadence.

Bunch of broken shit.
Bunch of old, broken shit.

Not quite as broken shit.
Just as old, but not as broken shit.

And you should see the state of the stadium!
And geez, you should see the state of the stadium! 😉

Italy: Day One (Arrival)

Jul. 20, 2005

8:40am (I think) My watch says 2:40am and I think Italy is 6 hours ahead. [Wow, sometimes I’m actually right about things!] We’re flying over the mountains. Alps? Could be. [Probably not – I haven’t a clue WRT geography.]

I didn’t sleep a whole lot during the night. I watched Hitch and Robots and then a History Channel special on Ice Cream. Tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so I listened to Unregenerate!, the latest 7th Doctor audio. Not McIntee’s best work, but not his worst, either. The movies, BTW, were fun.

For supper they served us a choice of BBQ beef w/ mashed potatoes and green beans or tortelini. I went with tortelini. Pretty mediocre, but the cookie was good. Plus they had raw carrots for munching on. Breakfast has been a measly buttermilk donut and milk. Wasn’t bad, just measly.

Well, I wonder if judiang made it to (or is on her way to) Amsterdam. Here’s hoping “yes!” to that and a further “yes!” to getting to Rome. I hope they look after her bag! [The irony, of course, being that Judi’s luggage most likely went to Amsterdam. Judi, meanwhile, was enroute to Rome.]

So far the flight has been smooth and uneventful. Hope the others are having a similar flight. Wonder if their entertainment was as good as mine. [It wasn’t, bwa ha ha ha!]

11:20am Sitting in International Baggage Claim waiting for everyone to arrive. The Northwest Flight number is different from the one on Judi’s itenerary – unless there are two flights to Rome from Detroit. And it doesn’t arrive until after 2pm! Unfortunately, I don’t know which airline is Tammy’s (I suspect Delta). [I suspected correctly.] So I’m sitting and waiting and hoping someone comes along that I recognize.

Boy am I sleepy!

1:50pm Still no sign of Tammy. I’m running out of options (flights). Man, if the 2:02 NWA flight isn’t the one that everyone else is on, I dunno what I’ll do. I guess I’ll take the €8 train to Roma and a cab to the hotel. I was rather hoping to meet up with Tammy since she might know more about the other flight time.

No sign of any flights in from Amsterdam on the list of upcoming arrivals. So prospects of Judi are getting more vague. And hell, if the Detroit flight ended up being so much later, surely they could have gotten her to the airport on time for its departure.

My own time in was fine. Thanks to the 15 minute delay in getting started, we ended up being one hour late landing. But customs went smoothly and I picked up my suitcase without a hitch. Nice to know at least one of the 18 made it to Rome!

[More wittering on continues. I was too tired to read, but apparently, not too tired to worry and witter…]

3:30pm Yay! Everyone’s here! Even Judi! Tammy’s flight was delayed 2 hours due to storms in Atlanta, and the Detroit flight was doing a US Air WRT bad lights going off, lots of Tarmac waiting, and stuff like that. [Did I ever write about my US Air flight from hell in this journal? Don’t think so – it’s a real chuckler – now…] Unfortunately, Judi’s bag did NOT make it. So I’m standing in the lost luggage line while Judi waits in the Alitalia line.

Here’s hoping we get out of here and quickly! I’m hungry!

8:12pm Sitting at Quattro Fiumi Cafe at the Piazza Navona. We just had an expensive ass meal, but it was very good and we were very hungry. We’ve been using Judi’s cell phone to call friends and family. Judi and I had supper with Amy & Kathie. Now we’re just waiting on the bill (which will come eventually).

After standing in line for Judi’s suitcase issue, we were told that we had to go back to the Alitalia queue, so we waited some more. Gary, Marcia, and Tammy waited for us and we took an airport shuttle to the hotel for €18 each. (I put €15 and will buy Judi gelato later to reimburse the difference.)

The hotel is really nice and we have a window over the street. Tammy and John have the room above us and they have a balcony – the luckies!

We saw the Pantheon today before coming to Piazza Navona. Neat domed building.

Judi says “zzzzzzzz” and “Ciao, baby!” 🙂

So, a bit of Rome, at last! After this point, the dates and times on the entries have little to do with the actual events as recorded. Finding time to write things up wasn’t easy, because I managed to fill my days quite nicely with sightseeing and swimming and stuff like that. And I’ve just noticed in reading ahead, I really did Rome a disservice in my journal. I have very little actually written about my Rome times. My LJ entries that I posted had more than my paper journal! Well, maybe tomorrow I’ll try to remember everything that we did at Vatican City.

I have another photo from the trip, too. Trevi Fountain, which we saw our first night in Rome, after we left Piazza Navona. This photo, however, was taken a couple of nights later. But it still looked the same.

Trevi Fountain.
Many of us (if not all) tossed coins into Trevi Fountain to assure a safe trip home and another trip back to Rome. And it helped me get rid of a couple of US quarters that were threatening to mix with my euros.

