Italia! (1/2)

This is how I know there is a God!

The Saturday of the weekend that I picked to come to Rome was the same day that was designated as a national day of protest by Italy’s left-wing political parties. Yeah, maybe I wasted a bunch of time that could have been spent in museums, but keep in mind that the monuments and cathedrals you will have with you always; the feelings of elation that go with thousands of yelling students marching behind a truck outfitted with giant speakers blasting Italian Celtic Rock protest songs and Bob Marley you will not have with you always.

So the flight went well. I got up at 6:45, finished packing, and took the train to Orly. The time from Luxembourg to Orly is about 27 minutes, giving me a leisurely 38 minutes to get from the plane to the train on Monday. We had beautiful views of the Alps and the Italian foothills on the way down; somehow it’s still a strange concept for me that there are mountains high enough to keep their snowcaps while it’s in the thirties down below. When we landed at Ciampino, it wasn’t quite that hot, but still a lot warmer than Paris, a lot like flying from Washington to Miami.

Took the COTRAL bus to the train station, rode in to Termini in the center, found my hostel, the Casa Olmata. I’m sharing a room with three Colombians and two other American backpackers. The Columbians were friendly even though their English was limited, but the Americans didn’t come in till I was asleep, and I left before they woke up this morning.

It’s a pretty short distance from the hostel to the Forum, so that was where I headed first. I got to the Palatine Hill just as it closed. I explored that area for a while, and then had dinner: spaghetti carbonara, as recommended to me by Margherita, the Italian girl in my Grammar class. Then I got some gelato and explored some more. Got some night shots of the Vittorio Emanuele II monument and the Tiber.

As I was walking back I noticed these posters for a protest for... sabato 4 aprile!! Of course I was enthused, especially since I saw that the posters all seemed to have been put up by different political groups, but they were all quite definite about the date.

Got back to the hostel, shared some wine with the Colombians, and went to bed, resolving to go visit the Pantheon the next day and try to find the protest.