I've been working full time for several months now, and that's been rather dull compared to cycling through Europe where I didn't know what lay up the road, where I'd stay each night or who I'd meet, and now every day is largely the same, a long slog of 8 hours in the office. So I'm going to take myself back to Europe momentarily by revisiting those memories through writing this blog. The problem is though, that since it's been 6 months since I got back from Europe, the memories have very much faded, so I'll just keep on rambling like this for a while...Hmm, what else can I ramble about? That's about it, I might as well get into it, where was I?
Rome, did I hear you say? Oh yes, that sounds about right.
I guess these posts will be much less detailed than previously, due to the memories having faded. I do now have the luxury of a real key board, as opposed to the iPhone, and I also have the photos from my point-and-shoot Canon Ixus 85IS, as opposed to just the ones from my iPhone. I've checked how many photos I have, and unfortunately not too that many, you often look back and wish you'd taken more photos, I find.
So I just read my previous post as a refresher. Now I remember where I was at. And I just checked my iPhone, luckily I already started writing this post, so I can copy and paste it.
Tuesday November 30
Donato and Daniella returned at probably 6 am, but not sure because they barely woke me up. What did wake me up was a loud protest a little later in the morning. At first I didn't know what was going on, I could hear whistle-blowing, chanting in Italian, people with megaphones leading the chants, and everyone cheering after certain things were said. With these clues a figured out it was a protest, but had no idea what it was about. I found out later that it was to protest against the Italian Government reducing funding to the higher education sector and student benefits, and privatising the system. I was also reading Rosie's blog today (undersienasun.blogspot.com, this blog is much easier to keep up with than mine since she posts less frequently and her posts have less detail). Anyway, she mentioned that she just took part in a similar protest in Siena, and that the lecturers have been frequently going on strike. I guess there must be similar protests going on across the country.
I'd normally be in support of these protests, I'm all for student/higher education support and I liked being able to go to the Mensa (student food place) in Siena with Rosanna and getting a full meal for only €2, I reckon that was great.
But on this occasion, the protest was right outside my window (or rather Donato's window) and this made for a real annoyance since it was difficult to sleep, so from a selfish aspect I didn't appreciate it.
When I later actually woke up properly, I couldn't believe it was 12:30 pm! Definitely time to get up. Daniella was also getting up but Donato was still fast asleep.
I packed up, said ciao, loaded my bike up downstairs and headed off. The first thing to do was to find some milk and eat breakfast, which I did.
Then I found some Wi-Fi and looked up hostels under shelter because it was still raining, and wrote down several addresses this time. I eventually decided on "Hostel Alessandro Downtown" because they offered a free "pasta party" each weeknight. I rode there and booked in for the night, and carried my bags into the 8 bed dorm.
Then with the 10 or so minutes of daylight left, I headed back outside into the rain to do some sight-seeing. Actually I just wanted to go and see the Colosseum. Of all the sites in Europe, I guess this was one of the ones I most wanted to see. It didn't take long to get there on the bike. It was pretty cool, when it came into view I was like "wow". I was finally seeing this thing I'd seen in so many pictures and not just pictures from the text book I used to study Italian at school. I had a good look at it then rode back to the hostel.
The dorm was really big, and there were only two other people in there (out of 8 beds) who turned out to be a young Hungarian couple. I talked to them a little, but mostly they talked to each other in Hungarian. It's so different to English; I couldn't understand any of it. With Italian or French or Spanish or German I can at least understand a few words, but not so with Hungarian.
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| The Colosseum! Taken with the iPhone, which turned out to producer a warmer, less sharp image. |
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| The Colosseum, taken with the Canon Ixus |
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| A famous arch beside the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine. |
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| The Colosseum, looks a bit spooky. |
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| The Colosseum |
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| The serving of "pasta party" pasta at the hostel. |
I also found out the Hungarian girls name was Christian. Imagine if I'd asked her "what's your Christian name?"
She would have said "Christian", and I would have been like "ah yeah, you know, first name?"
She would have repeated "Christian"
I would have said "yeah, that's right, your Christian name," and she would have replied as though talking to a toddler "my first name is Christian!"
And I would have been like "yeah, that's right, so we say "what's your Christian name?""
Probably at this point she would have given up and said her name was Anna.
But no, that didn't happen, and of course her name was Christian, and she was studying a course at the university in Budapest to do with looking after young disabled people.
The problem with this hostel was that the common rooms (doubling as the dining rooms) weren't very good, just two little rooms with tables but no couches. And most people didn't hang around long. This makes it harder to meet people. I think the common room has a big effect on the atmosphere and vibe of a hostel, and since I'm traveling on my own, I want to meet people, and therefore want a hostel with a good common room.
I headed back to the dorm, I was so tired that I could have gone to sleep right then at 8 o'clock. But I decided to prepare for the next day by going to refill my drink bottles in the kitchen. There I came across a Brazilian fellow going by the name Pabolo, he'd come in to make a cup of tea. He reckoned he was on exchange for the semester, studying in Ales, southern France, and he was just traveling round for a few weeks while on a break. He'd just come from Edinburgh where he said it was snowing really heavily. They'd had 30 cm of snow, the most in 17 years, and they had to close the airport. This meant Pabalo's flight to Rome was cancelled and not rescheduled. So he and his mate and two others decided to hire a car and drive to London. He said it only cost them £40 each, including fuel. Then he caught a plane from London to Rome.
After that I had a shower, then surfed the net (Facebook and Twitter, you know, the usual, to keep up with what's happening in the world and in my social network), and did some blogging before going to sleep.
Ride Stats:
Distance: 7.90 km
Average: 8.4 km/h
Maximum: ?
Time: 56:09
