Roma

8 days in Rome, mama mia! Our first four days were spent doing Rick Steves' suggested walking tours and visiting all of the ruins including a site that has been turned into a cat sanctuary! :)

We checked out of our apartment and into the Walter Guest House on the fifth day, and it was the worst hostel we've seen so far. Yes, Hollis, you could say it was a hostile indeed. To sum things up, it was unsafe and we checked out two days early, the desk manager telling me “you women cry about everything” and yelling “fucking Americans” as he literally slammed the door in our faces.

We found another hostel that was safe and checked in for our remaining 2 nights. We were getting ready for bed at the same time as one of our roommates, an older woman from Serbia who just had the best day- spotting both Tom Hanks and the Pope! (Not together, of course.) We talked for a bit before she urged us to get to bed early, before the other roommate got home. She told us his snore was so disruptive, it was impossible to fall asleep once he got started.

That night was sleepless and this man's snoring could not be stopped. Seriously, neither of us had ever heard anything like it. It was otherworldly. After having been physically shaken myself at the last hostel, I was reluctant to touch him and shake his shoulder a bit to stop his snoring. So, when it got really loud, we jostled the metal ladder attached to his bunk bed, and that slight noise stopped the snoring for about ½ hour ...before starting right back up again.

The following morning after my shower, I came back into the room and met Sam, our middle-aged Korean roomate who had been snoring so violently the night before. He looked a little distressed and after a quick hello, asked me “Did you have trouble sleeping last night?” I laughed and answered yes. Still distressed, he asked “Did you hear any noises?” I told him it was actually his snoring that kept me awake and that I did not hear any other noises. Something seemed to click with him and he asked “Did you move my ladder?” I answered yes and he informed me that he has a problem of rolling off the bed in his sleep and when he heard the sound of the ladder, he woke up startled, thinking he was falling from the top bunk, unable to see what had moved the bed without his glasses. In a thick, south Korean accent, he told me “For me, it was like nightmare.” How could I be upset with him after that?

Jack was in the shower for all of this, and in case you don't already know, Jack takes a LONG time to groom, so Sam and I had a long time to chit-chat. He told me he's a Religious Studies professor on sabatical and that he's traveling alone, lonely, especially during meals. He dropped several hints that he was ready to change his plans for the day in order to hang out with us, and so, what choice did I have? I broke down and invited him to join us for the free hostel breakfast and then along to Vatican City, even though he went the day before.

We got to the Vatican Museum early and the line was very long. Sam had an unexpected surge of independence and decided he did not want to wait in the line again. He left to go see the Colloseum- but not before inviting us to meet him back at the hostel for dinner of course. Four hours later, we walked out of the Vatican Museum only to hear “Jack! Jack!” and met, you guessed it, dear Sam waiting for us on the steps just outside St.Peter's basilica. He confessed that he didn't want to be alone again, and that no, he hadn't been waiting very long at all.

Even though he was slightly annoying, he was very sweet and a great resource of information as we were visiting religious sites that day (“See that key he's holding? He thinks it will get him into heaven. Ha!”). We went through the St. Sebastian catacombs and Sam took us out to a fancy Chinese restaurant (cheapest food in Rome, hands down). During dinner, he explained that Koreans are the most skilled at using chopsticks and shared the secret behind the long legs of the Westerners (answer: we lack the super long intestines that Asians have, enabiling our legs “to grow so long.” His words, not mine.). Later that night, we took him out to do some non-church stuff because he told us he hadn't done that at all over the course of his two month trip. After Sam threw his coin in the Trevi fountain, we took him to have his first-ever gelato.We stayed out so late with him that the metro stopped running and we had to walk across town to get back to the hostel, Sam walking right behind us like that dog back in Pompeii, peppering the conversation with questions such as “Do we turn here?” and “Should I cross now, too?”

We had another sleepless, snore-filled night, dozing off at some point in the early morning only to be woken by Sam at 6 am asking, “Are we waking up now?” We were sad to leave him behind (well, Jack was anyway), especially since we had to skip breakfast in order to make it to the Borghese Gallery at 8:30. We said our goodbyes and exchanged e-mail addresses, leaving him with the Rick Steves Italy book he so coveted the day before, hoping he would enjoy the presence of another long-legged Westerner, if only in book form.