Three Wonderful Days in Rome

I'm back!  I've arisen from the not so dead and am ready to fill the internet with stories of excitement and adventure through my stories of travel.  Please note this was written primarily in 2019.

Through my day job I became fortunate enough to start running education based tours for young people.  As such, I got to go to Rome for free back in January 2018.

It was in late October of 2017 when I was contacted by the company that I use for these tours with an offer for a "training tour".  I was a bit incredulous at first.  I mean, nothing's free, right?  So after they assured me that the tour was in fact free, I had a choice of three European cities to go to.  I chose Rome because I had been to Paris and Barcelona isn't high on my list of destinations.  Also, I'm Catholic so I wanted to see the Vatican.  So Rome it was.

The trip over was normal.  I met several other teachers in Atlanta and enjoyed dinner and drinks with them prior to boarding our plane.  The flight was normal.  No crazy antics, just me, some movies, and Sweet Water 420 (an Atlanta brew and favorite of Delta Airlines).

Arrival in Rome was weird for me.  It had been 20 years since I had last set foot in Europe.  I wasn't used to the strange yet familiar hustle and bustle of a European airport.  We found our guide and were quickly ushered to a random spot in the airport and eventually we were herded to a bus and headed to our hotel.

Italy looks like no other place I've been so far.  The fields look different.  The roads look different and the buildings look different.  It was charming and magical.  Something about that place spoke to me.  Staring out into the distance from our speeding bus, I felt some connection to the place.  It's hard to define it, but it felt...comfortable.

After a quick change of clothes and some freshening up, we off to the Spanish Steps!  We began our tour of the city at the top of these famous steps.  A little side note here, the Spanish Steps are so named due the Spanish embassy to the Vatican located just off the Spanish plaza.  Anyway, we meandered down the steps and into the plaza below.  One of our tasks was to get lunch so I joined a group of ladies and we wandered through the narrow avenues that shot out from the Spanish plaza.  We eventually settled on a little cafe located on a nice little road.  I had bruschetta (slice of French bread with various toppings on it).  It was fantastic.  One had a pesto sauce, one had tomatoes and olive oil and the other had ham.  They were amazing.  It was so good.  I washed it all down with a nice glass of wine (day drinking is acceptable there).  I also had an amazing apple strudel.  So far, I was loving Rome.

After lunch we headed to the Pantheon.  The Pantheon is an old Roman temple and from the descriptions I had read on the internet, I wasn't excited to see it.  I thought "What's so special about it?  Just another old ruin."  Nope.  I was way wrong about it.  First, this place is huge.  Huge and stunningly beautiful.  It's one of those things that just makes you feel small and insignificant.  We rounded a corner and there it was.  Huge.  Majestic.  It projects an aura of greatness.  The inside was a whole different story.  It's hard to convey just what it's like.  It's just immense.  The larges dome in the world makes up the ceiling of this church.  It is just awe inspiring.  I walked away with a totally new appreciation for this wonderful building.

Dinner was at a small pizzeria.  They served us a variety of pizzas and all were great.  I usually don't go for mushroom only pizzas, but it was good stuff.  After several pieces of pizza and glasses of vino, we headed back to our hotel.

Something that I like doing in the countries that I visit is to check out their grocery stores.  I just happened to be lucky enough that there was a grocery store right next to our hotel so a few of us wandered over to have a look.  It was a pretty typical store set up, but the food was different.  I was surprised to see so many frozen things.  I think my impression of European food was that it was generally fresher than what we have here.  But they had frozen pizzas and other convenience foods too.  I think the biggest culture shock was that there was no beer cooler.  The beer was kept out on a normal shelf and was thus warm.

Saturday morning began with a nice breakfast buffet (one of my favorite kinds of buffets) and then several hours of training.  Training wasn't so bad, we did some ice breakers and group building exercises and then talked about leading trips with students overseas.  It was very helpful and informative.

After our morning seminar we were herded back onto the bus and headed to the Vatican.  I entered
the Catholic Church at the Easter vigil mass in 2017, but I had always appreciated Christian art and had always wanted to see the Vatican.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  The art, the architecture, the gardens, everything was spectacular.  We were lucky, Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sisteen Chapel had been restored and was simply spectacular.  It was awe inspiring to see works of art that were created centuries ago by a guy who was in his twenties.  You aren’t allowed to take pictures in the chapel.  I don’t need to.  I will never forget what I saw.  The greatest part of the Vatican was St. Peter’s Basilica.  This was probably the largest church I’ve ever been in.  This place was HUGE!  When you wnter and turn to the right, you see one of the greatest works of art in the world, Michaelangelo’s La Pieta, the Pity.  It’s a statue of Mary cradling the body of Jesus, carved out of a single block of marble.  It was just awe inspiring.

One of the most amazing things about traveling is the human connections you make.  On this trip I became fast friends with several people.  Not a quick, temporary friendship that falls apart once you board your planes back home.  No, we made real, solid connections.  Many of us still talk over a year later.  I met one lady who lived literally right around the corner from me when we were kids.  I had even been swimming at her house before.

