Mexican in Rome Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of my Travel Tuesday. If you are still following my blog...thank you and I promise to get as gross as possible in future posts. This one won't be so gross...

As mentioned previously...I was in Rome once when I was really young. I was a novice at this travel thing despite thinking I was the shit and knew everything about travel. I had my fluorescent clothes so I could blend with the Italian locals, I used broken phrases to get around. But I had made a few mistakes.

The first was that I had scheduled a trip in crotch sweat August. Everything stuck to me. It was hot, it was smelly, it was gross.

The second was that I had booked two week accommodations in one location. What that meant was that I would be stationed in Rome while only being able to travel on day trips. The trip was prepaid and it would have been a waste of money if I had taken off. I made the best of the situation and went on trips to Capri, only being able to spend two hours on their beach before hauling ass back to the docks to make the last boat back to the mainland.

It was on one of these day trips that my story begins.

The guided tour traveled to little towns that dot the Tuscan hillsides. The expeditions took us to places that sampled Orange flavored liquor and shoved raw hide goods in your face. So we ended up on this town called Orvieto. It was a medieval town located on some cliff. It was told to our group that this town was so exclusive, that it never allowed any tour buses to or cars and therefore had to hike up to this town. Made no difference, I was in Italy, I would have hiked to a death camp. So while in this town I find a novelty store that was selling swords....SWORDS. And this was no little plastic sword, this was metal, and big, not too sharp, but big. I buy the fucking thing because back home I had a teenage brother that would have believed me to be the most awesome sister ever if I brought a sword to him.

I was sitting on the bus making my way back to Rome and my hotel. I was tired, I was hot, but ecstatic. I had a sword. So the bus driver, an oily man with a profuse belly, announces the stops, Trilussa being one of them. My stop. At this point I had been in Rome for almost the two weeks. I knew exactly where Trilussa was in Rome. So we get to a stop, the bus driver mumbles something, no one gets off. Ok no biggie, he continues to another stop and says some other stop, a couple gets off. I start to worry. I make my way to the front.
"um, excuse me, Trilussa stop?"
If you had been there, you would have seen the large belly swell as his breathing became labored, saying "I stopped at Trilussa, you no get off! So you get off here!". He stops the bus on this narrow little Roman road. I look in disbelief as he opens the door, yelling "this isn't my stop". His fat face retorted, "I no care, you get off here."
"This isn't my stop, you have to take me to my stop"
"you get off"
"I paid to get taken to my stop!"
"you get off or I arrest"
"Fuck this!" I yell as I gather my bag and my sword. I make a huge display, stomping my feet and dragging the sword like some Edward Scissorhand.  I step on the asphalt, and as the orca closes the bus door, I turn and use all of my body weight to kick the shit out of the bus door. It cracked.
My eyes widened and I see that this bus man is trying to open the door and get his ass up to yell at me, but more likely to call the cops on me.  I yell "hi-ya" as I dash down some random alley way, with a sword in hand.

That sword was confiscated at the airport.

Margarita in Rome

So let me tell you about this one time when I went to Italy...

Prior to the first trip to Italy, my international travel was comprised of accompanying my parents to family visits in Mexico. My mother's prim and proper upbringing meant that I was attached to her hip while the quebradita (Mexican for dirty dancing) was practiced by the adolecents in the plaza. In high school, over priced schools overseas schools would send their recruits for us traveling dreamers who  wished to spend their summers away from their parents. I thought then that some semblance of freedom, to travel without the leash of propriety (my mother) was attainable. For a moment I thought I had heard the whisperings of my mothers acquiesce to a semester in Egypt. As I geared myself to make the final pleadings for an allowance to leave, some assholes decided to put two fucking planes in the Twin Towers. It was the beginning of my senior year. It took less than a moment for my mother to say  "ni creas que to voy a dejar en un avion" (Translation: Don't even think you are getting on a plane anytime soon.). My appeals in the form of arguments resembling phrases like "the best time to travel is right after something like this, everything is on lock down and super safer" fell on deaf ears.

It was three years later when an opportunity to vacation to Italy was presented to me. Settling on Rome and the neighboring area, my father and passed me a credit card. I was elated. Rome would be the destination for a nerdy history freak whose study of the bloody battles in the Coliseum were easy Saturday reading, and to top it off with Spaghetti? It all was too fucking fantastic

So there I went to Rome. I am in the mind set that travelers should acclamate the local culture and fully immerse oneself, not standing out like a "stupid American". I studied Italian language and Italian fashion, filling my bright yellow suitcase, with wheels and a handle, with nothing but pastels and mesh over shirts. Have I mentioned that I am a plushy girl? Pastels make me look like a fucking easter egg. So I am in the airport, and because I want to be one of "them", I think, hey, I can do this, I am going to take the trolley, to which I have no map, all the way in to town, get off with my big ass yellow suitcase, and find my hotel..how fucking hard can this be?

The trolley dead ends in the middle of town...and there is no hotel in sight. I am close to some ruins, but if you have ever visited  to Rome you will quickly realize that almost everything is a ruin with a modern building on the inside. The trip was in August, a sweltering month for almost every part of the world, Wearing two sizes too small jeans (because tighter is better in Italy) and a knitted pastel blue short sleeve sweater...its fucking 90 degrees at 11 in the morning. I walk along cobble stone streets, all the while wheeling a  big ass bag that screams "Tourist". But no, I am convinced I fit right the fuck in. I take a right turn, I take a left. I can't fucking find the Trilussa Hotel. Someone is king enought to point me to the street Trilussa, but he knows nothing about the Trilussa hotel. I hobble down some more, all the while fully conscious of the fact that I am sweating, my crotch is rubbing against the fucking jeans, I am tired, I am hungry, and on the verge of a melt down.

I decide that before the tears commence that I take a seat at this cute little cafe. I waddle in, trying to ensure that I get some breeze towards my crotch. A few weeks prior I turned the ripe age of 21, making me eager to get started on what is to turn in to a long history of drinking. I take the seat at the table closest to the street, and I order the only alcoholic drink I can name, a margarita. I order in spanish because  because italian and spanish are the same...right? The waiter smiles, responding in English "sure, I'll bring it right out, and what would you like to drink". I take a breath...I am thirsty and I want my motherfucking alcohol, clearly he had not understood, so I repeat "a margarita". The waiter continues to smile..."I'll bring some water, no gas". I wonder if the no gas comment by the waiter meant he was planning to fart in my water cup.

I took the next few quiet moment to enjoy my surroundings. I had never crossed an ocean by myself, never been so far and removed from my "Pacific Standard Time". Rome is fucking amazing. Despite modernity  its history is captured in every stone, every building, and despite the crotch sweat and inability to find the hotel, I was enjoying this non parental adventure. Twenty minutes passed when the waiter came out to my table, with a pizza. I look at the waiter, and back down to my pizza. He is still fucking smiling. I look at the pizza again and before I can look up, the waiter has skipped his happy ass back to his counter. I politely flag him down..."sir, I still haven't received my margarita..."
"Miss this is your margarita, margarita pizza..."

I stammer, and start to cry...why? Because I am a fucking girl, my pants are stuck in my crotch, it's hot, and all I want is my god damn alcohol...I compose myself, explaining that my flight was so long and that I am very tired. I muster in broken italian/spanish "back home a margarita is a cocktail". My waiter, an angel in disguise I would have to assume, who was kind enough to politely and sweetly deal with  my emotional vagina bullshit, smiles again, and says, "a bella, I get a you a bellini". That fucking saint got me my drink, and a cab to drive me to my hotel...that was only a block away!

So began my lone travels, as a  Stupid (Mexican) American.