Italy Trip: Getting There

Jul 19, 2005

11:00am I’m sitting at the S’barro seating area at the Dayton International Airport. I’ve got a peach smoothiethat I’m sipping on ($3.80 from Boston Stoker). It’s very tasty. The object of today’s flying? Get to Rome!

[Present day Trina cutting in here. This is the first entry in my paper journal that I kept during the trip. I’m making corrections as I go, but so far, am terribly faithful to it. You can tell by the sheer tedium I’m writing about. I’ll start cutting out the tedious comments as I go as well, or you’ll all be sleeping on your keyboards.]

Unfortunately my last journal was left in a Big Boy in Michigan back in April, so I’ve no idea what I last wrote about in my print journal. My electronic journal is a bit more up to date. [That’s what she thinks!] I decided against bringing my laptop on this trip because of the carrying issue, electrical issue, and lack of ‘net issue. I’ve got lots of electronics with me, however. So boredom won’t ever be an issue. [It wasn’t]

So, what’s up with this trip? Well, back in October ’03 our BW3’s group first talked about renting a villa in Tuscany. We’ve done a lot of plotting and planning since then and 18 of us are going to Roma for 3 days and the villa for 7 days.

I’m the only one taking US Air to Rome – most of the rest are taking Northwest. Even judiang (who is my roomie) is taking the Detroit->Rome leg of it. I’ll be on the same flight as everyone for the way back, however.

[The next several paragraphs are a summary of what we intended to do on the trip. Since I’ll be reporting on what we actually did, it seems a bit silly to include that here too, so I skipped ’em.]

2:20pm Now sitting near my gate (I think) at Philly’s airport. The place is practically deserted at the moment since most international flights leave at night. Mine’s at 6:10pm, so I’ve got a bit of a layover.

5:10pm Still at gate and so is our plane (has been for some time). Judi, meanwhile, got her times confused and left for the airport late. I’m hoping the lack of contact since her call means she’s in the air now to Detroit. Please let it be so!

5:53pm Good news! Judi’s luggage made the flight! Bad news – Judi’s body did not! Crap! So, she’s going to try and get on standby to Amsterdam and then from there on to Italy. If things work out, she can be in Rome by 3pm. Wow! Poor Judi! I’m hoping she can get there OK.

In the Good News camp again, we’re on the Airbus A330 rather than the Boeing 767. That means we get the ability to pick our own inflight entertainment! Sweet. There’s even a remote control! And the adapter for my headphones fits the jacks. Still dunno how well they work. [Got Magnavox noise cancellation headphones for the plane – only $35 at Walmart.]

Movie choices include Hitch and Robots, so I think I’ll pick them. Who knows what Northwest will offer for the ride back.

Oh, interesting sign of the times: The old No Smoking lighted signs have been replaced with “Please turn off electronic devices” signs.

Captain’s just welcomed us. We should be pushing off shortly.

6:25pm Departing a little late – a connecting flight arrived late, but we’re all here now! And we’re off to Rome!

7:00pm Ha! Spoke too soon. Yup, we’re still on the ground, trying to get to the front of the queue.

Now, although this journal entry hasn’t actually talked about the arrival to Rome, I’m going to include a couple of photos from Rome. There will be more in the next post when I write about the arrival.

Judi and Trina in Vatican City.
Judi and Trina in Vatican City. If you look closely, elsaf, you’ll see the Pope in the background, left. He’s spying on us, but we just ignored him.

The Heffalump Monument.
I liked this particular monument. I like heffalumps. And woozles. No woozles on this one, however. And what’s with all the Egyptian needles? The Romans were obsessed, I think.

In other news, work was a bitch today (and yesterday), but my new video card (for my new computer) arrived today and installed nicely. I can now play City of Heroes on my new PC. Also, Semagic is able to detect music from QCD – woot! Oh, and while listening to Information Society, I discovered they did a cover of Abba’s “Lay All Your Love on Me.” Heh, never noticed before.

PDA post

Just a short note to post with my PDA.

It’s not easy doing this, however. Don’t think I’ll be using this method very often.

More Italy stuff later. With pictures.

Braindead & Jetlagged

Gah, I’d post more on the trip, but I’m lucky I’m actually vertical right now. Leo was wonderfully sweet and let me sleep in today, though I did have to get up to go to work. I was fine in the morning, but before noon arrived, my brain had shut down. Still, I had enough functioning motor skills to play with my new handheld & barcode reader, clone a computer, then blow it up, and probably some other things that I don’t remember right now. Dad and I decided that Chinese Buffet would be lunch – neither of us has any food in our houses. At least, that was our excuse.

judiang has posted some on the trip, so go read that. I’ll post more when I get my brain back in gear. Plus I have photos I want to post. I at least downloaded them off the camera. Yesterday, as I said I was going to do, I read Harry Potter and hung out with the kitty. He often came & sat on my lap while I read. It was a lovely and relaxing day. I even went to bed at a reasonable hour. After work, I continued reading. And I’ll probably do more when I get done with supper (a TV dinner, not lasagna). Early to bed again tonight – I have to kick this jetlag so that I can be more productive at work! New teachers arrive on the 17th!