Righ
t now i'm sitting on my hotel's fourth floor balcony looking over the streets below. On my right seems to be an apartment complex of some kind with the vatican walls overlooking the area, and on the left is a busy intersection with scooters, vespas, little cars, buses and smart cars.
Across the street is a small ristorante I've yet to check out, right next to a pizza e kebab sore I went to yesterday for a kebab maxi (5 euro). three blocks down, for dinner last night, I went to a pizza place for some kind of pizza with round slices of cheese on top of the cheese already therem with some kind of fish/meat bits in it. yum! the owner guy is from North Africa and toasted the pizza and talked to me for a bit about where i was from before he wrapped up the pizza for walking&eating. The pizza place shares the room with a gelatto area that overlooks the street in front.
To backtrack a bit, at 530 am June 22nd i woke up and got ready (showered) for the flight. V came by to say good bye and gave me a letter to read when I got to Europe, and my uncle came at 7 to take us to SFO. At SFO we took a 1 hour flight (boarded at 10, flight ??) to LAX where we transferred to anoteher United airlines (SUCKS) flight to England's Heathrow Airport (9.5 hour flight).
On the flight to london, UA provided dinner (chicken, or pasta? Pasta, please!) and breakfast (cold chicken, ham and cream cheese sandwhich with strawberry yogurt) and drinks in the middle. Boy did my butt, big as it is, hurt after 5 hours. There was two 3 year old boys behind where I was sitting, who yelled and fought for the entire time, and a baby somewhere that kept crying. However, wth thte eyemask and blow-u[ travel pillow my dad provided me, i napped in 2 hour intervals after finishing Invitcus, a movie about nelson mandela and the South Africa rugby world cup (Morgan Freeman and Matt damon). Once we got to london, it was 630 am london time, and we were sent to Terminal 1 by a worker. We got through the entire customs check security and into the actual terminal before we found out we were supposed to be in Terminal 4 :'[ by then it was around 730 and we took T1 to T4 bus! There was only my mother, padre and i in it! This was the only time i was outside of the heathrow airport, and it was fun watching the driver maneuver a HUUUGE empty bus aruond the airport terminals (approx 10 min ride) . Heh, with all the brit accents and the bus, it felt like a Harry Potter movie! >)
At T4, we had to wait until 1140 to know which terminal Alitalia (airline) was going to be at (flight boarding technically at 1220) so we had a LOT of time to kill! there were a lot of high end shops there, and it was, as airports usually are, verra verra expensive. Mi padre and i ate at Bridge Bar & REstaurant - two large pieces of toast with eggs and peppered salted smoked salmon while he drank coffee. At WHSmith (drugstore-ish place) I spent forty minutes trying to decide which magazine I wanted. What made the decision so hard? Well, unlike America, in the UK the magazines come with free stuff.
Yes. FREE STUFF.
Shampoos, body wash, lip gloss, totes, bags, sunglasses, 3 types of benefit eye penils, etc. How could I resist?! I eventually chose GLAMOUR UK's Women of the Year mag that came with BAD gal eyeliner :) huzzah! My dad bought newspaper that came with free agua. Because we still had 2.5 more hours to kill, I wandered in and out of shops like Boots and Beauty Box (?) and MANGO until my dad got tired. He lay down on a pleather + mental bench and slept for an hour while i erad my new mag. Earlier, we let my mom lying down on a bench somewhere and when we got back, she was nowhere to be found, so we gave up and assumed she woudl show up eventually :) At 1140, we checked the flight and went to gate 3 to look for my mom but she wasnt there! so we went to the Quiet Praryer Room to look for her (yeah, they exist!) but she wasn't there either, so we lay down on these reclining leather chairs to wait until the flight came. At 1220, we went back to check for mi madre, but she still awsn't there! My dad said that if she didnt' show up, we'd still go without her, Heartless! But promptly after he announced that, we heard our names beign called over the loudspeaker to be...exactly where we already were, so we waited until mi madre showed up. I was jet laggy on the 2 hour flight to rome, so i kept winking in and out whiel trying to focus on the view. My head rolled around and drooped and snapped back and forth until we landed.
ROMAAAAAA
We collected our baggage and waited for my sister (flying from lisbon) to meet us at the airport. I went around with mi padre (madre on a bench) to go get cash euros, a roma pass (metro pass and free museums! for 3 calender days, recommended!) and 2 sim cards (from Wind, very nice wrookers in the airport! first extended conversation with english speaking italians who thought i was 16 years old :'[ its the new haircut). We met my sister shortly after wand waited for our driver from the Best estern Hotel to pick us up. He drove a large grey minivan that was super roomy inside and box-like in s hape. he didn't speak a lot of english, but told me that he's been in roma his entire life. There was about an hour's worth of traffic getting to rome, but the view made it worth it! All the cars hwere are ultra tiny, and the driving is insane. WHERE ARE THE BLINKERS, PEOPLE. AND THE SPACE BETWEEN CARS? NONEXISISTENT. i swear i thought the driver was going to hit peoploe and vice versa.
The hotel had a nice lady with a chic asymmetrical black bob and a tall skinny african american man in the front. Our room is on the fourth floor (but in europe, its the 5th! floor 1 is 0 :O )with a balcony with 3 chairs and a table, and inside there's 4 beds (thank god i don't want to share with my sister...)). While my parents unpacked and shoewred, my sister and i went aruond to walka round the city, and my sister bought pizza (1.55 euro) and the kebab for my parents. When we returned 3 blocks later, i went out by myself to the pizza place and bought my own. Next door to our hotel is a small, very cute grocery store that i visited before i went inside.
the hotel has 3 bikes their guests can borrow during the day, and i def plan to utilize that :) I want to ride around and be FOREIGN! At night we walked around the vatican walls to St Peter's square and took a bunch of photos! Then we walked down the street to a night market and bought coffee gelato (2.50) yummy! my sister and i sat on the railings lining the river and talked whil watching the cars and the castles and statues around us. Walking back to the hotel around 11, we passed by a gelatto place with a ton of peoploe outside to check out the prices (1.50 for a small! i'll be back, heart!) and when we got back to the hotel, my sister discovered that the place wwas one recommended by her friend to have the best gelatto around here :)
After taking a shower, and washing my socks i fell asleep.
this morning I showered and waited for my sister to go down to the breakfast provided by the hotel in the lowest floor.
3 juices: misfruit (best!), orange, and grapefruit
3 cereals
5 types of pastries: all dusted with powdered sugar mmmm
toast, 2340928 types of bread with butters, honey, jams and nutella
Freshly cut fruit: watermelon, cantelope, and a mix (pineapples, coconut, kiwi, peachesm, apples, etc)
I'll try more tomorrow :)
the signor serving coffee was lovely.
I stuffed myself and took my favorite pastry to go (round, flaky, sweet, with raisins dotting it). Mi padre, sister and i walked around the markets downt he street until we saw my mom and split up in pairs. My sister and i went back to toudi (?) store next to the hotel to buy bobypins and mousse. I am her sugar momma with them euros. Later we'll tour the vatican museum and sistine chapel.
the weather's pretty warm right now; i'm almost sweating! Everyone's pretty nice here and they either greet you with bongiourno (good morning?) or bona cera (good evening).
This afternoon, italy plays someone in the world cup at 4 so my sister plans to take me to a bar so we can meet some new people! I'm ultra excited. Meeting new people is my favorite part of going to a new country!
Ciao, readers! :)
