Italia, part one.

Hi all!

It’s been a longggg time since my last post so there’s a lot to tell! I went to Rome for a night, then to Venice for two, one night in Naples, and then Capri for a night. Now, I’m back on the ship and we just set sail for Croatia.

Okay, so going back a little while…I went to Rome with Carmella and CJ for the first day of our trip. As I was boarding the train to Rome, I noticed what looked to be like a cute Italian guy dressed in all black in front of me. He turned around, and what I saw was possibly one of the most GORGEOUS men I have ever seen in my life. Tan, dark hair, chiseled face…but, wait, is he wearing a white collar? DAMN! He’s a PRIEST?!?! Just my luck. Too bad because tall, dark, and handsome is definitely my type…tall, dark, handsome, and celibate? Not so much. Thanks a lot, God. Way to steal all the potential eligible bachelors.
 
When we got to Rome, Carmella, CJ, and I went to our hostel to put our bags down. I’ve never stayed in a hostel before so I was a little wary of the whole situation and expecting the absolute worst. As we opened the door to our room, I braced myself…but to the surprise of all of us, it was SO nice! I’d never been so excited to see a bathroom in my life! When we booked, we chose shared bathroom to cut costs, so we were expecting a dorm style bathroom…but what we got was basically a hotel room. There was even a mini-fridge and a flat screen TV mounted on the wall!  For 22 euros a piece, this place was pretty damn nice.

After we dropped our stuff off, the three of us went exploring and hit up the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and the Colosseum. Later that night, we met up with the other two girls, grabbed a taxi, and told the driver to take us to his favorite restaurant nearby. He took us to this great place that we would’ve never found on our own. At the end of the meal, the friendly restaurant owner came by our table to say hello and give us complimentary restaurant calendars. I thought it was such a nice gesture…and I could definitely use a calendar in my cabin! I opened my calendar to July and was a little taken aback at what I saw. It seemed that every day had a pair of contorted figures in various positions…Did this nice old man really just hand each of us sex position calendars!? With the logo of his family-owned restaurant on it!?! Wow…welcome to Europe.

After dinner, we found a cheap bar to hang out at. At the bar, Carmella and I spotted a group of super cute European guys. We figured it’d be awkward to approach them, so we just ogled from afar. After that, we all went to a club called Mood. When we headed to the bar to get drinks after we’d been dancing for awhile, I accidentally bumped into some guy. As I turned around to say sorry, I realized it was one of the cute European dudes that we’d seen earlier!

I couldn’t let such a perfect twist of fate slip away, so I introduced myself and we started talking. I learned that his name was Stanley, he’s from Paris, and he just graduated from med school. Yep. Stop there. That’s all I needed to know. It was at this point that I started to consider the option of bailing on SAS to run away with him. And, boy, was he HOT. Super hot. We talked for about half an hour and all the while, I imagined my future as Mrs. Elaina [insert sexy French last name here]. It’s got a nice ring to it, eh? As he told me about his hopes of becoming a plastic surgeon, I fell deeper and deeper in love. We were about to go dance, so I turned to tell my friends where I was going, when I saw that one of the girls that I was with looked really sick. Damn…Do I stick around and help her or do I go off with Dr. Stanley and potentially ensure my future as a doctor’s wife? A tough decision…but sadly, I parted ways with the gorgeous Parisian. So long, Dr. Stanley. Perhaps, I’ll look you up one day when I’m in need of a facelift.

Although it was sad to say goodbye, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on what came next. We went outside to grab a taxi, and found that none of them were willing to take us when they saw the shape our lightweight friend (who’d clearly overestimated the amount of alcohol she could handle) was in. After many taxis passed us, Lightweight said that she was feeling a little better and that she’d do her best to act okay when the next taxi pulled up.  Satisfied with this, I waved down another taxi. We all piled in and made sure that Lightweight was by the open window so she could get some air. Our hostel was about 10 minutes from where we were, so she just had to make it through that and we’d be okay. About 2 minutes into the taxi ride, though, she looked over at me and gave me an ‘I’m gonna hurl’ look. Crap. I quickly tapped Katie, who was sitting in the front seat, on the shoulder and told her to distract the driver. Katie complied by whipping out her huge map of Rome and asking the driver to show her where on the map we were. As she was doing this, I heard Lightweight heaving out the window. Completely gross…but if the taxi driver realized what was going on, he was going to leave us stranded on the side of a sketchy Roman street…which was NOT happening as far as I was concerned. Sitting in the back middle seat, I maneuvered myself in between the front seats to block the driver from seeing anything. At this point, I was practically sitting on his lap. The more we heard Lightweight heaving, the louder and louder we got. The conversation with the driver went something like this…

Me: “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO THE UNITED STATES!?!?!?”

