Saturday - May 4, 2013
Ah...the pleasures of a sea day. As this was the day before our cruise ended (sob!), packing had to fit in there somewhere. I love (love!) packing FOR a trip, but packing to go home is just so sad. While preparing for a trip usually entails a LONG (looong) detailed packing list where everything is meticulously organized into its own separate little baggie/compartment/packing cube before being placed into the suitcase like pieces of a puzzle, going home usually entails just throwing all the crap in the drawers and closet into the suitcase and sitting on it to zip it up. A body's in no mood to be meticulously and anal retentively organized when you wanna cry because you gotta go back to work soon.
However, it being a sea day means there's not a lot to recount as come on now, as it's been well established at this point - if I can go and play checkers, rock the karaoke, dance the macarena, participate in a belly flop contest, power walk for charity (they had a fundraiser walk for Make a Wish) or sit on my ass - I'm damn well going to choose to sit on my ass every. time. No question. Aside from being antisocial and hating most people, I'm also lazier than a slug.
Thus saying, once I've been satiated by the buffet (stuffed beyond all recognition and medical provider recommendations, satiated - same difference) I waddle my way over to the pool to continue in my quest to resemble a farming peasant. And saw some more horrific things that you can never unsee.
Dear passengers, do we need another lesson on appropriate pool wear?
I don't know what is so hard to understand about the illustration above. If you look anything like the guy trying to emulate
Flavor Flav on the left, you should NOT be rocking a banana hammock. However, if you could be mistaken for an underwear model or an Olympic swimmer - by all means, rock what you want. For those who don't speak English or don't understand what NOT acceptable means, the picture on the left = no bueno, tres mal, and
太可怕了!!!!
Really, don't you think the pictures speak for themselves? Gentle readers, this is my proposal. If you have hairy man boobs, let me make this suggestion for alternative sartorial accouterments:
Look how much fun this guy is having! You'll be adequately covered, no one's retinas will burn out from trauma, and no one leaves a cruise ship with PTSD because they saw you shaking your thang in a banana hammock to Gloria Estefan's
Conga. Win win.
Once the conga line really picked up steam though, I couldn't take it anymore. So I removed myself (goodbye cocktail boys!) to my private balcony where the only view I see is this:
 |
| so much more soothing, no? |
At some point I fall asleep. And likely drooled. And then at some other point I got up and ate more food. And then I threw everything from the drawers and closet into my big purple suitcase (sobbing - because we're leaving, not because my suitcase is purple) and prepared to head home. We had to have our luggage outside our door by 11 pm so the porters could transport all our luggage off the ship. They originally had us scheduled for like, a 7:20 am departure. Um, what? Our train doesn't leave Civitavecchia until 11 am, what are we going to do in Civitavecchia for like, 4 hours? My parents went and switched our luggage tags for a 9 am departure, so instead of a 4 hour wait, we had a 2 hour wait.
That night was kind of bittersweet - it always is when you're at the end of a long planned and long awaited vacation. You save and plan and worry and stress over it for months and now it's almost done. Kinda anticlimactic you know?
 |
| goodbye last towel animal! |
On the last night, being the loser I am, I opt to stay in the room - I lay out on the balcony and look at the stars while my much more social parents went and rocked out to some Broadway medley where the only songs they recognized were ABBA songs from Mamma Mia.
Sunday - May 5, 2013
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Oh, except in Italia, there is no Cinco de Mayo - no excuse for sucking down tequilas and eating tacos. Damn! Oh well. How funny to think that exactly a year before I was at Staples Center watching the Clippers eke out a win against those bastard Grizzlies in game 3 of the playoffs. The Clips got destroyed by the Grizzlies in the playoffs this year. The pain is still too raw - I can't talk about it yet (sob!). Seriously, that was probably the only thing marring this vacation. I was so convinced that they were going to get into the second round and was all excited about buying tickets to round 2 when I got home. Instead, I mourned on the cruise and ate more pastries to comfort myself (okay, so I would've eaten the damn pastries anyway, but let me blame something!). Though I have to admit, watching them get swept by the Spurs...sublime! (The Grizzlies, not the Clippers when they got spanked by the Spurs last year).
