Italy pt. 2: A Little Bit of Roma

Last time I talked about all the steps we took just to get to Italy. Today I pick up where I left off.

At Fumicino we made our way to the baggage claim, picked up our bags, and went through customs. We walked towards the Leonardo Express, the train that’ll take us into Rome. Proving my street savvy, I almost fell for the gypsy that claimed I had to buy train tickets off of him. Luckily Robin was there to smack me on the back of the head and we made our way to the real ticket counter where we purchased out tickets. We validated them as our eyes darted around from one group of people to the next. We were warned of the gypsies in Italy and we were dead set on making it through this whole trip without anything being stolen. We were vigilant, watching each others back constantly and making sure that our backpacks were never susceptible to little gypsy hands.

It was thirty minutes on the Leonardo Express, taking in the country side which was covered in graffiti and shanty towns – it was like being back in New York. Robin and I went through our phrase book and studied the map of Termini and its surrounding neighborhood. We charted a course to our hotel so we can simply plow through with our bags, protecting us from, you know, gypsies.

We got off at Termini and were overwhelmed with the size of the station and the amount of people in it. As we exited the station, we started walking in the direction we thought the hotel was in, looking for street signs but finding none. We didn’t slow down, however; we didn’t stop. We kept moving, suitcase dragged behind us, map in hand, screaming, “Where’re the street signs? Where are the fucking street signs!”

Ok, I’m exaggerating. There was no screaming. But it certainly took us a couple of blocks to realize that the street signs were integrated into the buildings. We got our bearing straight and realized we were only several blocks from the hotel.

The Hotel Diocleziano - our first stop. Friendly concierge, gorgeous little lobby, a bar off to the side. The concierge spoke English (as most service people do in the big cities), and the bellhop showed us to our room. I honesty thought they made a mistake. This hotel was the second cheapest of the four we were staying at. I didn’t understand why we had a spacious, gorgeous room with a fancy, fancy shower that seconded as a Jacuzzi, and a private patio that was about twice as big as our hotel room. We apparently got all of this because I paid a couple of extra bucks for the deluxe room combined with a little bit of luck as far as the large patio went.

At any rate, our trip was off to a great start.

We showered and rested for a little while, trying to decide where to go and how to get there. We decided to walk towards the Spanish Steps, get lost a little bit, and had to stop and get some dinner on the way.

We were amazed, while walking around, how much Rome was built on food. Restaurants and cafes everywhere and everyone wanted you to have a seat. We finally picked a restaurant with a name I forget in an area that I wasn’t familiar with. We sat outside, got our menus, and picked out what we wanted. The waitress came over and asked, “Antipasti?” I ordered the mozzarella in carrozza. She turned to Robin and said, “And for you?”

Robin ordered something off of the prima patti menu causing the waitress to ask, “And?” Robin told her that was all and I ordered off of the secondi patti menu. We each ordered a side. The waitress, a little annoyed now, asked us what we wanted for dessert. We were confused and said, “Nothing yet.” We ordered some wine (by the glass) and the waitress was off. Later on, we learned how you’re supposed to order at a restaurante.

Ideally, you’re each supposed to order an antipasti, prima patti, secondi patti, sides, and dessert. Now, no-one will get mad at you if you don’t order every course (which is good because, if you do, you’ll end up spending close to 70 euros per person). But each person should at least order 3 of the five courses. At any rate we got our food and enjoyed our meals and toasted Italy with every new glass of wine. With all of the wine we bought, it would have made more sense for each of us to purchase our own bottle. We enjoyed our first meal and we set off to get lost again…

We walked around Piazza di Spagna. Sat on the Spanish Steps. Ate some gelato. Window shopped. Held hands, kissed, took pictures – we were falling in love with the city. We were also getting tired, the only sleep we had was on the plane to London. So we eventually started walking in the direction of the hotel. We decided to stop for another drink at this American bar. Sat down, realized there was a table fee (along with the fact that we were in, you know, and American Bar), and left before ordering a drink. We made our way to a wine bar near the hotel, had a half-carafe each, and talked about how beautiful the city was.

We headed back to our hotel and feel asleep…eventually.

The second day was more than just food and wine. We got up kind of early, got on a bus, and went out to the Vatican. We weren’t sure where to buy our bus tickets and every time we asked someone they tried to sell us tickets to the tourist buses like the Christian Bus – a double-decker decorated with bright colors and images of Jesus. I heard rumors that they hand out t-shirts on that bus that say, “Please rip me off,” but I doubt it – that would be overkill. We eventually discovered that you buy your bus tickets at the newsstands – we bought a day pass and were on our way.

