I have been in Rome for 20 minutes and Im scurrying around the Leonardo Da Vinci airport cursing Italians and attempting to communicate the specifics of my distress to heavily armed angry looking tourist-hating police folk through the medium of mime. 15 minutes ago I remember looking down at the plastic itinary folder in my hand and thinking ‘I had better put my passport someplace safer, that’s about to fall out’. So the fact that I went on to NOT put it someplace safer and consequently looked down at my plastic itinary folder 2 minutes later to find it empty was a source of some considerable mental self-flagellation for me. Fortunately I had managed to make it all the way through Rome passport control before ditching my only real item of importance somewhere en-route to the taxi stand, so I wasn’t stranded in the airport. And after spending an hour searching I leave my details with the Police and dejectedly head out to the taxi stand. Obviously I have long ago missed my uber cheap pre-booked shuttle to the hotel, and am sardine’d into a crowded taxi for the extortionate rate of 40 euros (nearly 4 times more than I was originally set to pay) and spend the journey making calls between my long-suffering travel agent Edward, the British Embassy, and Jay - my on-off lover back in England who is too nice to tell me to bugger off when I get stranded in strange places (it happens more often than it ought) and need someone to make phonecalls or negotiate travel routes on my behalf. By the time I get to the hotel I have done all I can do and am resolved to enjoying my trip and not allowing this issue to impact upon my currently rather surprisingly composed manner. As I approach the concierge desk of the Hotel Cilicia he looks up and smiles warmly at me as he asks for my name and for my passport please….!
….
5 minutes later I am apologising profusely to said concierge whose name is Ferrncio and who is really quite lovely. He accepts my driving license as room validation, and smiles at me in much the same way one smiles at a child who is trying to fit a lego brick in their ear as he pours me a glass of wine and upgrades my room privileges to all-inclusive. He introduces me to the hotel driver who chauffeurs me to my tour of the evening “Dinner and Music and Rome at Night Tour”. The tour guide had a heavy accent and I learnt sod all but I tasted Swordfish for the first time, which I didn’t hate.
The next day is a more comprehensive tour of Vatican City, the Colloseum and the Pantheon. For me the Colloseum was the highlight of my time in Rome. Obviously I have always known what it looked like; Its on TV more often than Samuel L Jackson. But in the stone it is truly awesome in the most original definition. In the words of Douglas Adams “(Its) big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to (this)…”
Im back at the hotel for 90 minutes before poodling out to my “Dark Heart of Rome” Tour. In this time Ferrncio comes to my room and advises me that the police have called for me (always a reassuring start to any message) and advises me my passport has been found. Relief. Massive relief.
The Dark Heart of Rome Tour was actually a very interesting walk-around covering the legends and some of the darker history of Rome. I possibly learnt more in this cheap tour than I did in any of the others. I will probably write the stories Ive learnt with the relevant photos on my facebook as I get round to it. I caught a taxi from the Castel Sant’Angelo where the tour ended, and the driver turned out to be the most persistent horn-hound of a man I have ever met. He pulled over twice against my objections with the intention of taking us both to a coffee house. I told him to keep going each time and finally got back to the hotel, unraped, by just after midnight. Saturday night on holiday and Im stone cold sobre, refusing free sex, and going to bed at roughly the same time the locals are having dinner. Buckle yourselves in boys, this one cant be tamed!It’s the next morning and Im now done in Rome. Its been pleasant, the people have been very kind, Ive kept my time here very full and I have learnt a lot. But as I zip up my luggage and cast my eye over the eerily tidy room for anything I might be about to leave behind I feel that familiar pang of being about to leave a place I will most likely never return to again. And Im never to see Ferrncio again, which is ever so slightly sad. Living life in the way that I do, I fairly often meet good people who have all the pre-requisites to becoming quite important and positively lifechanging for me, if only we had the longevity to allow for it. But such is life. I wish them all well.
At least there is solace to be found in the fact that I am not relegated to the journey home just yet.
2 hours later Im sitting beneath the flashing Departures board in the Leonardo De Vinci airport. I have a tedious 2 hour wait ahead of me so Ive bought a notebook, which is why I am writing this blog. I got myself to the airport early in order to collect my passport and minimise the anticipated ‘We don’t have it’ issues. They did though! Yay! Italian police get ever so nervous when you hug them by the way. Did you know they carry guns out there??