I wake up and walk out to the balcony and see that we've arrived. In fact, there are people who've already left the ship. We check all the drawers and the safe to make sure we've gathered everything and we make our very last walk to the promised land - the buffet.
 |
| Good morning Civitavecchia! (sob!) |
There's a noticeable pall in the air this morning as everyone is preparing to head home. Really though, I think half the ship was hungover from partying a little too hard, and though I was sad, I still had one last day to look forward to in Rome.
We sit in the buffet until it's about 9, then we make our way off the ship. First we get off on the wrong floor because I'm a retarded moron with no sense of direction, but eventually we find our way off. Once we're off, we have to find our section (assigned by time) and we immediately spot our luggage. Which really isn't hard when you've got a big ass bright lime green suitcase and a big ass purple suitcase.
We then get in line for the dreaded shuttles again (shudder), but I'm guessing they're clearly more interested in getting you OFF the ship than ON the ship, so it was actually pretty well organized. I mean, there WAS a line. As we stood in line for our turn, we see the port staff putting up signs for the next group of cruisers who are just starting to arrive. A few taxis and private cars pull up to the pier and you see people start lining up to check in. Like us the week before (well, not like me and dad after our Great Misadventure That Shall Not Be Mentioned - we were poop faced by the time we arrived at the pier - but I mean other people) they're excited and giddy - I mean, who isn't when they're about to begin a week of unmatched overindulgence to match the Bacchanalias the Romans had?
 |
| my mama wearing BOTH of our hats - 'cause we're awesome like that |
After the 15 minute bus ride, we're dropped off at the entrance to the port. We pull our luggage and walk the 7-8 minutes to the train station. Unlike the bright sunny day it was when we embarked, it's overcast and kind of gray as we leave. It feels like the weather is reflecting our moods.
 |
| outside the train station (the bright orange building on the left). Seriously. Who the HELL eats Subway in Rome? Are they retarded??!! |
We manage to get there early enough to snag the last 3 seats in the VERY small station. Literally, a great horde of people stream in after we claim our seats - and since by this time we had over an hour to wait (and the stupid train ended up being delayed - bastards!) it was good we got to sit. There were actually a lot of trains going to Termini in Rome, but I specifically chose the Frecciabianca because 1) it had reserved seats ; 2) it had luggage racks; 3) it was cleaner; and 4) it was non-stop. A lot of other cruisers just grabbed whatever commuter or regional train (subways, really) came by, but since I had pre-purchased tickets ahead of time, we waited. And waited. My mama played with her cell phone (what ever did we do before the magic of smartphones??) while my dad and I read our kindles.
Finally our train is about to arrive. It's assigned to the platform across the way, so we have to drag our luggage DOWN a flight of stairs, go beneath the tracks, and UP another set of stairs to reach the platform. Oy vey! No bueno!
So we huff and puff and then wait for our train.
It's kind of a mad dash when the train arrives. We drag our suitcases and run/walk towards our assigned carriage in 2nd class. Our car is almost empty. Huh. But yay - no fighting over the luggage racks!
 |
| luggage racks for our car behind my dad |
 |
| see how empty the rest of the train is?? |
We arrive in Rome to find it raining. :*(
I hate rain. Yes, I realize I'm not "green" and the earth lurves the rain and it's wonderful and makes plants grow and blah blah blah - but it totally sucks donkey balls when there's rain when you're on vacation. And not only is this still gross dirty rain like we encountered the week before, unlike the light showers we encountered the last week, it's actually raining...pouring as we exit the train station. Blech!
