Roman adventure

When I got up yesterday morning, I thought I had my travel plans all set, and except for my usual nerves about whether I would actually get to where I needed to be on time, I looked forward to a smooth trip home. But this is my life, so nothing can be that simple.

My initial plan was to go to the educational sessions at the conference, which I had assumed would all end by 5, get to the train station in time for my trains to the Rome airport, hop a cab to my hotel “near the airport” (about 4 km away), and get a decent night’s rest before my flight out early this morning.

I can make anything into a Gordian knot.

When I got to the conference, the first speaker up was a young professor who had been on our campus for a couple of years before he moved back to Clausthall, Germany, where his girlfriend had a job already. (Economics on our campus meant that she couldn’t get one with us.) Catalin is still with us as an adjunct faculty member and teaches a course almost every semester through our distance learning program. Since we really need professors in drilling, we’re glad to have him on board.

I told him that I had made my plans a little differently from what my Roman friend Gioia had suggested, and I was hoping that the proximity of the hotel to the airport would mean that I could get back and forth to the airport on the 50 euros or so I had left in my wallet. Catalin frowned and said he didn’t think that would be enough, which sent me into a tailspin over how I was going to pay for things. “Keep calm,” I kept telling myself. “Somehow you’ll work this out.”

I felt better after the lunch break when my boss showed up for the afternoon sessions. He had already determined that we’d be on the same train back to the airport, and he was a little jealous that I had gotten tickets all the way through to the airport from Florence by spending a few minutes in a line when his travel agent had told him it couldn’t be done. Around 3:30, he slipped out of the session, telling me he was going to go see if he could get his and his wife’s tickets. She was supposed to meet him at the conference center around 5 so they could reclaim their bags from the “coat room” and we could walk back to the train station together. I was hugely relieved; John is a terrific person, and just being around him calms my nerves.

I couldn’t follow up on his suggestion exactly because my bags here back at my hotel (just a few doors down from the train station; the little hotel I had booked on my own had turned out to be better in several ways than the “recommended” one his wife had found), but I promised to meet him about an hour before the train was supposed to leave.

Our train ran a few minutes late, but we boarded it safely and trudged together through the Roma termine station to the train to the airport, John assuring me all the while that if my hotel was near the airport, it was bound to have a shuttle that would get me to the hotel and back cheap or free; worst-case scenario, surely someone at the hotel could help me get a ride. To say John is a world traveler would be gross understatement; I felt certain that if anybody would know what would happen, John would.

Once we got to the airport, John led us down several long passageways that didn’t seem to be getting us to the exits, so when I spotted an elevator, I pushed a button and got on. That got us down to the taxi/shuttle area, where all the electronic help services seemed to have already gone to bed for the night. I found a man with a “shuttle” sign in his hands and asked how I could get to the address I had from Expedia. He told me I could go in his shuttle for 35 euros (45 if all three of us were going to the same place), but when John said he was going to a different hotel, the man left me with a driver and led John and Phyllis off to their hotel shuttle.

I was a little surprised when the shuttle driver loaded five other people into the minivan, but I figured my nearby hotel would be first on his list, and I’d be in a cozy room soon.  Not so much; he had headed off down a very modern freeway for several kilometers before he said to me, “It will be the same price, but I will take these others first. But I will takeyou to the Pantheon.”

The Pantheon? The ancient-part-of-Rome Pantheon? Back closer to where I had changed trains than to the airport? “Yes, but I will charge you the same price.” Yeah, right, but I’ll starve and I’m already thirsty and I need to go to sleep. The Pantheon?

For several miles, Rome looked an awfully lot like Houston to me—all big freeways and fast cars rather than an ancient city. We turned off at an exit marked “Vatican city,” and I expected it to start looking different. After several miles of boxy-looking structures that looked more rural than urban, we turned down a street that reminded me a lot of Darling Daughter’s neighborhood in Los Angeles, winding up at a hotel tucked into the corner of noplace that seemed meaningful to me. I just wanted to go to sleep.