Am on the plane to Venice now. Plane bursts down the runway. Stomach meets spine. And all too late I remember that this is an internal flight which means the pilot is in all Likelihood Italian. Ive seen how they drive. Im almost certain to die.
Anyhoo, byebye Rome. Oh look, the airport is practically next to the sea. For as long as it takes for us to U-turn over the water I stare down at the waves in my customary hopelessly optimistic aspiration that I might someday see a shark fin or a huge dark shadow under the water. Today is not that day. Land. Boring. Back to my writing.
Its 8pm on my first night in Venice and all my money now belongs to a Gondolier called Tomas (Or so I persisted in calling him throughout the journey. Sod knows if that actually is his name. In hindsight I don’t actually remember him telling me his name, but by the time I recalled that l’il nugget of information I had called him Tomas too many times to make it worth backtracking. I think he liked Tomas anyway. I’d wager the deed-pole office was his very next stop after dropping me off)
Gondola rides are expensive anyway, but when some dappy tart marches herself from one end of Venice to the other before realising her little ankles cant possibly take anymore, the price rockets. Its meant to be a circuit, y’see. Like a rollercoaster. You get picked up at the station, you go for a ride, then you get dropped off at the station for a swoon-worthy 80-90 euros. 150 euros gets you transported back to your hotel. I was going to haggle but it did turn out to be pretty damn long journey. Overpriced it most certainly was, but overpriced compared to what other people pay - not so much.
***By the way, anyone who puts a value on personal space should not underestimate the power of a honking wheezing cough. I don’t feel ill at all, but I still have enough goo on my lungs from my previous chest infection to choke up a right wheezer and it is BRILLIANT for getting yourself an immediate couple of meters. Great for manoeuvring through a crowd, scaring off queue jumpers, and repelling lecherous men.***
Its my last morning in venice but I still have a full day here. The motorboat will be picking me up outside my hotel at 8pm, and I have a tour booked at 2.30 to visit the 3 islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello. The rest of this trip I have been fine but for some reason I woke up this morning thinking of ‘him’ again and coupled with the pain in my legs from my previous walking Im finding it hard motivating myself to leave the hotel. It doesn’t help that the sky is grey, and the tourists are starting to pour in. I toy with the idea of staying in the comfort of my hotel until kickout at 12, then that uber annoying little voice in my head said ‘choose your own adventure, page 15-stay in hotel room. Page 62-Explore new lands!’
Consequently page 62 consisted of an art gallery, an overcrowded river bus in the wrong direction, and overcrowded river bus in the RIGHT direction, a kooky little museum/bookshop and a tiny little untouristy church… full of tourists looking for exactly the same thing. I have also purchased a venetian mask. Just because. And now I am down to my last 7 euros, so dinner tonight will consist of some kind of cake. With a large dollop of haggling for an appetiser.
Its 2.10pm and Im sitting on the banks of the venetian grande canal. Writing again. Sounds romantic doesn’t it? Its not! Im surrounded by tourists. Granted, I am a tourist myself, but at least I have the courtesy to not be an idiot or a c*nt atop of it. Everytime I move they fall on me like the personifications of consciousness in ‘Inception’. I have decided that the only way I will not be wounded or – more likely – sent to prison, is for me to stay still until my tour starts in half an hour. If Im completely honest, I couldn’t be less interested in seeing 3 small islands full of tourist-hating glassblowers but it sure as hell beats the alternative of sharing a cell with an aggressive foreign lesbian while I try put together a compelling ‘no officer, that large murano glass vase had already been forcibly inserted into that paparazzi-wannabe when I got there’ case.
Its 9pm Tuesday 2nd April and im sitting at the Marco Polo airport in Venice awaiting my flight home. Typically the flight has been delayed 2 hours. Im typically a little remorseful that my interim life as a jet-setting socialite (which is how I tend to present myself in my travels. You tend to get more stuff for free when people think you have more to spend) has come to an end for another length of time, but I shall recoup expenses and be out there again soon enough.
Home to England.
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