#5 Unforgettable Rome..Euro2006(05.27.06)

Paolo met us at the train station in Rome with flowers. He had just flown in that morning, rented a car, and was waiting for us to arrive. As were were walking to the car from the train station, we passed by the hostel where we had our reservation prior to the change of plans when Paolo decided to meet us in Rome. I must say that I am so glad we didn't have to stay there. Who would've thought that a cheap hostel directly across the street from a huge European train station might not be the best idea?

The car he rented was one of the bigger smart cars, meaning there was a "back seat." So we played Tetrus with me and the suitcases and Paolo drove us around Rome and to the awesome hotel he'd made reservations for us at.



I got settled into my room then met them in the lobby for some sight seeing. We drove to a subway station and took the subway that would take us nearest to the Colosseum and Centro Storico (Rome's historic center).

Rome was completely amazing. I was in awe the entire time I was there. It is an amazing feeling to be walking down a street surrounded by shops and offices, turn a corner, and find yourself looking at a 2000 year old building you've only seen briefly in movies or history books. Everywhere in Rome there is history. One of the first familiar sights I saw was the Spanish Steps. I do have to admit that the only place I'd seen these steps and paid attention to the fact that they were the Spanish Steps in Rome was thanks to that diamonds are forever commercial where the man tells the woman he'd marry her all over again, and she looks up and her mom and dad are there too (must be nice, rich bastards). Unfortunately Emily has the only pictures of me on the steps and for some reason her computer was unable to make me copies of any of the pictures she took. Fortunately, she was able to make copies of all of mine.

Walking through the streets, there were random sidewalk shows and people you could pay to have your picture taken with. For instance, this Roman soldier will pull his double edged sword (or gladius) from his scabbard and thrust it into your chest while throwing a javelin into the back of a fleeing spectator for the bargain price of two euros. There were also jugglers, human statues that come to life and scare the crap out of small children, and there was one guy who looked like he was running, but he was actually standing still. I stood beside him and acted like I was running with him. Again, Emily has that picture. You can see him right in the middle of this next picture if you look closely.....closer....look closer....he's wearing a suit....

Yeah, I know. I can hardly see him myself. But you can see that the streets and piazzas were packed full of people with the occasional crazy speeding taxi driver barreling through. This was my favorite street in Rome...Via dei Condotti...one of the most expensive streets in the world. This street leads directly to the Spanish Steps. This is a picture from Via dei Condotti looking back to the Steps.Okay, now this is the part where I tell you about the totally hot, sexy red Francesco Rogani purse I bought on Via dei Condotti....We were walking down this street with every store you ever saw in a Vogue magazine. Bulgari. Hermes. Valentino. Cartier. Massoni. And all the girls sing "Do..da-do...da-do....d0-da-do-do" So all I wanted to do was buy something. Anything. We walked in and out of stores and touched Prada, and felt up Dolce & Gabbana...yeah baby. But nothing was within my reach. I'd been looking at some Italian leather purses here and there and we happened upon a store, Francesco Rogani, which was entirely Italian leather bags. This was the sort of store where you press the buzzer and someone unlocks the door and takes you around the store. So, I told Em and Paolo to wait a second, I stood behind a couple waiting to go in, and when the saleswoman came to the door, I followed them in like I totally belonged there. So I'm walking across the hardwood floor, picking up different handbags and purses and smelling them, and I eventually made my way to the back of the store where, God bless them, there was a wall of sale items. They were arranged by color. Red, green, yellow, brown, black, white.....I made my way straight up to the red bags. The beautiful bright red lucious leather bags. I found two that I liked and as I became engrossed in my decision, a saleswoman who'd been watching me walked up to me and said in her sexy Italian accent, "You know you won't be able to make your decision util you see yourself carrying the bag." The store had these enormous floor to ceiling mirrors. So she told me not to be shy and to walk in front of the mirror exactly the way I would walk with a bag such as this. So, being me, I took off parading myself back and forth in front of these mirrors...with this awesome saleswoman cheering me on and laughing with me and making me feel like the most important client she'd had all day. So I fell in love with my sexy red leather bag and she took it from me and walked with me to the checkout where the owner asked me my name, where I was from, and to tell him all about Texas and President Bush. While he visited with me, the saleswoman wiped down my bag, placed it in a cloth drawstring bag, then inside a shopping bag lined with tissue paper. I think she may have thrown in some butterfly kisses and magic fairy dust if I'd watched her closely enough. This, all over a bag on the sale wall bought by a girl who snuck in the door. Of course, I should mention that their sale wall prices were still about four times as much as I would even consider spending on a purse normally, and it was the most expensive thing I bought on the whole trip. You'll notice that my sexy red bag appears first and foremost in almost all of the pictures of me for the rest of the trip. I still love smelling it. Mmmmmm......Our next destination was Piazza Navona. Note: I'm holding my newly purchased Francesco Rogani shopping bag. Piazza Navona has a beautiful fountain and actually, most of what I knew about all of the Piazzas and fountains I saw I learned from the Dan Brown novel, Angels & Demons. There's a great map in the front of the book and it was pretty cool that I saw everything mentioned in the book with the exception of Vatican City. Unfortunately, there was no way we had time to see it. So, I say next time, I'm so at Vatican City. All of the Piazzas had a unique Egyptian obelisk, and Piazza Navona was home to the beautiful Fountain of Four Rivers which Em and I are standing in front of in the picture above. Here's another picture of Piazza Navona...the larger building to the right of the picture is the Church of Saint Agnes in Agony. From Piazza Navona, we walked over to Piazza della Rotunda.
Piazza della Rotunda is home to the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a must see in Rome. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the building, even after almost 2000 years. Can you imagine what this building has seen?
Unfortunately, we couldn't go inside that particular afternoon. I heard someone say there was a ceremony in progress. Stupid ceremony. So I didn't get to see the famous occulus in the roof of the Pantheon, but I was still amazed to be in it's prescence. It's such an odd and unfamiliar feeling to be so overwhelmed by history. The aura of the building is such that I felt that if I were to sit and stare at the building, and soak in everything about it, for a long enough period of time, I might actually see it breathe.

