Retrospective: First Day in Italy

I’ve flown in a plane before. At least once before college for sure. When I was in 5th grade I flew to Florida to visit Disney World, and then I didn’t fly for a while. But in the past few years I’ve been flying more. I’ve taken a plane to Rochester, NY from Boston, and a small plane out of Lake Placid. Much more recently I flew to California on a trip to tour Silicon Valley. But I never flew out of the country, until now.

I just got my passport a few years ago, and I didn’t really know what I needed past that. So I brought a backpack and a duffle bag of clothes to the airport, took the Orange Line to the Red Line to the Silver Line all the way down to the international terminal of Logan Airport. I miraculously avoiding the need to check my bag, and I was off ... after a few hours waiting for the plane. I didn’t really know anybody too well then. We played Euchre and chatted a little bit. It’s really strange at this point to think of my relationship with everyone else on the trip at that point. I know everyone on the trip so much better now. It almost seems strange that there was a point where I didn’t know them.

Right before we left Cary Rappaport gave a small lecture on the electromagnetic scanners used in airport security. How they are useful, and ways they aren't so useful. And then we flew on the plane. Alitalia was pretty fancy. We were served probably the best airplane food I’ve ever had. It even had cheesecake, yum. The seats all had screens on the back, and on them you could play multiplayer pong, and watch out of an exterior camera on the bottom of the plane. I watched some episodes of HBO’s Rome I had downloaded earlier on my own computer, and tried to get a little sleep on the plane. But I didn’t really get too much. And soon enough we landed.

As it was, getting through security, and customs was easy. The guard just looked at my passport, stamped it with the date, and I was able to go on my merry way. We left late at night back in Boston, so with the combination of the time difference and the 7 hour ride we got to Rome in the middle of the day.

The first thing I thought about Rome was how undeveloped it was, but then I found that the airport is actually pretty far from the city. JFK or Logan it ain’t. It also struck me fairly quickly that the signs weren’t in a language I was used to. We went into Rome proper from the airport. To the Trastevere district, across the Tiber from the main body of Rome. From there everyone was split into 3 groups, so 8 per apartment. I happened to be assigned the apartment an extra 5 minute walk up hill.

We unpacked at the new apartment, got our keys, explored the compound for a little bit and set off to explore Rome. The area we were in wasn’t super high scale. There was a lot of graffiti on the walls and the streets weren’t especially clean. But we soon found a place to eat, and we found that the pizza in Rome was much cheaper than Boston, pound for pound. Also the alcohol was super cheap. A bottle of beer was something close to one or two euro.



Later we would take a tour of the Trastevere district. And it was on this tour that I was first astounded by the majesty and ornamentation of the Churches of Rome. We saw Santa Maria in Trastevere, and when I got in I basically just stood for a minute with my mouth agape. The church had a gilt ceiling, with recessed panels and artwork in each. I’d come to learn that this was only the beginning of the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Italy. Later, we had a group dinner of several courses at a place called Spaghetteria, though at this point I forget what the actual meal was. Following the dinner was a walk across the Tiber to see some of the splendid monuments of Rome.

We first stopped by Largo Argentina, which we would come to call “The Cat Palace”. It was a set of ruins dating to the Republican Era of Rome set into the center of the square by about 30 feet. We then walked up to Piazza Navona to see an eternal feature of Rome. People trying to sell you useless things. The objects de jour were little helicopters which could flung with a rubber band, SPLAT balls, which flatten when they hit a hard surface and slowly return to form, and laser pointers with a diffractive lens which created a grid pattern. There were also several people selling pieces of art and posters of famous painting. As I’ve traveled through Italy this kind of vender has been everywhere. Perhaps the only constant in the whole country. In the square was also a neat building and Fountain of the Four Rivers, which is topped by a massive obelisk. Each of the figures looks away from the Church. Cary told us that sculptor had a bit of a rivalry with the Church’s architect, so the fountain was designed to Poo-poo the church it sat in front of.

And then I went back to the apartment to fall into a well deserved sleep. I was jet-lagged and sleep deprived. And I was completely oblivious to how much more awesome the Italian Dialogue would be.

I was smart enough to reflect a small moment on the plane in the notebook I'm keeping, so I'll leave with a snippet of my entry from that night:

I figure while I'm putting pen to paper I might get a little thoughtful. I am going to be a guest in this country. And though I know its history well enough, I know very little of how it exists currently.What are the issues on the Italian people's lips? This is a question I cannot answer on the plane, but it's one I should hold in my mind while I'm in Italy.