We wound our way out of that neighborhood and onto a street that looked like downtown Anywhere for a few blocks, then suddenly I realized that the streets seemed wider and more pleasant, but the structures reminded me an awfully lot of Florence. After a couple of blocks, the driver said, “When we go around this curve, look to your left and you will see St. Peter’s dome.” Sure enough, as we rounded the curve, the dome shone like a sun under the bright lights and was absolutely breathtaking. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sleepy anymore. I had already been blue about missing the statue of David in Florence, and I was sorry I hadn’t built in time for Rome. But St. Peter’s Basilica? Just because I didn’t take a taxi? I could deal with this!

We drove on through the neighborhood that reminded me of Florence until he finally turned down a small street where I could see a throng of people crowded into a large plaza, all looking with amazement back toward the building to our left and all amazingly quiet. “This is the Pantheon,” the driver said. To the two women in the back of the van, he said, “I can’t get you closer than this. Your hotel is down on the plaza. When you get down there [a few yards away], you’ll see the McDonald’s—of course; everywhere there’s a McDonald’s—and your hotel is on the right.” “Okay,” they said, and piled out to collect their luggage.

After he had taken care of the other two, he came to my door. “Come here,” he said. “This isn’t the best way to see this. Come over here.” I’m sure I must have been gaping as much as the folks in the plaza if I wasn’t grinning like Carroll’s Cheshire cat (or both), but I did have the presence of mind to realize that I had my camera in my pocket and pulled it out to snap a couple of pictures. I turned around to ask him if he would shoot one with me in it and panicked briefly when I realized he was no longer beside me. I swallowed my heart and checked back in the area where I had left the van and saw him fiddling with some paperwork.

After we left the Pantheon, I asked if we could stop long enough to get me something cold to drink, and the driver said he know a place nearby. I told him I could hardly wait to get home where I could get cokes or tea with a whole cupful of ice; as far as I could tell, people in Italy didn’t understand the concept of “cold.”

He pulled up to a little “bar” that looked to me like the kind of place where cokes would cost twice what I had available, so I asked if he knew of anyplace cheaper. He said he did and pulled back into the road. At the next spot, he asked me what I wanted and told me he’d get it for me. If I was going to stay awake all the way back out to the airport and the hotel, I needed caffeine, so I asked for Diet Coke. “We have something new here called ‘Coke Zero,’” he said. “Have you seen that?” Yeah, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, whatever—as long as it doesn’t have sugar.

He popped into the little dive and came out a minute later with one of each, obviously icy cold because they were sweating in the cool evening air. In his other hand, he had a small cup of ice. “Do you know the phrase ‘hit the spot’?” I asked him. “It means, ‘just what I needed’; and this really hit the spot!”

He smiled and pointed to the right. “We are now going right through the Roman forum,” he said. “And up ahead there is the Coliseum.”  We circled the Coliseum like a dervish, and in quick succession he pointed out the old city wall, an ancient pyramid, the mansion that was the home of the first Italian president, the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral….none of which I would have seen if I hadn’t blindly climbed into this van.

He took a back road back to the hotel that reminded me a lot of driving along Hwy 105 between Navasota and Conroe, eventually pulling down a small street toward the hotel. When we arrived, he said, “This is the site of an old Roman castle.” My hotel?

The front doors were looked and the reception area dimmed, but two signs on the door advised me and another guest to call a number to get the manager to come let us in. My driver whipped out his cell phone and placed the call, then waited with me until I was safe in the manager’s hands. The manager settled into his desk and rifled through my paperwork. “Oh, this isn’t where you are supposed to be,” he said. “You saw the prices on Expedia. You were supposed to be in the country. This isn’t the country; this is the resort. The rooms here are much more expensive. You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “This is the address I got from Expedia, and you had a sign on your door that said this is where I am supposed to be, and I don’t know what you mean by ‘the country.’”

“Oh, the country is over there,” he said, waving his arms farther down the street. “Where are you from? America? You would use acres. We have 600 acres. Your room is there, in the country.” He must have seen the blank look on my face. “But you have such a big suitcase and you will be here for only one night. I think I can find a room for you.” After glancing at his computer, he said, “Ah, yes, I have an apartment you can have. It is near the castle. You can see the castle from your room.” Castle? I can see the castle?