Train to Rome...Euro2006 (05.27.06)

I had to take a little break from writing to finish up my semester and help catch up on things at work. But I was just looking at dates from last summer and realized that one year ago today, I was in Rome. Crazy!! So back to the story...

I was pretty excited about my first European train ride. Alberto got us on the train and saw us off. As the train left Lecce, I realized just how lucky I was. I had just had a fabulous vacation week in a gorgeous Italian city surrounded by the most beautiful beaches I'd ever seen. For most people, if they're lucky, that's it - that's their vacation - but I still had over a month to go!! It's still pretty awesome to think about. I'm really fortunate I had this opportunity. These are pictures I took on the train ride to Rome.




We had pretty good seats when we first got on the train. But I think the train started out in Lecce so we were literally first on the train. We got pretty settled in and kept ourselves busy reading, taking pictures, etc. The trains are non-smoking so we got pretty good at having a cigarette and lighter ready to jump off and smoke a quicky in the few minutes the train stopped in various towns. We met lots of different people that way, too. I know smoking is bad, blah, blah, blah and I have since quit smoking, however, I do have a lot of friends and have met a lot of people I would never have met, had it not been for smoking. Just had to mention that. Anyway, there were always train employees who would step off the train at every stop to keep things moving, and rush us all back on when it was time to go. We learned that when we heard the "ding", we'd better be on the train because it was leaving. We found that some places were much shorter stops than others. The very short stops consisted of all of us smokers literally holding on to the train with one hand in the event we heard the "ding" and needed to hoist ourselves and each other onto the train Indiana Jones style or something. I will say that I would have no problem hanging on for dear life and being drug alongside the train until someone pulled me in because I knew if I got left behind I would be lost forever. Traveling got easier the further along we got in the trip, but I'll admit it was intimidating realizing we were on our own in a foreign country.

So later we decided to go to the restaurant car for some breakfast and coffee. We sat in a booth, drank our coffee, reminisced on our travels thus far, and when we went back to our cozy little seats, we found that a couple had decided we were in THEIR seats. All of our stuff they hadn't thrown aside, they were sitting on, and they were extremely rude about it. This was our first of many experiences of incredibly rude/mean/yelling people on trains. So we loudly and gruffly gathered up our things and found two empty crappy seats further down the car. It helped a little that we could say shockingly horrible things about these mean people and they had no idea what we were saying. We knew they weren't saying anything about us because they were too busy pretending we didn't exist.