The Vatican was overwhelming. You walk into St. Peter’s square and you instantly appreciate how much history happened here, good or bad. The fountain, the statues lining the perimeter and, of course, the cathedral itself. Robin and I spent a half-hour just staring and taking pictures before heading into the cathedral. We walked through the tombs of the old popes, first, saw the tomb of St. Peter and Pope John Paul II – he had a handful of mourners kneeling in front of his tomb, praying and crying.

Then we did the actual cathedral. The architecture and artwork were remarkable. An early Michelangelo piece, the tombs and statues of certain popes – the altars off to the side of the main altar where priests were going about their everyday business – holding mass, baptizing babies, keeping confession. I asked Robin if she wanted to make confession at the Vatican and we both decided it was a very bad idea – we’d likely spend the rest of our vacation undergoing penance. We did stop off at a side alter to pray and reflect for a little while, however, and we touched the feet of St. Peter like every good lapsed Catholic making a pilgrimage to the Holiest of Holies.

We hopped outside for some water and a slice of pizza before going to the Pope’s blessing. I purchased some rosary beads for my mom so I can have them on me when the Pope does his blessing – that’s the kind of gift me mom would love. The Pope came out, said something in Latin, and then addressed the crowd in Italian, English, Spanish, German, Russian, and French. Every time he switched up his language the crowd went wild. He was calling out parishes that were visiting from distant countries and the people attending would cheer and hoist their banners into the air – it was quite a sight. It’s just amazing how there can be so many people there, adoring this man that they’ve never met. I have to give it to the Pope, he was charming and funny. I can see how folks would get behind him.

After the blessing Robin and I walked to the Vatican Museum only to find that it’s closed on Sundays. At least I got to buy some sunglasses on the way up there. The guys selling illegal items in Italy are a trip. They have these cases that transform into tables – they can set up in seconds and leave just as quick. You see one guy running down the street, away from the police, and everyone picks up their gear and starts huffing after him. If you happen to be trying something on at the time, it’ll likely be yours, free of charge.

Robin and I quickly realized that it’s best to avoid eye contact when we hear one of the three pitches: “You want to know how much?” “Good price,” and, “On sale.” My absolute favorite moment was when Robin said she wanted a fake Coach bag. I walked up to the guy selling it, and he asked, “You want to know how much?”

I say, “How much?”

And he says, “Good price. On sale.” It’s like these guys are programmed to bring Americans to them. We did the barter thing. “Twenty.”

“Twenty? I can get a real one for thirty.”

“No…no. Twenty.”

“Ten – all I got.”

“No...twenty.”

I open my wallet. There’s ten euros in there. “Look – ten. All I got.”

He says 15, I walk away, and he calls me back and gives it to me for ten. I wish the guys knew more English. I’d love to be able to call them out. “Is 20 the sale price or the retail price? Because if it’s the sale price I’d like to know what the retail price is. Or is there not a sale? Were you lying to me?”

We walked to Castel St. Angelo a medieval castle that used to be connected to the Vatican via a series of underground tunnels. Admission was a bit steep but it was worth it for the view of the city and the statue of Michael the Archangel on top.

After the castle, we walked across the river and wound up near the alleys the surround Campo de Fiori. We walked around and got lost, ended up at a restaurant in a back alley because they had some musicians playing music out front. We were seated after ten minutes – fifteen minutes later no-one even asked us what kind of wine we wanted and one of the waiters shooed away the musicians so we snuck out. We ended up finding a fabulous pizza shop with cheap Peroni and we had a seat outside, enjoyed the nice weather, and ate pizza and drank beer.

We went back to the hotel afterwards. Robin napped as I sat on the patio with a bottle of Chianti, reading Rick Veitch’s Maximortal. I didn’t really get into it, sadly.

That evening Robin and I went to the Pantheon and Piazza Navona – we got off the bus near these excavated ruins that have been turned into a cat sanctuary – that was instantly added to our site-seeing agenda for the next day. We walked up to the Pantheon, got dinner at this nice little place with a view. Cheaper food than the night before and nice, big portions. Seafood, too, and it was real good. Half-liter of wine for me and a liter of Peroni for Robin.

We just sat and ate and drank and talked – two people in love, watching the people walk by. We went to a famous gelati place afterwards; we each got a three scoop, and then took side streets to Piazza Navona where we found an American bar with a table outside. We were both amazed by the waiter’s flawless English – he claimed to be born and raised in Italy. Some of the people at the bar seemed to know him, and their conversations led us to believe that the waiter was, indeed, Italian, and that he just happened to learn accent-less English somehow.

A flower guy came around, like they always do, and I tried to convince him that I can’t buy a flower because Robin’s allergic. And, yes, I tried to do that in Italian. We got into a conversation with some other Americans afterwards about the best way to chase off flower guys. Afterwards we hailed a cab and got RIPPED OFF like mad. I don’t know what that guy was doing but we certainly paid way too much.

Went to bed…eventually. We tried out the jacuzzi, first.

I’ll continue with Rome and start up Venice next time.

