Our last few days in Rome,
were very similar to our last few days in Paris. They were of course precipitated by a
strike. The French may have invented the
strike which lasts forever, but the Italians mastered the strike that hurts the
most. Thursday evening as we were out on
the town waiting for a bus, an obnoxious American loudly proclaimed, I wonder
if these people know there are no buses coming. As we had been waiting for the
better part of 15 minutes, we inquired as to why….it turns out, three blocks
away, thousands of taxis were protesting.
By protesting, we mean, they parked across four lanes of traffic
encircling all of the major monuments, and screwing up traffic royally. We marveled at the sea of white cabs, took
ten or so photos, and jauntily walked down to the coliseum where we metro’d
home. That night, Andrew, while checking
our Saturday flight, noticed that all the flights out of our intended airport
were cancelled on Friday due to an Air Traffic Control strike. We were nervous, not because we would have
minded staying in Rome for an extra day, but because when we purchased our
tickets to Istanbul, to get the “best deal” we purchased one ticket from Rome
to Basle (Switzerland) for Saturday, and due to scheduling conflicts we
purchased a separate ticket from Basle to Istanbul for the next day,
anticipating staying in the airport overnight.
Therefore, we weren’t sure if our flight got cancelled on Saturday how
we would be able to catch our 7:00 flight to Istanbul on Sunday. The next morning we decided to spend our last
day in Rome
eating gelato and re-exploring our favorite places.
Well after waiting for a bus for a good
twenty minutes, a nice English chap kindly explained to us that all of the
buses had been cancelled. No problem,
we’ll walk to the metro we replied, er…no…all the metro had been cancelled, and
if you were going to a funeral forget the hearse, they were striking too. Anyone who worked in transportation in Italy had taken
the day off in protest of budget cuts….well except for the extortionate cabs
that were happy to break the strike and the bank all in one blow. So with no way to get to the heart of Rome, we decided to visit
a nearby flea market that had caught Alex’s eye on the bus rides to metro
station. So we put on our coats and
walked the mile or so to the flea market.
It was more of an outdoor grocer, but we discovered their food stands,
which were fantastic. We shared a meal
of lasagna and Pomodora with Riso…aka a tomato stuffed with rice served with a
side of savory potatoes. After that we
bought some fruit for our airport camping trip, and then explored the
neighborhood, which included a stop at a Pasticceria, a Chinese .37 cent store,
and of course a Mc Donald’s. We had
heard the strike was supposed to end at 4:30, so we went back to our hostel and
packed until 5, when the buses were running again. After that, it was easy to get into Rome, so we decided to go into some Piazza’s and do some
last minute souvenir shopping, which included two watercolors, and a Christmas
Pinnochio ornament, for the tree we’ve been told we are going to have in Turkey. We also had one last cone of
gelato—unfortunately, we didn’t choose the store very well, and I think we got
the ice milk version of gelato.
This morning, we woke up at 6:00, dressed, returned the key
to our bungalow, and traversed by bus, subway, bus, and airplane to get to Switzerland. Of course there were three hours of line
standing before we arrived, but we made it, and have now set up camp on a
lovely abandoned terrace overlooking the rest of the airport and France and Germany, so we’re told, as this
airport is on three borders. We have a
lovely padded couch with four seats, and no intervening armrests, a plug a foot
from the bench, thirty foot vaulted ceilings in a nice metallic shine, with
spacious interior, marble tiling, multiple restrooms, a Rolex wall clock, and
lovely Chrismas tree lighting. The floor
to ceiling glassed in views allow for plenty of natural sunlight, as well as a
full length mirror at night. Best of
all, it cost us only our dignity. But
with a deck of cards, some dice from a 37 cent store, and our laptop, we are able
to make this humble abode our home. At
least until 5:00 in the morning when we queue up for our first line. The only mishap from our trip was when the 2
liter water bottle we had so intelligently packed in expectation of our camping
trip busted en route all over the bottom half of one of our bags. Thankfully not the one with the watercolor.
