19. Well, I Live in Rome Now, So, Toodles!

I've been in Rome for literally 3.5 hours, and I am in loooove!

From the free chocolate after the flight, to the taxi driver who knew I didn't speak Italian but let me swoon to it while he described Rome to me, to the best fried cheese and lasagna ever, and to the two hilarious men who I chatted with while eating that food who shared theirs with me and told me exactly what was the best off of the menu.

I reserve the right to change this grandiose mindsets slightly when I see and experience other people and places in the daylight, but I have a feeling I'll feel pretty darn close to the same!

Today has been a bit of a chopped up day, from one country to another, speaking neither language and figuring out airport transit in both languages that I don't speak. 

I'll do a recap of Berlin today, and then bounce back to Roma!

So I went to bed last night and realized that I'd not recently checked the check-out time for the place I was staying. At 2am, with my fingers crossed that it was a noon check-out, I saw that it was 10am. Poo. My flight wasn't until 5:45pm, and what in the hell was I going to do for eight hours?! I decided to set my alarm for 8:30am, and text the woman nicely to ask if she'd be open to letting me check out at noon. After some back and forth over language confusion, I realized that she said yes. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth! I got to go back to sleep, got up at 10:45am, and began getting ready to go. I was already packed, so it was just the trying to look like a human again after a night of sleep, and getting my butt out the door. 

I did all those things, and then realized I still had many hours to kill. I walked across the street to the place I showed a picture of earlier on (will repeat it below), and got a delicious salad. As I left, I got two of these deliiiiicious pastries that I'm genuinely not sure how I'm going to live without!

Okay that's a bit dramatic, but they are soooooo good! The flakiness pastry I've ever had and they're lemony and creamy inside!

(they're very tiny, though they may looks the size of croissants, they're the size of mini-croissants... yes, I fear your judgement on this one! lol)

Then I walked around a mall for a bit, and decided to make my way to the airport. The flight was delayed about a half hour, which ended up being about 45 minutes so I took my time getting there. I was walking to the metro and I found this very cool art installation that I'd seen while in a cab on my way into town just after arriving. It was this giant card house installation, and I Googled it multiple times over my trip to see if I could find where it was. Turns out I still couldn't tell you, but I accidentally walked by it as they were taking it down today. The world works in mysterious ways!

It was for sure not an installation to just have cards there for fun... this one shows a dude have a cupping treatment done! Random!

From there it was the airport, where my bag was searched yet again, as it or I have been at every security check since the beginning of this trip. I'm not a novice packer, I know what's up, so I'm not sure what's going on, but fine, as long as they let me through, which they all do pretty immediately.

I hadn't left enough time, apparently, to get a good seat on the flight, because my knees were literally in the back of the person in front of me because 24 hours ahead isn't long enough to secure myself an emergency exit (ie. more legroom) seat. 

It was.... not ideal. Two hours of leaning forward because it could relieve some of the knee pain. I'll be checking in as soon as possible next time. Heads up on Air Berlin, lovely people, got me here safely (definitely the most important part), but even shorter people were struggling with their legs.

We arrived and after walking for a long time through the airport (quite happily) I arrived at the taxi line... of over 150 people. Yeah! That's right, the line was very long, and I have never seen so many cabs lined up either. It took about 30 minutes for it to be my turn, and then it was Italian taxi driver time, as I eluded to at the beginning of the post.

He-was-adorable! I want him to be my older guide to life forever and in Italian for always. He was lovely, and can we have a moment for the Italian language?

It's like someone has baked you a perfect cake, iced it with the best icing you could imagine, then added rainbows, gold and genuine smiles, and mushed all of that up into a language. I have very little clue as to what he was saying, but it is the stuff that dreams are made of (much like my soon-to-be-a-real-thing cake I've just described)!

Finally I arrived at the AirBNB place to the woman I'm renting from standing and waiting for me. Points earned right there. Then she took me inside, showed me literally everything, and guys, she brought me breakfast for tomorrow because she knew I wouldn't be able to do groceries tonight because nothing was open. COME ON, she's the best!!!

We chatted for a bit, and perhaps the second best thing to the Italian language itself is the Itialian accent applied to English words. I can't. I just wanted to hug her because of how adorable and wonderful she was / is.

Then she took me for a quick walk of the neighbourhood to point some places out, and I am soooooo excited to check it all out tomorrow when it's all open! And that's just two blocks around me, not the entirely of Rome that I have four full days to enjoy! 

She pointed out a place simply called Trattoria, and so after we parted ways, I went there. Nervously, of course, because this is not tourist Rome, this is Roman people Rome, and the chances that people will be over the moon about having to speak English to the chick from Toronto were very small. 

Anyhoo, I learned how to say "Table for one, please" in Italian, and it half worked, lol. Whatever, at least I tried.

I sat down, it was around 10pm tonight, and I was tired. And hungry. And tired of being hungry. I ate way too much, but if this is what Rome is going to be about, it's going to continue to happen!

The first thing is deep friend mozarella.... I had maybe four of the blobs (which I'm sure they'd be happy to hear me call them!), and I was toast. The rest are in the fridge waiting for me to make some part-two bad / delicious choices tomorrow. 

The second is clearly lasagna, and... I need a moment.

Talk amongst yourselves...

It was so effing good. Like almost bathe in it so effing good. And this was my first meal! I haven't even seen daylight and this is the best Italian good I've ever had!

To top it off, the guys next to me, a man maybe 60 and his younger counterpart struck up a conversation with me when they noticed I was pretty bad at Italian. They didn't say that, but, you know. They told me that I simply had to get the deep fried mozarella, and that the pizza was amazing. Of course it would be!

The cool / hilarious part was when their food arrived, and the insisted that I have a piece before they did. So, I had a small piece of this delicious bread thing, and then one of their cheese ball things... that's when I knew what I was in for!

Anyhow, now I'm full of cheese, hanging out in a wonderful apartment in Rome, and soon to be dreaming of tomorrow and the adventures that I certainly hope it holds. 

I'm heading to bed, it's been a long day, and I will be back tomorrow with some great stuff, even if it's all just pictures of food, which let's be honest, most of this blog has been anyway, lol.

Night, folks!