Ben Murrell

As promised, I’m now transcribing my journal from the trip onto my blog. On my first day, I just made a bulleted list of stuff I did and people I met – for the rest of the journal I wrote out paragraphs/pages each day. I’m going to go ahead and translate the bullet points into a paragraph for this post

I landed at 8:00am on 05/21/2009 – my flight left from Atlanta at 4:15pm. I managed to sleep about two hours while sitting by two crying babies in the middle of the middle section of the Airbus A330-300. In spite of how much I slept, I didn’t feel tired at all – the excitement of being in Rome kept me going all day. The first thing I did was pull some money out of the ATM.

My first euros

The ATM’s in Europe are much more interesting than the ones in the USA – they give 5′s, 10′s, 20′s, 50′s, and 100′s! It was always a surprise to see what I’d get when I pulled money out. I rode the train from the airport to the main train station in Rome (Termini) and found my hostel which was literally across the street from the train station. I had booked one night there from KC before I left so I’d know I had a place to stay for my first night away from home. I stayed in Pop Inn which ended up being a good and a bad thing: I was right by the public transport hub, but it was noisy at night and there was no AC so we had to leave the windows open. It turns out you can sleep through anything after a bit of drinking though

After I checked into my hostel, I got tortured with a blow torch I started walking to the Colosseum. It took about 20 minutes to get there… I rounded a corner and I could see a bit of it between two buildings. It was amazing. That’s when I really realized I wasn’t home anymore – I was in Rome, traveling. The whole day sort of went like this – I’d see something really awesome and be semi-euphoric, then I’d crash and start to think, “Oh my god, I’m here, alone, I’m lonely, what in the hell have I gotten myself into for the next 10 days.” I started to get around the feeling of loneliness in a few ways: I started talking to my video camera, I started asking people to take my picture, and I just smiled.

Me and the Colosseum

Anyways, I made my way to the Colosseum, got some water, then got in line to enter the Roman Forum. I wandered the ruins for a few hours with an audio guide, then I headed over to the Colosseum. I grabbed a panini along the way and ate it on the steps of the Colosseum. I took a tour of the Colosseum which was interesting, but for me the big pull of the Colosseum was just seeing it from the outside. The inside was neat, but I probably would have been fine just staying outside and walking around it. The tour ended around 5:00 and I started to walk back to my hostel. I was tired and thirsty so I decided it was time to figure out how to ride the metro/subway. I went into the Colosseum metro station and bought a ticket and rode the metro back to the Termini station quite painlessly. Rome only has two metro lines and they connect at Termini, so it was a good place to learn how to ride the metro.

When I got back to my hostel, I had to get the key to my room (it was too early when I checked in in the morning). This took a while, but when I finally got it, I went back into my room and unpacked some of my stuff. While I was unpacking I met Matt and Manny, two guys in my room from Connecticut. It was their last night in Rome and they were going to be catching a ferry to Athens the next day. Meeting them basically set the tone for the rest of my trip – they were really friendly and shared lots of good info with me about riding trains, taxis, places to stay, things to see, etc. They invited me to go out with them that night, and I went and took a shower. When I got back, another guy had gotten into the room (Lonnie). Lonnie was an older guy that seemed young – it was his divorce trip basically. We all left after everyone was ready and went to a bar right by the hostel where they spoke no English. Had a few drinks there, then headed out to find the Travestere area where there was supposed to be a lot of cheap food/drinks and things to do. We took the bus out to Travestere and had dinner. During dinner we met an Italian lady that let us try her food, she was really nice.

Me in the Roman Forum with the Arch of Septimius Severus

After dinner, we walked out to the bar area and went into a bar where two Italian guys were singing American songs with terrible accents. Naturally, we started belting it out… naturally. It got boring after a while so we left and ended up on the Travestere Steps. While we were on the steps, I got my first taste of gypsies constantly trying to sell stuff to people. Stuff like roses, glow sticks, necklaces, and way overpriced beer. We hung out on the steps for a few hours and I met a Spanish guy (Alejandro) who I got to speak Spanish with a little bit. He was in Rome for the Barcelona/Manchester soccer match that was taking place in a few days. I met his girlfriend and his Italian friend, Ruis. To get home, we took a taxi. Our plan was to not expose the fact that we spoke English and just say “Termini!” over and over to avoid being ripped off. It was funny, but I think the guy figured us out, – the fare was still pretty cheap to get home. When we got home, we saw two guys fighting and detoured around them then got some late night pasta and went to sleep around 3am. When we were getting to bed, we woke up the other two guys in our room who ended up being from Singapore (Daniel and Oscar)… oops!