Driver: “Yes. I go to Boston.”

(Simultaneously) Me: “BOSTON!?!? WOOOHOOOOO!!! I LOVE BOSTON!!!!!” 
Katie: ‘WOW!!!! YAYYYYYYY!!!!! I’M FROM BOSTON!!!’
Carmella: “YEAAAAA, BABBY!!!! BOSTONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!”

Me: ‘WHO DID YOU GO TO BOSTON WITH!?!?!”

Driver points to the gold band on his left hand ring finger.

(Simultaneously) Me: ‘OMG!!! HE HAS A WIFE!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!”
Katie: ‘WOW!!!! THAT’S AWESOME!!!! YOU’VE GOT A WIFE!!!!!”
Carmella: ‘YAYYYYYY FOR WIVES!!!!!!’

…clearly, we were a bit desperate. As our conversation got progressively more ridiculous, we all started hysterically laughing. I looked over at Lightweight, whose head was still out the window, and saw that she, too, was laughing. I’ve never before seen someone puke and laugh at the same time, but it makes for a quite an image. Thankfully, the taxi driver, who seemed amused by his obnoxious American customers, never noticed what was going on in the back seat and got us to the hostel safely.

The next morning, we all woke up bright and early to catch a train to Venice. After our 4 hour train ride, most of which I spent asleep, we arrived in Venice. It was absolutely GORGEOUS! Katie, CJ, Carmella, and I took a bus to our hotel, dropped our stuff, and headed back into the main area of Venice. We took a waterbus into Saint Mark’s square and met an American family with some kids around our age along the way. We started talking to Peter, the oldest one, and decided to meet up with them later that night to hang out. Then, to solidify our plans, he asked if he could get one of our numbers so we could figure out when/where to meet. We all looked around at each other waiting for someone to offer up their phone and realized that Carmella, Katie, and I had all left ours at the hotel…leaving CJ (who’s a guy, fyi) as the only one of us who had a phone. CJ hesitantly pulled out his phone  and the two guys proceeded to awkwardly exchange numbers. Suffice it to say, the rest of the night was spent cracking jokes that were generally along the lines of ‘five minutes into Venice and CJ already managed to get a cute guy’s number!’

After that, we explored the city some, had dinner, and quickly came to the realization that Venice was as expensive as it was beautiful. Restaurants all had a cover charge (I thought only bars did that?) and a service charge tacked on to the already outrageously high prices. After dinner, we met up with our new American pals and walked around Venice for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel.

We spent a majority of the next day wandering around getting lost in Venice and exploring all the cool shops. Every other shop was filled with super pretty Murano glass. I picked up some gifts for the familia, and then headed back to the hotel around 4 to take a power nap and get ready for dinner. We decided to go to a local place near our hotel for dinner to give our wallets a bit of a break. It was a good decision on our part since it was way cheaper than what we’d found anywhere else. At dinner, Carmella suggested that we keep an hourly video log of our night since we planned on being out late. (If you’ve never done this, I highly suggest it. Watching our videos the day after was absolutely hilarious).

We’d asked around the day before and found out that there was one dance club in all of Venice, and we were determined to find it. We met up with our American buddies again and headed to a bar first. After the bar, we grabbed a map and walked around Venice for an hour looking for the club. Thankfully, we ran into a couple of Italian guys who worked at the bar we were just at, and they led the way. We finally made it to the club, which was called Piccolo Mondo (which I think means small world?). It was lucky that we’d found the guys to show us where it was because this place looked like a hole in the wall from the outside. We ended up having such a great time and danced the night away. At around 4:30am, we left the club and walked our American pals back to their hotel. From there, we had to take both a waterbus and a regular bus to get back to our hotel. We got back to our hotel at about 6:30am…which gave us just enough time to shower, pack, and head to the train station for our 9:20am train to Naples. To say that we were tired would be the understatement of the century…but we’d had so much fun the night before that it was worth it.

Okay….time to go study for my Global Studies midterm that’s tomorrow. I’ll fill ya in on the rest of my week in Italy tomorrow!

Also, I have a new cousin named Jonathon! Congrats, Aunty Lorena and Uncle Zeyad! I can't wait to see him!