Ciao or Caio?
I’m back. Contrary to popular belief, I am in fact, doing school all the way over the Atlantic in Dublin. My mother told me I am due for a blog and that people (a lot of people) have been asking when my next one is coming out. Well sorry to keep you all waiting, I just had five final papers to write. No big deal, I’ll get write on my blog.
My mom should’ve known better than to stroke my ego and tell me people are talking about my blog. We all know I don’t need any more ego boosting, I do it enough myself.
Last time we spoke, I was just getting off of my Saint Patrick’s day bender. That feels like ages ago. As I write, I’m on a plane (airplane) on my way home from Italy (Italia). I have more to catch you all up on, but I’ll start with my Italy trip. And oh, was it a trip.
Flashback to early February when my roommate Bennett wasn’t strong enough to escape Covid like I was and had to bow out respectfully from his trip to Italy. When I heard that he had to skip his trip, I was saddened for him and had the brilliant idea that WE should go to Italy together! We had only known each other for about a month at that point, but switching back to present time, Bennett is also on the plane with me on the way home from his trip to Italy with me. I don’t like to speak for people, but I feel confident in telling you guys that he had the best (best) time of his fucking life.
I planned a 6 day trip through Italy for Bennett and I. We flew into Milan for 8 euros and flew out of Rome five days later. From Milan we took a train to Venice then to Florence then to our final destination in Rome. Together we planned hostels, air bnbs, and hotels. This was the longest trip I’ve ever planned for myself without my mom sitting beside me and doing it all for me.
I didn’t really think it would actually happen, the trip. It seemed kind of weird to go on a trip with my roommate that I barely knew, especially just the two of us. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that it would be uncomfortable or that he really didn’t want to go with me.
Meeting new friends is my favorite thing. I love meeting new people and learning all about their interests and what they like to do and how they act. Every person is their own person and does things uniquely to themselves . I just love the idea of making these new connections wherever I go and just having a plethora of different types of friends that appeal to all of the different parts of me.
This can be applied for platonic and romantic relationships, but you shouldn’t expect one person to meet all of your needs. Though society has conditioned us to think we need to find our other piece, our other half, we shouldn’t be looking for one person that will make us a better person or make everything better for us. God (sorry to my non religious people) puts different people in our path not for us to choose just one of them, but for us to choose all of them and learn how they can fit into the different parts of our lives. When I make friends, I have the habit of wanting them to be my best friend and nothing less. But I’ve started to learn that any friend I make can be a different type of close friend to me. I have my close friends who I can relate to on a person level, or an intimate level, or purely friendly level. I hate the term “missing puzzle piece” because news flash, there aren’t two pieces in a puzzle. At minimum, there are 5, but maximum? There can be hundreds, thousands of pieces. When I meet people, I am looking for all of the puzzle pieces to fill up my GIGANTICLY HUGE puzzle.
Relationships are important to me and when I let myself to not stress over them and let them play out naturally, usually a great friendship comes out of it.
Despite my worries, my trip to italy was an astounding success. I can barely put into words how good the trip went, which isn’t good since I’m a writer.
Something I haven’t been able to describe is the sort of awe I was in. Italy felt like the holy land, somewhere I knew I’d always visit but never actually get to.
Explaining this feeling to people sounds so cliche, but being in italy was surreal. I’ve been raised on this thick Italian culture that has filled up my house and family and so many of my relationships for my entire life. The food we eat, the music we listen to, gosh even our family values are based on being Italian. Family comes first has nothing to do with your ancestry, but somehow anything that has to do with family for us is imbedded in Italian traditions and culture. I can practically hear my friends making fun of me for saying this, but when I got to Italy it was like everything I’ve been raised on was all coming to head. This is where my family came from, this is what everyone talks about. Italy.
I had a list of foods that I have been eating my entire life that I needed to try. I already knew that the “traditional” Italian food my family makes is a watered down, lost in translation version of what people in Italy are eating. Reading menus and looking through the glass at bakeries, I’d see things that screamed familiarity, but something was just off. My first experience with something not being quite what I expected was when I ordered pasta fagioli.
It was our first night in Venice and we were starving. Getting to Venice was *pause* rough. So far, everything had been going smoothly. Our flight to Milan on Wednesday was good, our hotel in Milan was cute, the pizza we ate was delicious and the geloto we followed it up with hit the spot. Then Thursday found us exploring Milan and snoozing in a park next to our train station until it was time to leave. We headed to the train with about 30 minutes of a cushion to get on the train and settled. As we were looking for the platform we needed to go to, we for some reason couldn’t find our train. After frantic conversation, we realized that the reason we couldn’t find our platform was because we were in fact, at the wrong station. With 20 minutes to get to the other station, we rushed to the metro, took it two stops to the other train station where our train was waiting for us at exactly the time it was supposed to leave, with its doors shut and locked, not allowing any more passengers.
So, we missed that train. Then got on the next train, then had a transition in VERONA ITALY, then got on the wrong train which was the slow, two hour train instead of the high speed one hour train that we paid extra money for. So besides that little hiccup, we got to Venice, paid an extra 20 euros for the check in after 8:00 fee because we checked in at 8:16...yeah.... then went and got dinner.
That was our first real Italian dinner. We ordered Aperol Spritz, shared an eggplant parm for an appetizer, and then here's the kicker. One of my favorite foods that my family makes is pasta fagioli. It's a red tomato sauce with cannelloni beans and pasta, preferably a small one. So of course I ordered that. And when they brought my dish out, I almost laughed. Like I had to have expected this to happen at least once. I was handed a bowl of beans. Smushed beans and a handful of pasta. I mean, it was great. It was really good, as far as a bowl of beans goes. But um, not what I was expecting?