I suppose we had our share of being less than pleasant on the train. I can't remember if it was on this train ride to Rome or a later one, but the train stopped in a city, and there were also trains stopped on either side of ours. Emily and I were sitting at a table facing each other. We looked over and there was a family standing at the window of their train (a couple and their curly haired little girl), but they were staring at us. We smiled at them and kept talking to each other, but these people kept staring at us. The trains had these electric blinds that slide up and down by pushing a button at the base of the windowsill. So we thought it would be funny to close the blinds as we were talking. We had a little laugh about it, then later when I went to the restroom, the woman and the little curly haired girl were standing in line in front of me so I felt like a really big ass. Apparently they had changed trains at the last stop.

We arrived in Rome early afternoon and Paolo met us at the train station with flowers. I think our few days with Paolo was the only part of the whole trip that Emily actually enjoyed.

Emily and I had been talking about taking a trip to France together since we met. When the opportunity finally presented itself, I worked really hard to be able to take this trip, and a lot of people went out of their way to make sure we had a memorable time. All I wanted to do was enjoy every possible moment. I felt like I owed that to myself, to Josh, to my family, my friends, my job.... because they all made sacrifices for me, and the only thing I cared about was making the most of my once in a lifetime trip. I'll admit I had plenty of homesick moments, but I never let it keep me from appreciating where I was.

Last Day in Lecce...Euro2006(05.26.06)

Friday was our last full day in Lecce. Alberto had to go to work for a while so Stefano picked us up and we ended up going to the Alfa Romeo dealership with him (he had ordered a car and was checking up on it).

Emily and I had to wait with him at the dealership for a while. I think the receptionista was getting a little tired of us. But you can't stick two girls in a room with expensive things for an extended period of time and not expect us to touch them. We got a great picture of Yoda on the hood of the red car in the top picture.

When Alberto was finished on base, we drove to the beach. I was so impressed by the fact that each one we went to was 30-45 minutes from Lecce, yet all three were completely different.

On the way, we stopped to take pictures of this breathtakingly lifelike statue of an ancient Grecian goddess...... ....oh wait, no that's just me....

This was such a cool spot. Take a second to really look at the next picture.

The blue post to the far right of the picture is part of a gateway (locked) to a set of stairs. These stairs wind down to the platform you see just to the left of the post in the picture. See the people laying out? The stairs continue winding down to the water where the rocks form a natural pool.
Alberto was hoping no one would be there so we could walk down to it, because apparently it's privately owned. Lucky bastards! It was so easy to imagine gorgeous, wealthy Romans in long flowing robes and those really cool gold headband things and spiraly arm bracelets walking down to bathe in their natural pool by the sea...


This is a close up of the rocks just down the rocky beach from us. There's a guy standing by himself on the rocks down by the sea on the left side of the picture (think I could get anymore prepositions in that sentence?). We weren't worried about him falling in because luckily....

...we had a Power Ranger with us!! Alberto drove Emily and I everywhere, and Max and Stefano always followed (or rather, raced ahead) on their motorcycles. If you're still wondering, that's his helmet resting on his head.

The third beach was really pretty and very rocky.

I have to admit it was difficult to find a flat enough spot to lay out on where there wasn't a rock jutting in some place it shouldn't be.

But it was a beautiful day, and I just wanted to soak up every second of my last day in Lecce.

Emily and I decided we had to jump from the rocks into the water before we left. So we walked to the edge (I don't think it was more than 5 or 6 feet to the water. We weren't cliff diving or anything.)...anyway, we walked to the edge, held hands, counted to three...and jumped.

The shock from the freezing cold water actually numbed my body for a minute. It was really cool though, because you float so easily in the saltwater. You can basically just sit in the water.

That night we had dinner at the same restaurant we ate lunch at our first day in Lecce. We had a really nice time with everyone and it was a fitting end to a great week. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from dinner. Here's a few pictures of Lecce at night. I wasn't quite still enough so they're a little blurry, but it was a really nice evening.

I'll be forever grateful to Alberto and his friends for my unforgettable week in Lecce.

The next morning, we took the 6:30am train to Rome.

Alberobello and Ostuni, Italy...Euro2006 (05.25.06)

Thursday (May 25,2006) , the guys took us on a day trip to see two unique little towns in South Italy.

