the Passport Manuscript: When in Rome (for the first 24 hours)

It has finally happened: I am officially living in Rome! It’s been around 36 hours since we landed in Italy, but it feels like enough has happened to fill a week. As my roommates sleep off their jetlag, I wanted to take a moment to record our activities. The consistent rain falling outside is perfect blogging weather!

We celebrated our arrival yesterday by going to lunch at the first restaurant we stumbled upon. The food was delicious but the wine stole the show. Vino della casa is sweet and totally different from back home, a happy surprise for me since I don’t normally care for wine!

Our very first bottles of Italian wine!

We decided it was worth it to fight sleep and go into the center of Rome for our first night! After Google Maps failed to be useful in anyway, we just wandered through the most enchanting streets until we found a pub that looked appealing. The cobblestone streets are often lined with twinkle lights and twist and turn randomly. There is no grid pattern like in Philadelphia and it’s quite easy to end up walking in circles.

We chose the Abbey Theatre Irish Pub due to my love for early Irish literature- this proved to be a great decision! We befriended the bartender and met some ex-pat 20-somethings that were full of fun and useful information about the city. Our new bartender friend Paul welcomed us to Rome with a pretty gnarly shot called a “Slutty Girl Scout” (we should probably be offended but considering my favorite shot in the US is a “Redheaded Slut”, I’ll let it slide).

It tastes like a Thin Mint...

From there our night got a little rowdy despite being a Monday- Italian people are loud and like to squeeze right up against the bar. Ironically, we met an Italian guy who was about to purchase a house on Temple’s Campus to rent! We looked at the location and pictures and gave him some advice from a TU student’s point of view. In return he explained the Metro and taught us some useful phrases. The Metro closes at 11:30pm in Rome so we took a cheap cab back to our residence.

Today, the wine, liquor, and jetlag hit hard. We slept until 2pm but it was worth it, I feel like I’ve synced up with the current time here now! Avery, Casey and I took a five-minute walk to the Market and had fun looking at all the Italian food. I bought two different kinds of FANTASTIC cheese and some Fanta (in honor of it tasting so much better in Europe)!