Daniel R. Epstein

Man - where have I been? I know all about Elektra being a Skrull despite the fact that I don't read the Avengers or Avengers-related books or, really, Marvel books besides Daredevil but I somehow missed this one. I never got to work with Dan but I've read many of his articles. Condolences all around, Dan's wife and family - it's so heartbreaking when someone dies so young.

Eximious!

You can find out what's next on the new Eximous Press website. I'm going to be porting all of the old production blog posts over there and cross-posting all book-related posts in the future. So, if you prefer that site over MySpace, update your bookmarks. That site will also feature all of the information on future projects as well as essays on comic book editing, writing and producing.

So go check it out - the site will be updated frequently.

Italy Part 1: Getting There

I never really did a comprehensive travel report of our recent trip to Italy. Since this site is supposed to be a storytelling blog, and I kind of want to record the details of the trip so I have them when I’m all senile and what not, I figure this is as good a time as any to start jotting it all down. This will be in multiple parts, with pictures when possible. Today will just be about everything that went down before we actually got to Italy.

I’ve wanted to go to Italy for a long, long time. It’s been my dream vacation for as long as I can remember. Robin and I talked about doing it for some time but we never really had the money for it. Last year, however, I got a hefty bonus, one that was enough to cover airfare, hotels, and rail passes for close to two weeks in Italy for Robin and I, and instead of doing what I always do and put it into savings, I booked us a trip.

We booked our airfare before we even knew where in Italy we’d be going. Ten nights, roundtrip from Dulles to Rome, that’s all we knew. We tried to get discounted tickets but all of the flights had impossible stopovers – either less than one hour (in Heathrow – impossible) or greater than eight hours. We decided we were adults, now, approaching 30 with money in the bank – let’s get the flight we wanted. So we booked roundtrip on British Airway for a little but more than the discounted fares we were seeing. Of course, the week after we booked it British Airway had a sale to Rome that would have saved us around $200 per ticket. And, no, they wouldn’t give it to us retroactively. And thus begins the circumstances behind our decision to never use British Airways again. The rest will unfold along with the story and, of course, “never” means “never…unless there’s a great sale.”

We had to pick our cities. Our initial idea was Rome, Venice, and Naples. Robin wanted to spend some time on the beach and I was willing to lie out in the sun as long as Peroni would be present. Whenever we told anyone our plan, however, they’d always say, “Naples? Naples is a dump.” On the recommendation of several friends we decided to go with Florence. Good wine and cheese – that’s why I wanted to go to Italy in the first place.

So we booked hotels for the three cities – three nights in Rome at a hotel near the train terminal, two nights in Venice right on St. Mark’s Square, three nights in Florence at a hotel near Ponte Vecchio, and two final nights in Rome at a hotel near the Pantheon.

Plane booked. Hotels booked. I purchased first class train fare for Robin and me, so we can go from city to city. We weren’t being stingy with this trip at all. It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip as far as we were concerned and we wanted to make sure it had the potential to be as fantastic as it could possibly be.

Everything was ready to go. I scheduled my vacation time at my job, we got the pet-sitting taken care off (Robin’s friend watched Becky while we were away and the cats had a sitter). I made sure James Powell knew what was coming up and what needed to be done for Postcards while I was away.

We bought our DK guidebooks. One for Italy and one for each city we were going to be in. We bought a new suitcase since we only had one medium sized bag and neither of us wanted to carry our large suitcase around. We looked into renting a car while were in Florence so we can get out to Chianti on our own schedule but realized we needed to start planning for that particular aspect quite some time ago – special licenses or something to that extent. We got the vacuum sealed clothing bags, an extra SD card for the camera, some new clothes that fit comfortably, and new walking shoes so we don’t spend the evenings complaining about our feet hurting. We researched the mass transit and cab situation in all of the cities we were going to, we picked out some good restaurants and sites that we absolutely had to see, and we researched the local wines so we knew what we had to get and what we had to bring home with us (answer: Chianti).

We were ready to go – we had everything we needed. Almost.

About two months before we were about to go to Italy I decided to propose to Robin. We’ve been together for eight years and, honestly, I’ve run out of excuses. She definitely wanted to get married – she no longer answered that question with, “Eventually.” Eventually has come. It was time.

So I started asking around. I looked at local jewelry shops, saw what they had. I knew Robin wanted something that looked or was antique. She wanted platinum, too. And that’s basically all I had to go with. There weren’t a lot of great options in DC. One dealer, however, pointed me towards several jewelers that make rings like the ones I was looking for. Two of these places had online storefronts and friendly customer service people and I found a ring I liked at each of them. One of them was out of my price range and one of them was not.