The first was Alberobello, Italy - one of my favorite towns we visited on our trip. The town is built on a hill so the streets are really steep. What makes Alberobello unique are the interesting roofs on the buildings.

I loved walking through this town. It's almost like a mideval fairy tale town. We walked through several stores and shops where I bought some of my favorite souvenirs that I brought home to family and friends. People have inhabited the area of Alberobello since the 15th century. These unique buildings are called the Trulli (because of the way the overlapping stone makes the cone shaped roofs) and were declared national monuments. Alberobello was a farming and peasant village that became a royal township to the royal family.


One of the things I loved most about traveling in Europe is that everything is so old and has such a long, interesting history. Emily and I were very fortunate to have Alberto and his friends to take us to such interesting places and really made the most of our week in Lecce. Going around the table, Alberto is sitting on the left, Max in the middle and Stefano on the right. Grazie mille ragazzi!!

The second town we saw that day was Ostuni, Italy. It is also known as "the White City" because the entire city was made from white stone.

Alberto pulled over so I could take this picture and I am so glad he did. It was getting late in the day and the sun reflecting off the white stone made the entire city glow.

Ostuni has been inhabited since the stone age. It has a great history and has been regarded as a jewel of Italy since ancient times. Jewel you say? Of course I loved this city!!



This was a square in the center of the city. There were lots of shops up and down the streets that branched out from here. You can see there are closed umbrellas hanging down. The vendors open these huge umbrellas during the day, then take them down later in the afternoon and evening.


We ate a lot of ice cream on our trip. Then again, there were ice cream shops around every corner. And the Italians definately know their gellato!!


This is mine and Alberto's Democrat / Republican picture.

These next few picures I took walking through some of the streets. I loved how the streets, buildings and walls were all white, with bright splashes of color in a blue door or bright green shudders. It was very striking.

Note the walkway from one street to another. The streets are connected like this in lots of the cities we visited in Italy. I thought it was pretty cool. Once or twice it was a little creepy but of course I'll have stories for that when I get there.


That evening, Emily wasn't feeling well so they took me to dinner to meet some more of their friends a restaurant that is a converted masseria. The term masseria is mainly used in South Italy and refers to a wine producing farm. This masseria we ate at was about an hour away, out in the middle of the country, surrounded by farm land. The restaurant was the converted old farm house. We literally drove down a long, narrow, winding dirt road surrounded by crops to get to this restaurant. The atmosphere was exactly how you would want to experience Italian dining. It was very dimly lit, and very comfortable. My friends helped me order (as always) and I would have to say this was the best meal I had in Italy. The entire experience was unforgettable. Even the drive back to the apartment was great. I rode back with three of the guys so Alberto could drive his friend home, and they listened to Pavarotti and Friends and sang along beautifully at the top of their lungs. Exactly like you think Italian guys would do. It was one of my favorite and most memorable nights.

#4 Go topless...Euro2006 (05.24.06)

...preferably on a European beach where it's legal.

On Wednesday, (May 24, 2006), they took us to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. I'm going to find out the names of these beaches. All three were within 30 - 45 minutes from Lecce.

Isn't it gorgeous? We set up in the first set of lounge chairs down on the beach on the far right of the top picture. I was in heaven on this beach. In all honesty I would have to say that it was the most beautiful place I have ever seen. I was completely overwhelmed. The water was so clear and the surrounding beach was incredible!

I felt like I was at one of those remote European locations you see pictures of celebrities hanging out at....oh wait - I was! The water was a little chilly at first but we waded in and picked up seashells. I was planning on making a necklace out of them, but I haven't done it yet. Maybe this summer I will. We were there at the perfect time of year too because the beaches were still quite empty , so we were really able to enjoy being there without being crowded out of all the good spots!


And therefore...I was a little more comfortable "doing as the Europeans do" and by that I mean "unleashing the girls," or as Emily called it, "liberating myself."

Though I'll admit that it still took me about an hour and a half and one alcoholic beverage to work up the courage.


Anyhow, I think it goes without saying that going topless on a European beach has to be included on my lifetime checklist....check!

For dinner that evening, we all went to Stefano's house for a cookout. We had a great time! Stefano gave me a bottle of liquor that his family makes, it's green and quite potent. I took it to a party at a friends after I got home from my trip and made everyone try it. It was a bit strong for their liking but my friend Melanie and I drank enough of it for everyone!!