Why blech? Because we have to walk from Termini to our hotel. I picked
Hotel Quirinale because it was within walking distance from Termini and it had pretty good
reviews on Tripadvisor. I booked a triple room (and I couldn't find any photos of the room online before we checked in, so I didn't know exactly what it was we were getting) for about 200 euros a night which included breakfast for all of us. The description just said it was either going to have three twin beds or a twin and a double with a private bath. Not much to go on, but I figured it was going to be better than the Motel 6 'cause the online photos of the other rooms look decent. Google Maps estimated a 7 minute walk from the train station - it took us closer to 15 because we were not only looking wandering a bit trying to make sense of the map (and it doesn't help that there's a big ass roundabout in front of Termini) but we were dragging our gigantor suitcases with us...IN THE RAIN. Fortunately, we each have our own umbrellas - but it's still hard to navigate crowded, busy, uneven streets while pulling your suitcase as you're holding an umbrella trying to shelter yourself from as much of the rain as possible.
When we get to Quirinale they don't have our triple room ready yet. Instead, we drop off our luggage with the bell boy (bell man? He was like, 60) and then went out to head to
St. Paul's Outside the Walls. Rome only has 2 subway lines. Fortunately for us, we're super close to Termini and there's a direct line to San Paolo. Since we visited the tombs of Peter and John, we wanted to also fit Paul in as well and Sunday was the only day we could do it. Remember how nice the Frecciabianca was? Yeah...the subway wasn't anything like that. I was a bit traumatized - and I've been in the New York subways and subways all over Asia. And dude - Asia...not the cleanest place evah. (with the exception of Japan and Singapore. And Korea is pretty clean. Fine! Only my people are dirty, happy now?) The station had some suspicious stains on the ground and it smelled of pee. I guess the stains aren't that suspicious then, huh?
What struck me this time more than it did last time - the graffiti. It's everywhere. And I thought it was bad in Santa Ana - the cholos and little bastard taggers here have NOTHING on the Italians.
After a 10-15 minute ride, we arrived at Basilica S. Paolo - the guidebook indicated that the church was only a few minutes away and right by the station. Except once we exited the station, we couldn't find any signage. Well...you literally could see the church from the station - but it's the backside, so it's not apparent at all. It was probably less than a 5 minute walk.
As we're walking in the rain, this portion of our day was kind of unpleasant.
We'd driven by before, so I knew what it looked like, but it wasn't until we got to this part (pic below) that I knew we had actually arrived.
Just as we took shelter under the ginormous portico, a huge tour group exited the church and departed. The signage outside the church sucked - it wasn't clear where the entrance actually was - the door the group exited from wasn't marked, but while my parents were debating if they should go around and try to enter through the front doors, I just walked into the church. No one stopped me - there was no one that appeared to be on duty at all.
This had a Byzantine flavor - probably from all the gold. And there was A LOT of gold. The church was built in the shape of a cross. The door where we entered from would have been the left "T" of the cross.
 |
| this is what it looked like from where we entered |
 |
| This would be considered the top of the cross, the head |
 |
| This was be the center - where the altar below which the body of Paul lies. This is looking down from the head of the cross |
 |
| This would be the bottom portion looking down from the altar |
 |
| looking at the front of altar from the bottom of the "T" towards the head |
 |
| walk down the few stairs towards the altar and this is what you have |
 |
| literally beneath the altar - the chains above (I'm not sure if these are symbolic or actually historical) as well as a view of the sarcophagus of Paul (or so claimed by the Church) behind the mesh barrier |
 |
| I couldn't really understand, but I'm assuming this is where it was dug out from. The actual sarcophagus is above. |
Much like Peter, John, and the house of Mary, no one really knows if this is the tomb and body of Paul. The Vatican had slipped a probe into the sarcophagus and did some tests, and the results are apparently consistent with what's known of the body of Paul. Like the other sites, you make of it what you will and I like to think that it is Paul's body though it doesn't really matter (to me) if it is.
 |
| you can't really see, but above the arches there are circular portraits of EVERY pope evah! |
After we wander around inside and take a gazillion photos of the same thing (and this place is SO much quieter and far less crowded than St. Peter's), we walk outside and take some photos there as well.