Now…I had a book coming out. I had an advance coming to me which, truthfully, was essentially already spent between creators, designers, editors, agents, and marketing. But…technically…I could scrape a little bit out of my company’s share of the money and that would, in essence, get the other ring, the nicer one, into my price range. So I decided to wait…

And wait…

Advances, well, they can get delayed at times. And that’s exactly what happened with my advance. Two weeks to go before the trip and I still didn’t have the ring. I wanted to take advantage of this trip so I ordered the smaller one. It was still a gorgeous ring. Edwardian inspired platinum, a nice rock in the middle with little diamonds on the side. I had to pay for express sizing and express delivery but it was worth it – I wanted to propose.

I had a plan. For some reason, I thought Venice had a Faberge egg thing. So I bought a ring box that looked like a Faberge egg. I was going to pretend I picked it up from a cart or something, open it up, surprise! I planted it! Imagine my surprise and frustration when I found out Venice had nothing to do with Faberge eggs. At least it was a nice ring box, I guess…

Literally the next day Robin and I are at our favorite Italian restaurant in Georgetown for my birthday. During dinner Robin drops a subtle hint. She says, “You know, I think it would be romantic to get engaged in Venice.”

Now – I was rip shit. RIP. SHIT. Who says something like that two weeks before the trip? If you wanted to hint at it, there are much more subtle ways of doing it without risking completely ruining the surprise if it was, indeed, going to happen. So, I lied. I lied hard and took advantage of the fact that she can’t get mad at me on my birthday. I told her I don’t think I want to get married, yet. That I thought we still have some issues we need to work out before making that commitment. That with the book coming out I can’t divert my attention or money to a wedding. I laid it on. And she bought it. And I might have paid for it during the weeks leading up to the trip but at least I had my surprise.

The ring took a while to get to me. I called the jeweler a week after ordering it to make sure it was shipped to me. The jeweler took this very condescending attitude and told me that they realize they need to get it to me before I leave on my trip and that if there’s anything wrong they’ll call me. On the Wednesday before my trip (we were to leave on Friday) I still have not received my shipping notification or my ring. I called the jeweler up to see what was going on and got the same snooty customer relations woman. She said, “Like I told you, Mr. Rodriguez, if there’s a problem we’ll call you.”

I told her that I was leaving in two days and I’d like to have verification that the ring has at least shipped. She reluctantly put me through to shipping. I gave shipping my information and they put me on hold. Five minutes later they get back on the phone, apologized their asses off, and promise me that they are shipping it over night right now. I wanted to get the customer relations lady back on and give her a piece of my mind but I figured it wasn’t worth getting upset over – at least I’ll have the ring.

The ring didn’t come to my job until 4PM Wednesday afternoon – I was getting nervous. But the receptionist brought it into my boss’s office while I was meeting there with another coworker. They made me open the ring right there, I showed it to everyone and they were all pretty excited. I left work shortly afterwards and went home – ready to finish packing and get moving.

I reserved a town car to take us to the airport the next day. The guy picked us up and headed out to Dulles – the two of us were so ready to go. We checked in, checked our bags, and had dinner at the Gordon Biersch in the airport. I excused myself and said I had to go to the bathroom. I went to call Robin’s father to ask for his permission to marry his daughter and, of course, get the answering machine. I needed to get his cell phone, so I text messaged Robin’s brother to get it. He, of course, gave me the wrong number. I texted him to give me the right one and went back to dinner so Robin wouldn’t get suspicious. Her brother sent me the right number and I called her father up and, of course, got his voicemail. I went back to the table.

Five minutes later Robin’s father called me. I excused myself again and told Robin it was Josh Fialkov on the phone – we were finishing up a pitch that he had to get out while I was gone. I answered the phone, Robin’s dad asked what’s up, and I asked for his permission to marry his daughter…

Silence.

After ten seconds or so I asked “So…is it ok?”

He gave me an enthusiastic “yes” and said how happy he was and told us to have a good vacation etc, etc. I apologized for asking so late, but I didn’t want Robin’s mom to find out because she can’t keep a secret. He understood. Recharged and ready to get engaged, I go back to the dinner table. Five minutes later, Robin’s mom called me. I excuse myself, again, saying it was Josh, again, and answered the phone. Robin’s mom asked if everything is alright because I left a message. I told her not to worry about it, I wanted to talk to John, and I’ll talk to her later. She said ok, likely knowing what was going on, and wished us a good trip.

We boarded the plane and took off. We drank some wine, ate some snacks, watched some movies, and slept for a while. When we woke up we were close to London. The plane landed and we made our way through the nightmare that is Heathrow. Brushed our teeth, got some coffee, and walked around the airport a bit – sampling shots of scotch and watching the flight board for any updates.

On the plane to Rome I went through the guidebook a bit and practice my Italian. It was a nice, short flight to Fiumicino airport. We could hardly contain ourselves as we lined up to get off of our plane. Several minutes later we were in the airport – ready for our trip.

And that continues next time.