When I travel I like to enjoy myself and so I eat and drink whatever I want, I'm on vacation!  This was no exception.  I sought out all the food and drink I could.  I did not taste anything bad while I was there.  That's not to say there isn't bad food there, I just didn't have any.  I had some great lasagna in this little restaurant near the Plaza di Fiori.  Sadly, I did not write down the name of the place.  I also had a pretty good kebab near the Vatican.  I know I know.  Why go to Italy and get kebab.  One, kebab is awesome.  Two, I wanted something fast and cheap.  I didn't want to be late for our Vatican tour.  Another culinary highlight was a simple sandwich I grabbed from a shop near the Colosseum.  It was just meat, cheese and lettuce, but it was very tasty.  Again, I did not record the name of the shop.

The Return Part 3: Where Memories Live

I was back.  I hadn't been here for 22 years.  A lot has changed and a lot had been forgotten.  My memory was blurry about this place.  My wife was asking me a thousand questions on how to get places and where things were.  I had no idea.  I didn't drive when I lived there and only had limited knowledge of the area.

I was inundated with feelings of nostalgia.  I could vaguely remember places and feelings that those places brought back.  It was good to be back.  It was as if I could see the memories walk past us.  Ghosts.

I could see my stepbrother and I as nine-year-olds riding our bikes down little alleys in Imperial Beach.  I could hear the shouts and laughs as my friends and I ran through a deserted tract of land we called "the swamp".  Memories flooded back to me.  Places where we'd go for Navy family picnics suddenly became familiar again.  It was wonderful to be there again.  It felt strangely like home even though it had been almost 30 years since I called it that.

Tuesday, the first full day in San Diego saw us waiting for my cousins to arrive from San Francisco.  They had texted saying that storms back east had caused the cancellation of their flight and they were working to find another flight.  So to kill time I decided to take the family on a little driving tour of the city.  We drove up I-5 to the Coronado Bridge.  That bridge had always been a subject of interest for me and my friends back in the 80s/90s.  It something that we'd beg our parents to do if we happen to be going to Coronado.  My boys enjoyed it too.  It was interesting for me too as I had never driven over it before.  I had always been a passenger.  It was awfully narrow and the locals just zipped past me.  A little unnerving, but not too bad.

The plan had been to take the Silver Strand back south and then go through Imperial Beach and back to the interstate.  However, as we were heading south, we saw signs for the Silver Strand State Beach.  We hopped off the road and decided to hang out at the beach.  It was rather chilly.  The skies were dark and it was windy. We shuffled up the coast picking up pieces of shells and other bits of former sea life.  The boys loved it. It was the younger one’s first time seeing the Pacific Ocean from this side.

The boys loved collecting shells and being chased by the waves.  They played the age old game of waiting for a wave to break and then running away, trying to beat the water.  A day camp was there surfing.  We wandered up and down for a bit, but kept an eye on the clock.  Finally we decided that we had collected enough shells and that we needed to get on the road to pick up my cousins.  But first, a quick detour.

We continued south on the Silver Strand.  The Strand spat us out in Imperial Beach.  It was instantly familiar and yet alien.  I could see vestiges of what it had been.  There were some buildings that had been repainted.  A Taco Bell was now a normal Mexican restaurant.  Streets were the same, but I was largely lost.  I could remember riding my bike down these roads with my stepbrother.  I could see us peddle our way up and down the thoroughfares.  It was home, but it wasn't.  It was familiar, but wholly different.  We made our way through this land of ghosts and got back on the interstate. Twenty minutes later we were making our way through the San Diego airport's parking lot.

My cousins, Mike and Ben, arrived not too long after we did.  After a brief walk back to the car we were on our way to lunch.

Living in Tennessee it's a bit hard to get quality Japanese food.  And the stuff you get is usually sushi, teriyaki and fried pork cutlet.  Not a whole lot of diversity.  So when my cousins suggested that we go to a Japanese restaurant, we jumped at the chance.  Long had I heard about West Coast Japanese food and how great it was.  I was excited.  For our meal we chose Ichiban (literally number one in English).  They had a wide variety on their menu, but the spicy miso ramen caught my eye.  So that's what I got.  It was pretty good.  Everyone else seemed happy with theirs too.

After lunch, we went to Balboa Park.  I remember going here many times when I was a kid.  I remember it stretching on almost forever.  I remember the gullies and the hills and the Spanish influenced buildings.  I remember the awesome museums (and they are pretty cool and I highly recommend them).  It was a thrill to be back.  Memories flooded into my consciousness.  I knew where certain things were or at least their existence.  The boys enjoyed running around and playing in the playground.  We wandered around for awhile and then went to the Natural History Museum.  I really like this type of museum.  It's interesting to see the rocks and the fossils and other things of our planet.  I never tire of going to them.

It was decided that we'd stop by the hotel to rest and get ready for dinner.  Mike has friends in San Diego and we were going to meet one of them for dinner.  I spent the time updating Instagram and mildly dozing off.  The boys rested and so did the wife.

Dinner was pretty fantastic.  We went to this little restaurant and as it happened, it was the Prime Rib special and I love that stuff.  Good food and conversation was had.  The boys did their usual and barely touched their food, which gets pretty annoying because they claim to be two seconds away from starvation and then suddenly their stuffed after one bite of chicken. 

The next day saw us get a late start.  Breakfast was at a local Denny's and it was pretty good.  Service was outstanding and the food was great.  After stuffing our faces, we began our plan of the day:  The San Diego Zoo.

Again, I remember this place fondly.  I remember spending many days there and always having a good time.  I remember the two headed snake that was fascinating and creepy at the same time.