We spent under an hour at the church. There's nothing nearby for us to see, so we get back on the subway and ride back to Termini. It's about time for us to check in, but we wanted to find lunch before that. OMG. We are soooo ghetto. Because what's the first meal we have upon departing our cruise ship? Can you guess? Really? As we walked around, there's a lot of food options, but we don't really know which restaurant to pick...that is, until when we see...A Chinese Restaurant. In Rome. A PACKED Chinese restaurant with people other than my yellow brethren. Every table in this very small restaurant is full and there are people waiting to get in. And once my parents saw that, you can bet your ass they weren't going to settle for pizza for lunch. So yes, our first meal off the cruise ship was Chinese. Sigh. We waited awhile to be seated, and once we ordered, we waited a LONG time for the food. The verdict? Eh. The mapo tofu wasn't great - I make better mapo tofu and it's not like I'm a great Chinese cook or anything. The scrambled eggs with shrimp dish (not pictured because 1) the plate was tiny and 2) we devoured it all immediately because we were so hungry we were about to eat our fists) was...subpar. The eggs were a little runny and the shrimp they used were tiny. Like, a third of the size of what we usually have. Teeny tiny shrimp. Huh. The flavor was okay, but nothing great. The vegetable was fine - you can't screw that up if you throw it in a hot wok with garlic, salt and oil - but the stand out dish was the pork with bell peppers. So out of the four dishes we ordered, only one was really good. Two were meh and the vegetables were fine. I'd give it a B- or a C+. The portions were small (pictures somehow make it look much larger than it was) and I swear, they were slaughtering the pig after we ordered because it was at least a half hour after we ordered before we got anything. And it didn't come at once. We sat there with white rice for quite awhile before food started trickling in. Slowly. Even though it was pretty meh Chinese food, my parents were so happy to have it.
After our lunch, we walked the block to our hotel. They let us check in and we dragged our luggage to our 3rd floor room. (they had elevators, if they made me drag my suitcase up 3 flights of marble stairs, I would've had a bitch fit).
 |
| the few stairs we had to drag our crap up to get to the elevators |
 |
| outside our room |
Like I said before, I had no idea what kind of room we were getting since there are no photos of triple rooms online. To this day I have no idea if this was a real triple room or if we were upgraded. Because this room was HUGE. The only thing it was missing was a kitchen. HUGE I tell you. And for the first time in two weeks, I slept on a BED. A bed bed, not a sofa bed. Ahhh...
And I had my own room - it was actually pretty big. Much larger than I was expecting for Europe. The main bedroom was huge as well and faced a side street. There was a very spacious bathroom that connected to both of our rooms as well as a very large closet. I was actually kind of sad that we had rented a place instead of staying here the three nights we'd spent in Rome the week before, but after staying a night, I was actually glad we rented a place. Having a couch can't be beat - you really need a living space. As large as this suite was, there was no living area, we sat in chairs or on the beds to watch TV. There was also nowhere to make coffee or to have a snack unless you wanted to go out, which is inconvenient for sloths like us. And according to my mama, the noise from the streets were loud at night and she didn't sleep well - though I slept fine and didn't hear anything (but I do sleep like the dead). The thing that kind of killed it for me - the wifi signal sucked donkey balls. It was fine for checking email and what not, but damn it, I was trying to stream game 1 of OKC v. Memphis and the wifi was SO bad because it kept getting stuck when it was a super close game that had us sitting at the edge of our seats (literally, waiting for the damn bandwidth to open up so we could see if the ball that's been stuck mid-air for the last 8 seconds was going in or not). Even so, I was pleasantly surprised by our room.
