Friday, 4/11/03
It's 4:30pm, we have just gone through Pompeii, and I'm running on a scattered hour and a half of sleep. Nevertheless, today has been a wonderful day and an adventurous night.
Dixie, Kate and I left Castiglion Fiorentino on the 10:22 train to Rome. Not far into the train ride an Italian guy opened the door of our box and started talking to Dixie. She tried to pretend she didn't know Italian and told him to go away, but he'd heard Kate and Dixie practicing Italian in the train station so he knew she spoke some. He kept asking if we were going to Rome and telling her he'd take her to a five star hotel. Then Kate started trying to tell him to go away, but he got mad. He ended up slamming the door, flipping Kate off, then banging on the window again. Dixie was really shaken. When the conductor walked by, we told him that the guy was bothering us, so he made him move to another car.
The rest of the time I sang Les Miserables songs to Dixie and Kate because they'd seen the show in London, as well as Phantom of the Opera. Then, while Dixie read a magazine, Kate and I sang every song from The Sound of Music, adding emotion with our arms. We even tried to go the gazebo bench dance on the seats, but there wasn't enough room (there wasn't anyone else in our car). Then we sang what we knew from Mary Poppins and then The Little Mermaid.
When we got to Rome we made a huge mistake. We thought the first stop in Rome was the central station so we got off and the train left, leaving us stranded on the outskirts of the city. There were a ton of homeless people asleep on the floor, and it was dirty and scary, so we caught a taxi to Roma Termini and wasted €4 each. At 1am they kicked us out of the Roma Termini, so we were on our own. We picked a random road, found a beautiful fountain, then continued down a long road until we happened to come to the wedding cake! [Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II] We were excited because we wanted to say we had spent the night in Michelangelo's piazza on Capitoline Hill. We got really comfortable at the foot of the statue at the top of the steps, right under the horse's behind, but after an hour or so it got a tad too chilly so we walked toward the forum, then eventually back to the train station. We had felt really safe in Michelangelo's piazza because there were police cars patrolling all over and were pretty much parked in the square.
Saturday, 4/12/03
My hands are numb because it's chilly and moist outside. At this moment we are in a wine bar, S. Nicola. It's a nice restaurant, but I'm not eating anything. I'm very full.
So yesterday morning at 4:30am we got back into the train station. There was a lady that also went in when we did. She was wearing tennis shoes and jeans, a scarf on her head, and a long black coat over what I assumed was her backpack. I didn't know immediately if she was homeless.
Monday, 4/14/03
2am--Roma Tibertine Station. Who would've thought I'd be back in this homeless shelter spending the night? Long story, but it's been one of the greatest memory-making weekends ever.
So, back to 4:30am on Friday. I immediately suspected that woman was following us. She didn't say anything, but just kept putting her sunglasses up and down. It was confirmed she was following us when we went downstairs to try to find a restroom, and she was two feet behind us. Dixie's mom called at that moment so we were moving rather slow. Finally, when we couldn't find an open restroom, Kate said, "Dixie, get off the phone. That lady is following us." Then the woman called Kate "Judith" and burst out with, "I WILL follow you." We paused for Dixie to put her phone away and the woman was in front of us, staring intensely at Kate's bag. I expected at any moment that she would grab Kate's wrist and start pulling on her.
We walked quickly to where there was a station worker on one of those little cars, and put a little distance between us and her, but she came waddling up and said, "Nice man. I WILL MURDER YOU. And it's your birthday." That really scared me and I think the worker got the picture from my look, so he called her, "Signora, Signora." She spoke promptly to him in fluent Italian and we ran up the stairs and got out of there. For the next 15 minutes we were peeking around corners to make sure she wasn't there. It really freaked me out when she spoke in English, but Kate figured she said the only phrases she knew. Later in Pompeii, Dixie and I argued about whether that woman or the guy on the train was scarier. She thought the guy, I thought the woman.
So we went into a cafe in the train station and hung out until our train to Napoli got there. We must have slept because I don't remember the trip. Unfortunately, the train didn't take us to central station, so we had to catch the circumvia to that station, then another one to Pompeii. I was surprised it was so close to Naples; it took us an hour to get there, but there was no break in the city between.
When we got off the train there was a strip of street vendors, some with the biggest lemons I've ever seen in my life. There were some about 5 or 6 inches in diameter. I bought a delicious tomato, mozzarella, and ham panino because I hadn't eaten at the train station. Then I bought a guidebook to Pompeii, because Valerie had told me it was better than getting an audio guide. The whole time I was looking through the book, I was thinking, "Am I going to be cheated by this?" But because I didn't have the brainpower for the decision, I went ahead and bought it.