Venice was lovely. Like so cool it was ally after tiny ally after squeeze your way through this crowd. But there was another slight, (extremely dramatic pause) mishap.
Our air bnb was fucking amazing. So cute, had a crazy amount of books and cute little random decorations. But that is where the great parts of it stopped. After a long day of traveling, Bennett and I slightly drunkenly passed out for bed because of the very strong aperol spritzes we had for dinner. The next morning I got up first to shower. I shower and do my thing before I get a chance to look in the mirror, and when I did, well. There were red dots covering my face. Weird tiny red dots. In normal dramatic julia fashion, I rushed out and showed Bennett who told me relax, it’s mosquitoes, and that it’s fine. Yeah for sure, totally fine, I tried to tell my mind. But as a slight (maybe not slight) hypochondriac, I was googling every slight thing it could’ve been. But google didnt really tell me much, so I ignored it. But.
The next morning I woke up to even more dots all of my face and wrists. Again I panicedly showed Bennett all of my new dots and he begrudgingly showed me the red dots he also accumulated all over his face. But as opposites attract, Bennett balances my slightly (SLIGHTLY) overreacting anxious brain and told me it’s still not a big deal. So we go the whole day thinking it’s fine fine fine fine fine. We take the train smoothly to Florence, check into our hostel and have a lovely evening walking through the rain and finding a place to eat dinner.
As it started to be routine, we got aperol spritzes for dinner, then had an early night and I was out cold by 11:30. The next morning Bennett and I woke up and sat on the roof before we checked out. Honestly, I’m not sure what convinced him that the dots on our faces were definitely bug bites of some sort, but he told me he thought they were bed bugs. yes. Bed bugs.
So I did some googling and in my brain I’m like oh okay we’re fine our bites don’t look like bed bugs at all. But when I showed Bennett he said “oh yeah for sure those look exactly like our bites”
“No they don’t Bennett” I said
“Yeah they do” he said.
So, unfortunately. The Venice air bnb had bed bugs. BED BUGS
Long fucking story short, we thankfully left the bed bugs in Venice. Trust me, I’m sure. As soon as I got back to campus I basically stripped down in the hallway because there was absolutely no way I was bringing those little suckers into my dorm. I cleaned all of my clothes, showered, and vacuumed my backpack in the first 30 minutes of getting back to campus.
I think I’m a pretty optimistic person, but my optimism disappears when even the slightest problem occurs. And I don’t mean to be dramatic, but it’s nearly impossible for me to see past the problem and believe that things will get better. Because when we determined it was bed bugs my life flashed before my eyes. That was it. I wouldn’t be able to see my friends at all because I’d give them all bed bugs, I’d ruin every single person’s life on the airplane I had to take home, and I wouldn’t be able to go to London. But, surprise, none of that actually happened.
So that was Bennett and I’s brush with death, but despite the missed train to Venice and our new little buggy friends, the rest of Italy went along without a hitch.
After Venice we took a train to Florence. This train ride went smoothly. I finished my 3,000 word paper, and we landed in Florence easily. We checked into a hostel which I was kind of nervous about. My last experience in a hostel wasn’t really that bad, but we had an older man staying with us who would get butt naked in the middle of the room and stare at us in the middle of the night. That experience put a bad taste in my mouth and thankfully this hostel reminded me why I liked hostels in the first place.
After our bed bug realization, we did some sight seeing. We saw THE David. Let me tell you, he is one fine looking man. Not sure what Michaelangelo’s sexuality was, but no way a straight man could make a statue like that. The detail. God the detail. Michaelangelo literally thought of everything. He made David’s muscles strain in the right places as if a human was standing in that position. His abs were to die for, and let’s talk about his ass. Again, no straight man would be able to create the ass that is David’s. So not to be that gay, but Michaelangelo was definitely, not straight.
Besides David, the gallery had five other statues of Michaelangelo’s, however they were all incomplete. I’m not sure if this is why they included them, but by including these incomplete statues that were still so fantastic despite, really put into perspective how amazing the David really was. The unfinished statues made you appreciate the smoothness of the David and the precision of every aspect of the David.
Florence came and went with this delicious lemon pistachio pasta and a little rainstorm.
Rome brought us a cute little hotel room and dinner with my cousin! As we were waiting for dinner I explained to Bennett how Rachel and I have only met twice, and that I haven’t seen her since high school. But when your family is massive like mine, that’s pretty normal. Dinner was incredibly good, but the next day was where the fun started.
We had a jammed packed day. We left our hotel at 12, and I was determined for us to see every square inch of Rome. And we sure did. Rome quickly became my favorite place in Italy because I just couldn’t get over all of the century old buildings and statues and monuments. I felt like every corner we turned there was a different piazza with a different fountain with more naked men squirting water out of every hole and crevice of their body. These artists had to have been obsessive with penises. Like obsessed. Like my history textbooks never talked about public nudity being a consistent thing, but you would think bo one wore clothes. For some reason every statue was naked. Sometimes they even had clothes on, but somehow there was still a penis. It’s like these dudes would look at their statues and say “hm. Something isn’t right. Something is missing” and then they’d slap on a penis with a full bush and say “ah yes. Perfect”
Besides penises, most of the statues and art in Italy had some type of mythical aspect. Like a set of wings or a tentacle or a horse with wings. It just made everything so much more exciting. I felt like a kid in a candy shop.
Our full day in rome ended with a 9:30 dinner reservation at a home made pasta restaurant. Poor Bennett had to deal with my constant complaints of me being cold, but he spilled his drink at the bar so it balanced out.
In conclusion, Italy was lovely. Try new things and travel with people you only know a little. Plan that trip you’ve been thinking about. Do it do it do it.
That’s all for now
Ciao.
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