First Impressions

The entire trip over I've been plagued by doubts and uncertainties. Sometimes I'm optimistic, and eagerly planning places to go and eat, other times I just want to crawl into my bed and sleep until it's time to go. Hopefully I'll get over the latter and be excited tomorrow. Or at least, the day after that.

The plane ride was uneventful, punctuated only by bad food (and worse wine). Watched High School Musical 3, which is perhaps the funniest movie I've seen all year. Layover at Amsterdam was excruciating, had to wait an hour in the passport line for them to give me a stampy, which I guess in the end made it all worthwhile. The first stamp of my new passport's shiny little life. It's no longer a visa virgin.

Despite the seeming ineptitude of the Amsterdam officials, the airport itself is very nice. One of the first things I saw was a Sbarro and a Burger King, and I'll be damned if that didn't make me feel a ton better. Also a Starbucks. Another cool thing about the Amsterdam airport is their proclivity toward berating passengers via the airport PA system. Especially when they say, "Mr. so and so, please report immediately. You are delaying your flight." Pretty awesome, imo.

Arrived in Rome, flight took longer than I thought it would. Baggage took even longer than the flight, waited probably another hour for mine to come around on the carousel (?). Think I saw a honeymooning couple going to Rome though, which makes me happy and bitterly wistful at the same time. Read the entire book of Twilight during the journey--overrated, to say the least. (Now I'll probably get hate mail).

The room is nice and clean, and very cool and breezy. The view is not bad, it let's me look upon the little terrace with stone benches and pretty flowers, which is nice. Also, I see some palm trees from my window. Rome is a lot dirtier than I expected, I knew it was a city, but this is probably dirtier than New York, and definitely dirtier than Chicago. There seems to be graffiti in every part of town, be it nice or not, religious or secular. However, my residence itself appears to be fairly secure, with a locked gate, a locked front door and another locked door.

Now I'm just writing to keep myself from falling asleep embarassingly early. I figure if I go to sleep at 8pm Rome time, I'll probably sleep my normal 12-14 hours and wake up at a decent hour to start my day. Hopefully I'm less pathetic and depressed (about being in Rome for goodness sakes!) and able to grab some espresso and a croissant. However, there doesn't seem to be any reputable eateries by where I live, but I have been promised a very nice fresh market in the mornings, about five minutes walk away. Unfortunately, the walk back includes stairs twice as bad as those of Furman, so we'll see how often I make that trek.

Not confident about my abilities in staying awake any further, so I guess I'll tap out a few emails and crash. Hopefully more (and better) news tomorrow.

-L