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| Rome, Italy |
I love Rome. It's big with lots of people and energy, kind of like New York. Unlike New York, there are *giant* fountains, statues, and ancient structures everywhere. Kelly and I semi-lucked into a great deal on a hotel, too. €70 (woo hoo, I found the Euro symbol!) a night including A/C, breakfast, TV - great price for Rome. So far all we've done is eaten and shopped. Kelly agrees Rome is great, but didn't think so the last time she was here. I asked her why she thought that was. She said, "Maybe it was the fact that as soon as we left the train station an Italian guy told us (in broken English) 'I wanna f*&% you in the ass!' and then the next night our room was robbed." Whatever, she doesn't have to be so negative.
I forgot to mention in my previous post that there is one thing that trumps my sometimes hatred for shopping, and that's ridiculous bargains. We stumbled across Kelly's favorite fashion emporium, Zara, which she didn't even know existed in Rome. They had a men's section as well. Everything was around €10. It was creepy awesome. The price would be marked as you would expect, at around €50 or so, and then it would say 70 or 80 percent off, and the total would be between €9 and €13. Kelly was deciding whether to try on a dress, and she assumed the discount was €12 off. When I showed her it was €12 *total* she said, "That settles that one!" She ended up getting it. I also bought a nice button down shirt and funky colored pants, for a total of €21. I find it's better to buy clothes when I find the deal, versus when I need them. That way I usually spend about a fifth of what I would have. The occasional purchase like this is how I keep my wardrobe from stagnating, which would be all too easy for me.
Kelly and I hit the once a week open air market today. It's an Italian Kobey's Swap Meet (analogy for those from San Diego). It had a host of legitimate stores, as well as a section run entirely by gypsies (whose women all had gold teeth...cREEPy). It also had quite a good many illegal brand-name knockoff salesmen. We had seen hoards of these guys the night before as well. They have black duffel bags (which match their skin color...it's all Africans who have this job here) full of Gucci bags and Yves St. Laurent sunglasses. None are real, and you can get them for cheap. The interesting part comes when a police car is spotted or heard. A wave of subtle hand gestures and verbal signals ripples through the whole row of them, and they quickly begin packing their stuff back into the duffel bags. This happened while we were there, but it became apparent the cops were there for someone else, so we didn't get to see them dart off with their duffels, which Kelly said she has witnessed before. It's such an interesting system. I long to understand the behind-the-scenes of the whole operation, just like I'm really curious about the inner workings of casinos (but that itch has been scratched by many TV networks). Someone needs to make a documentary about fake Gucci salesmen and gypsies.
I need to take a time out and plug my iPod and Etymotic earphones. Neither is cheap, but the combination is making my vacation. I have my entire CD collection, plus dozens of audiobooks I got from the library all in the iPod. I'm also copying the pictures we've been taking (full size ones, and videos too) onto the iPod with a Belkin device I bought, which is how we're able to take so many pictures for 5 months without deleting them. The Etymotics are earphones and earplugs all in one, so they completely block out noise on planes, trains, or wherever, leaving me engulfed in whatever I'm listening to. I can now actually make that crying baby shut up. One of the biggest pluses I hadn't even realized until I got here is that I can now "read" in the car, bus, or train via audiobooks. I can't read real books because I get extremely car sick.