He juggled numbers for a few minutes, then I asked him about getting to the airport in the morning. “I only have 15 euros left,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a taxi. What should it cost?”

“Ah, 28 euros, maybe 30 euros. How much did he charge you?”

“35 euros.”

“Ah, too much. He should have charged you only 30. But don’t worry; the taxi can take your card. I will get you a taxi. What flight?”

Yeah; I could have gone straight to the hotel for 28 euros. Or for 35, I could get in a trip to the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Roman wall....I gave the hotel manager my flight number and he checked an airport website to determine the time I needed to be there. “You should leave at 7:15,” he said.  “I will get you the taxi.”

He dialed two numbers on different cell phones and let them ring several times, then hung them both up. “Let me take you to your apartment. It’s too bad you have to leave so early; you should stay and see it all. We have the castle and a whole Roman town; you should see it. You should see the country. But you can see the castle from your apartment.” Castle?

He swooped out from behind the desk, picked up a wonderful set of keys (two of which looked like shiny new versions of old-fashioned skeleton keys), and grabbed my suitcase. We trudged across the cobblestone parking area and then over a hard clay surface to a door that looked like a miniature version of the large, wooden doors on the front of the hotel that, frankly, looked as if they, too, belonged on a castle.

Inside another door was my “apartment.” Sure enough, it was pretty much what I’d have called a “studio” back home: living area and tiny kitchen downstairs, bedroom and bath with a wonderful European tub, sink, toilet and bidet upstairs.

And, sure enough: outside the window was a castle. I haven’t had internet connections nor time to read the hotel brochure, so I don’t know the history, but I’m definitely going to have to explore this. While I sorted out my stuff to be sure I’d be under the weight limit for baggage, a black cat hopped up on my window sill and made me feel at home. Except just beyond that window was, you know, a castle.

When I left home, the one instruction I got from Number One Son was, “Take lots of pictures.” My eyes flew open at 5:30 this morning, so I bathed  (nice hot water in that  wonderful, deep European tub) and dressed and grabbed my camera. It still wasn’t daylight, so I did the best I could with and without flash to capture everything I could see: the castle, the old Roman street that looked so much like Florence (only with clumping of potplants outside every “apartment”), a church.  As the sun began to rise, I just kept snapping; after all, the taxi wasn’t due yet and the front desk wasn’t open yet, so what else was there to do?

I slipped out across the street to try to find out what “the country” was, but a spot that looked interesting (maybe a stream?) was too well shielded for me to tell. A white van that looked too much like day laborers back home had pulled up in front of the hotel, and I didn’t want to go too far from my baggage with them around, so I mostly hung around in the courtyard. After a bit, the manager’s wife showed up and let me in. She promised to watch my luggage so I could run across the street long enough to snap a couple of pictures of the other side of the castle and what I think must surely be the area her husband had referred to as “the country.”

Back inside, the manager’s wife told me breakfast was served from 7:30 to 10 or so, which really didn’t apply to me, but she fixed me a cup of steaming hot tea and let me grab a packet of melba toast and a cup of yogurt. I had barely opened the yogurt when my taxi arrived.

From there on, the trip was easy.  I had plenty of time in Rome to grab a snack before boarding, in Newark to get through customs, and in Houston to grab a drink with John and Phyllis, who had  come in on a United flight just a little ahead of me.

John's room at the Hilton had never been confirmed, and we had arrived at the airport too late for him to catch their usual shuttle; once he got to his hotel by taxi, he found out that it was full and didn't have room for him and Phyllis. Their alternative was a room at another Hilton that was billed at over 400 euros; he was grateful that they let him have it for 290. Best I can figure, they got settled into their room at the airport Hilton about the same time I got settled into mine.

But they hadn't seen the Basilica, the Pantheon, the Coliseum, or the pyramid.

And they didn't have a castle in their back yard.