[Brandi's comments are featured in italics.]
Though I’ve never been to Paris, I’ve been through its airport twice before, though I got to see much more of it this time around. We landed and were met by a shuttle, which pulled up to a little entrance where we waited, and waited, and waited. The woman taking us around was having a fairly spirited argument with the shuttle driver, we think about whether to let us through. But enough people started trickling off the bus that she finally gave up, so we all poured off the bus and into the airport. Once our passports were looked at, we met back up with Jill (our new friend from Austin) and started searching for our Alitalia flight to Rome.
Arriving at 8:30 for a 10:10 flight seems like plenty of time, but by the time we went outside security, got our tickets and came back inside security, the plane had already been boarding for ten minutes. And by "boarding" I mean sending people down a jetway to climb on a shuttle bus and wait. The flight was pretty uneventful---we both slept for about the last half of it, and we got a great view of the Italian countryside and the Mediterranean sea on our approach.
We wound our way down to the baggage claim with Jill, and along the way we asked her if she knew a good place for lunch near the Spanish Steps. She recommended Mario's, a place that has a family tie to a couple Italian restaurants in Austin. When the baggage carousel stopped circling, there were three people waiting for their luggage: Jill, Brandi, and me. The Alitalia baggage people were fairly helpful, explaining that our bags were in Paris and that they would be in on the next flight and at our hotel by 5:30 that afternoon. A customs checkpoint beyond the baggage area was surprisingly nonexistent. We found a taxi service that offered us a flat rate of 50 euros to our hotel, so we took it. I spent much of the ride calculating our distance, converting it into miles, and converting euros into dollars to see if we were getting hosed—I don't think we were, but who knows. Our driver was very nice---he knew a little English and a little Spanish and kept apologizing for his language skills and for taking a phone call while he was driving.
Our hotel, Visconti Palace, obviously caters to English-speaking clientele: all of the guests speak English to each other, and even the staff immediately break into English after a token “buon giorno” or “buona sera.” The guy we met at the counter was about as quintessential an English-speaking Italian as I could have imagined. Not the pizzeria proprietor with a mustache and bushy hair, but a little bit more of the Roberto Benigni type. He was short, thin, and eager to please, with greasy hair held against his scalp with lots of product, including a Superman-like curl cemented to his forehead. With the characteristic “-a” punctuating every word out of his mouth, he pointed us the way to the “Spanish-a Steps-a.” Without any clothes to change into, we immediately took to the streets.
The buildings around our hotel could easily be found in New York or a dozen other cities, but once we crossed the Tiber (about three blocks away) we were in a different world. For two people who have never been in a really, really old city, Rome is so impressive and such an overload for the eyes that it defies description. A few of the things we noticed on our walk: there are no street signs, but the names of the streets are carved into stone on the sides of buildings; for many buildings the year it was built is found in Roman numerals (along with the name of the reigning pope in most cases) across the front; in a few places around town you’ll find a faucet of constantly running water feeding out of a building into a tub or simply coming up from the ground, and people will stick a water bottle or a bucket under there and use it for drinking and cooking.
The Spanish Steps were pretty cool. Looking up at them from the plaza beneath is impressive, but climbing the steps and looking out among the Roman rooftops (and the crowds of people below) is pretty amazing.
After some initial difficulty in finding the right street (streets veer off in all different angles and have names that run together, and the map tends to omit some streets, as you have to when there are a billion of them), we found Mario’s. Brandi ordered buffalo mozzarella and tomato salad, and I had rigatoni amatriciano. Right after our food arrived, Brandi looked right over my head and smiled as if she recognized somebody. Her eyes got really big, and I thought, “Who on earth could she know here?” I turned around and saw Jill (from the flight) and her husband Michael. We sat for a long time and talked about our trips (Michael had had a similarly frustrating time getting in via Continental) and our plans. We also talked about the travel habits of our fellow Americans. Michael is very good at painting a picture with his hands, which is one of the recommendations of the Italy travel books. They also tell you to a) make an attempt to speak the language and b) not be loud and obnoxious, and you can see why. Most everyone is very nice and interested in immersing themselves into the Italian experience, but it seems there is a brand of visitor here determined not to speak a word of Italian, and unfortunately they tend to come from the States.
Our meal was one of those three-hour lunches you hear about being so common in Italy. Michael and Jill let us have some of their antipasti, which had great prosciutto, white beans in olive oil, and seasoned zucchini. For dessert, we had a passable crème caramel (basically flan), and Brandi had a cappuccino that she was delighted with. We enjoyed our time with our fellow Austinites---they were even nice enough to loan us a phone for me to try and call my family, though I couldn't get through. Soon we said our goodbyes and were on our way to more Italian adventures.
Our trip back to the hotel took us by Trevi Fountain. Like many major landmarks in Rome, the fountain is in among many narrow alleys and newer buildings, so it comes up as if out of nowhere. And the Trevi Fountain is unique in that no street approaches it directly, so you always hear it before you see it. We came upon it from behind, so it kind of revealed itself bit by bit. The fact that the fountain appears out of the side of a building is part of its mystique. Lots of people crowded around, trying to throw their coin in to assure another trip to Roma! We only had a euro, so we threw in 100 times the money of most visitors. That should purchase a return trip for us, plus a couple generations of our offspring.
The last word from Alitalia was that the luggage didn’t make it on either of the flights from Paris, but they were hoping to get it on the 5:30 flight, which would get it to our hotel at about 8:30.
Our hotel room is pretty nice---apart from a shower that would fit about 1 ¼ of me, there’s not too much to separate it from what we’re used to. The TV has CNN International and Sky News (both in English), plus about 10 Italian stations, a French channel, and a German channel. We got little bits of news about the hurricane, and we tried to call our families but didn’t get an answer.
Dinner was at Grotto Azzurra, a restaurant a few blocks from our hotel. We sat outside on the sidewalk, and the waiter was very friendly. We started off with a bottle of their house wine (8 euros---are you kidding me???). They brought out a basket of bread, but Brandi was disappointed with the lack of olive oil. Of course this was due to the Americanization of the Italian meal, but it proved not to be a staple at the table in Italy. I had half moon pasta with sausage and mushrooms, which was great. My gnocchi, on the other hand, was just okay. I didn’t realize how unsavory it was until Florence, but I'll tell you more about that later...
With a little effort, we found our way back to the hotel, but our luggage still hadn’t. I went downstairs to try and make some sense of the situation, but there was no sense to be had. The latest update was that our luggage would be on the first flight in the morning and at the hotel shortly after that. I tried to question the guy at the desk about Alitalia’s lack of certainty about our bags, but I didn’t get a straight answer. I started getting frustrated with the hotel staff, but I think that the staff just can’t get a straight answer from Alitalia. We’ve had different hotel employees tell us different stories about airline strikes and customs delays, and it seems like it’s something they have come to accept is not very reliable. After giving up on the hotel staff, I tried calling Alitalia directly but couldn’t get someone who spoke English. I’ve had my luggage lost before, but only for a few hours as the airport has usually delivered it to my hotel within a few hours. My most recent experience was on the way home, which make a big difference. Without our luggage, not only can we not change clothes tomorrow; we also can’t recharge our camera battery, so we are limited in the number of pictures we can take. Oh yeah, and Alitalia is basically going day-to-day in terms of whether they will continue to operate, so I’m sure getting our luggage back to us is not at the top of our list. I was asleep by 9:30PM (since we had now been up for 24 hours) dreaming about what our next day in Rome would like!
