As Much As I Can

Back in Siena after an exhausting and yet thrilling weekend in the Eternal City, Rome.  My body is achy and I'm barely awake but I feel that I must start blogging about this weekend so I can try and get it all down.  There was just so much to see/do and we did just about everything.  So here's the plan:  I'm going to start writing about this weekend and keep going till I just about pass out, I'll post it and then follow up with the rest of the story and pictures.  I hope this be cohesive and up to whatever standard I've already set for myself, not that that's a very high bar.  So, here goes.

I had a very small set of goals for this past trip to Rome.  I wanted to see the Colosseum (because of the movie Jumper/because it's the Colosseum), I wanted to see the Tevi Fountain (because of the Lizzie McGuire Movie, feel free to judge), and I wanted to see St. Peter's Basilica (because of Angels and Demons).  Check, Check, and Check.  I also wanted to avoid getting taken, pick-pocketed, or mugged.  Check, check, and check.  Other than that, I figured I'd role with the punches, Rome wasn't built in a day and it certainly wasn't designed to be seen in one or two, so I wasn't going to stress about it...False.  But, I suppose if I'm going to give you a cohesive narrative about this weekend, I should really go back to the beginning.  Thursday.

This past Thursday, we had between 1 and 3 field trips (depending on how you count).  We began in a cookie factory.  This place was absolutely huge!  But, before we got to see it, we had to slip into a hairnet, a gauze jacket, and booties.  Apparently, because they ship their cookies internationally, they're held to different standards of health and need to ensure that we look ridiculous before viewing their magic machines.  And, while I didn't forget my camera, as evidenced by this picture of the outfit, I couldn't get any pictures of plethora of magic machines because it was forbidden.  The guy never really explained why, but I heard grumblings about labels and copyright. It was insane though, there was a machine for everything, but they all needed human help.  I felt like I was in Willy Wanka's factory and I was an oompa loompa, so naturally I started humming/singing the theme song while we saw all the different ways to make cookies and cakes etc. 

It's hard to look thug as an oompa loompa, but I tried my best.

Later, we stopped for lunch in a random town, during which they played only the Beatles.  I was confused.  Though, while I'm not a particularly big Beatles fan when I'm in the US, I was so happy to hear English, that the Beatles were literally music to my ears.  The view from outside the restaurant was absolutely amazing.

One of the courses at lunch.

After lunch, we went to a brewery.  I'm not sure how many of you have been inside the brewery part of a brewery, but it smells terrible.  There are more magic machines, but these ones excrete all sorts of smells, and it's loud, and wet for some reason.  The people working there were all guys.  It was a very different experience than the pristine vineyard where we had the wine tasting.  We had to drive another 4 minutes after seeing the brewery to get to the tasting room.  During which, I was surrounded by girls who didn't want to finish their half glasses of beer that they were tasting, so they'd pour it in my glass.  Somehow, a simple beer tasting turned into around 5 or so glasses of beer, the first of which was really foamy; the second smelled like mangoes, tasted like mangoes, but had a horrible after taste; the third tasted like all of the awesome parts of a water park and had a slightly better after taste, the fourth was a chestnut beer and was actually pretty good, and the last was an aged chestnut beer.  I left the tasting unpleasantly full of beer.  Our teacher really needs to consider people's drinking habits before she allows them on the trip. Each person should be able to abide by the cardinal rule: no wounded soldiers in Italy. 

Later that night, as it was someone on the trip's birthday, we went to El Gringo for dinner and tequila and sangria.  Surprisingly, and upsettingly, the Mexican food in Siena, Italy is better than the mexican food in Lexington, Virginia.  Granted, I avoided the meats, but either way, I was in heaven.  Something other than basil, tomatoes, and olive oil!  We then moved to a coffee bar, then an Irish pub (we were trying to be as cultural as possible) and finally to the most hopping bar in Siena.  I'm not one to party, so I just watched my friends do a few rounds of shots at the last bar as they decided that it was finally time to get to know the locals.  It was 11:45 at night.  By 12:45 we had met a man who had been in the Italian army as a parachuter (he was 34) and one of our girls had decided that she was going to fulfill her goal of kissing an Italian man.  But she got stage fright around the parachuter and decided to ask someone closer to her own age for advice.  Mind you, our train to Rome left in just under 9 hours and was a 45 minute walk away and none of us were packed.  She begged to have 10 more minutes to find a wing woman and spit some game, and challenged the rest of the group to beat her.  No one ended up kissing Italians.  One person did end up getting followed by a lesbian and making out with a guy from Lousiana.  Granted that cannot be confirmed because it happened at 3:30 in the morning, long after I'd gone home.  Unfortunately, at 1:40 when I decided it really was time to go home, I didn't have my key.  When we were leaving early in the night I thought to myself, "hmm, Keaton, should you grab your key?  No, things haven't gone past 1 here ever, and no one has gotten out of hand.  It'll be fine."  False.  The roommie brought his key, but decided to stay out a tad bit later than I would have liked, by roughly 2 hours and change.  I finally managed to get his key on the condition that I let him in when he got home.  So I get home at 1:45, and start to do things to keep myself busy and awake while I wait for him.  I packed and pulled my laundry in off of the clothes line.  While doing that, I dropped some of my shorts onto the clothes line of the floor below me, but I couldn't reach them from the ground.  I ended up trying to knock them down using a bag of recyclable plastic that was from our downstairs neighbors (the ones who's clothes line my shorts were now on).  Instead, I just ended up hitting their window a lot, waking them up, getting laughed at, and having them hand them to me. It was an uncomfortable interaction for any time of day, let alone 2 AM. I ended up falling asleep at 2:30, waking up at 3:30 just before the roommie got home.  I let him in, and tried to fall back asleep.  It wasn't until around 4:30 that I could fall back asleep.  About 4 hours later, I woke up, finished packing and headed on the way to Rome.  The roomie did the same, but at a much slower pace, for obvious reasons.

I was shocked at how tired I wasn't.  I was equally shocked at how easily we managed to get into Rome.  A swift transition from bus to train and boom ROME!  I was so excited.  All we had to do was take the metro to our hotel, check in, drop our bags off, come back into the city and start site seeing.  But, as the saying goes, even the best laid plans can be ruined by European unions.  The Italian metro workers were on strike.  But not for the whole day, just from 5-8 AM, 10 AM-5 PM, and 8 PM to the end of the day.  So we had a 3 hour window during which we could actually get to the hotel (which we still weren't sure would be a decent hotel).  But, even 5 PM was still 3.5 hours away.  So what were we to do but wander around Rome carrying our back packs?  In fact, we happened to wander to the Roman Forums!  And here is where I think the story has to stop because my eyes are closed and I'm just typing, assuming that words are coming out right.  Cheers to the daily adventure.