 |
| entryway. My small single room is to the left (you can't see the door in this pic), there's a closet to the left and the hallway leads to the main bedroom |
 |
| my mini-single room |
 |
| the big room. With chandelier and everything! |
 |
| they had the mother lode of toiletry kits. They even had butt wash. |
Overall, this was a comfortable place to stay. There was a feel of...neglected opulence about the place that I don't really know how to describe. The furnishings were all very old, heavy and clearly of quality and there was nothing wrong with the housekeeping, but there was still a kind of a worn atmosphere that pervaded that place. Maybe my perception is skewed because I just got off a cruise ship where everything is shiny and new, or I'm just WAY too used to the brand new fancy hotel rooms in Vegas that are upgraded constantly - but the hotel made me think of a grand dame that's past her prime.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in the shops on Via Nazionale trying to find souvenirs for family and friends (and of course, for me) while my dad bowed out of the torture of accompanying his family shopping by surfing the internet on his tablet in the hotel room. My mama and I ended up buying stuff...for us and we continued to stress out over finding gifts for family. (though we did find a fabulous food emporium that had some awesome things that I was really tempted to buy. I also found penis shaped pasta there that I wanted to take a photo of - except the stock lady was standing there and I was too embarrassed - and no, I wasn't tempted to buy that. That would be too awkward for even me to gift. They called it "love pasta". Sure.)
On our last night, my parents told me I could pick whatever I wanted to eat. We strolled around the neighborhood and being retarded and completely unprepared (sob! I didn't yelp) I picked the corner restaurant with the brightest lights and the most people. Damn! I was totally conned - just like the other tourists around us were conned. We ended up at
Ristorante Washington, which lemme tell you now - sucks ass. DO NOT EAT THERE. There's nothing
wrong with the food - it's...eh. Definitely not worth the prices. We paid over 60 euros for the three of us for two pastas, a pizza, a water and two coffees. The ambiance...it was okay, but the service was really, really bad. The waiters were rude, condescending, and as we were still eating put this really awkward pudgy guy next to us (also a tourist) and said "this is your table" and stuck a
reserved sign on our table WHILE WE WERE STILL EATING. That wouldn't have been so bad if they did it to others too, but there were people around us who'd been there longer and they stuck the pudgy tourist next to our table. Poor guy looked really uncomfortable too. They also charged a mandatory 15% service charge, which is in very small print on the bottom of the menu so you're forced to tip for the worst service ever. This is without a doubt the worst meal we had in Italy. My parents thought the pasta was fine, but too oily and the serving size was very small, about half the portion they got at Ricca. My pizza...it tasted like a cross between Italian pizza and Papa John's. It wasn't bad, but it was the worst pizza I've ever had in Italy. The cheese didn't seem like fresh mozzarella (sacrilege!), but the dried shredded crap that Vons sells. It would've been fine if I had eaten it at home, but I wouldn't have freaking paid like, $15 for it. I could get a better one at BJ's or CPK for less. Really, if the service was better, I wouldn't feel such repugnance towards them, but the fact that they charged us up the ass, treated us like crap, and the food was subpar seriously pissed me off. Hell, it's been almost a month and just thinking about it still pisses me off. Ugh! So the lesson is - stay far, far away from Ristorante Washington.
 |
| we should've known not to pick a place with big posters of their food in the window |
 |
| in WHAT universe does a Margherita pizza have ONE basil leaf? It's not suppose to be a garnish, it's a freaking main component in a Margherita pizza! |
After our entirely unsatisfying dinner (my dad refused to leave immediately, he stubbornly lingered over his miniscule cup of cappuccino just to piss off the wait staff) we wandered around the area on the last night of our vacation.
We walked around the Piazza della Repubblica, down Via Nazionale, and just strolled around watching the city come to life at night before we headed back to our hotel to turn in.
 |
| Piazza della Repubblica |
 |
| looking down Via Nazionale from our hotel |
 |
| same street, other direction |
We head back to the hotel, move things around in our luggage and carry on for the trip home the next day, watch OKC beat the Grizzlies (yay!) in a painfully tortuous manner because the wifi was slower than molasses, and sleep. Can I just say again how happy my old bones were to be sleeping in a real bed? Ahhhh...