Pompeii on 2 hours of sleep! We loved it. My guidebook turned out to be really useful; it had a map and descriptions of most of the buildings. At first we just randomly cruised through the forum, down to the theaters, and to the arena. By then, Dixie and Kate were hungry because they hadn't been smart like me and gotten panini. So then my map came in extremely handy, as we wanted to see the Garden of the Fugitives.
Break--Ken just said that he heard that "scaffolding is breathtaking in the morning sun." He wants to go see the Church of 2000 by Richard Meier, but it would be a huge hassle to get there, and we all pretty much want to go home at six in the morning.
Back to Pompeii. We took a long time to find where the "dead" people were, partially because we took detours to villas with beautiful gardens. The plaster casts in the Garden of the Fugitives were extremely small. I don't know if the people were really that small, or if somehow the plaster wore down. We were amazed when we could actually see the pelvis of a child sticking out through the plaster. So Dixie said that apparently Pompeii and Ercolano (Herculaneum) were sort of a "Sodom and Gomorrah," as evidenced by the postcards from the brothel, which I'm grateful we didn't make it to. Also, the streets of the city ran with water and trash. the people actually walked on higher sidewalks along the roads, and occasionally there was a big hump, a dam-like structure across the road for the people to cross. The horses and carts, I suppose, just had to walk through the sewage. We spent 4 1/2 hours in Pompeii, pretty good for 3 girls who didn't get any sleep the night before.
It took us 2 hours on the bus to get from Pompeii to Amalfi, even though it was just on the other side of a mountain. It took forever to wind up the mountain, then down the other side. When we got off the bus the owner of our "hostel" met us. His name is Willie. We found out a little late that he runs a kind of shady place. It's not "Willie's hostel", but we are "friends of Willie's". Legally we're not supposed to pay money to stay there because he doesn't have a license. Therefore, they don't have to pay the taxes. We rode the bus up the hill to the bottom of an enormous set of steps that probably added up to the same number as the lantern of St. Peter's.
I forgot to mention that Willie randomly talks to strangers on the street. That's how we found out about him, Alli and her crew had been staying near Amalfi earlier in the semester, had met Willie, and Dixie got the info from them. Willie is quite the entrepreneur. He just opened his own pub and encourages his "friends" to go there. He's originally from Manchester, England, supposedly moved to Italy 8 years ago (he claims he's 26, but looks a little older). His grandmother left him this house and he and his brothers have been running the hostel there. It's basically a bachelor pad. There's a kitchen where anyone can cook, two inside rooms with beds, then downstairs with an outside entrance, is the room where we stayed. No heat.
Next to us was "the dungeon" where Chris, Willie's brother, and the other people who work there sleep. It's called "the dungeon" because it has no door, only a curtain. There's one bathroom next to the kitchen, then a toilet outside the dungeon with just a shack of a wooden roof over it. The thing about the bath was that there was only 6 liters of hot water per day, so we were limited to 2-3 minute showers. In our beds we had clean sheets, or one clean sheet. No oversheet, just a big comforter, directly against us, and who knows how many people before. They were warm, though. Friday we kept in touch with Marty, Ken, Kelly, and Maari, who were in Rome and decided to come down too. They ended up sleeping in tents outside the house in the lemon grove.
Saturday morning I went out without my contacts to use the restroom, and nearly stepped on a rooster.
Even though Kate and Dixie didn't get up until noon, I had lain awake since 8am, feeling nasty and uncomfortable with my lack of privacy. It was cloudy outside on Saturday, had rained that morning, but was in the process of clearing up. The tent crew had left early to go to Pompeii, so we were on our own. I forgot to describe Friday night. Dixie and Kate went to the bar to wait for Marty's crew, but I stayed behind to catch up in my journal and go to sleep at a decent hour. I met a guy from Amarillo, Dan, and ended up talking to him for a really long time. He is studying at Cambridge and had a month off to travel before his finals. We just talked about random things. He was probably just wanting to talk to a friendly face. He had been backpacking alone for a few weeks.
Saturday the three of us girls sat on the pier for a couple of hours while the weather cleared. We talked to a guy who was also staying at Willie's with some girls. He woke up that morning with his head sticking mysteriously outside his tent.
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