A Restful Flight

My United flight to Rome was uneventful, thank God.

The food was abysmal. Note to self: just stop eating airplane food. It’s never any good.

When I packed my travel accoutrements, I completely forgot that I had booked an exit row–meaning no one was in front of me. I was bummed that I couldn’t use the fancy blow-up pillow I brought! It looks like this:

I also brought a blow up footrest–didn’t use that, either. I did use my blanket. But then I left that in Rome, so… yeah. I’m gonna have to rethink the accoutrements next time.

Still, through the grace of God, I was able to sleep enough to not be jet lagged when I arrived. And the weird thing is, it never caught up with me. I slept fine there and I slept fine when I got home. Thank you, Jesus!

My brother-in-law picked me up from the airport, and we drove out to where they lived–a good 45 minutes outside of touristy Rome.

I knew that my sister and her daughter were sick before I bought my ticket, but we all thought they were getting better. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, they felt worse. But they were kind enough to give me a tour of the campus.

I am a big fan on the Roman pines.

With my sister and niece ill, I was a little worried. Not only did I not fly to Rome to get sick, but two days after arriving home, I had an appintment to meet with a priest to pray over me (read previous post for more info). I couldn’t get sick!

So I planned to buy some vitamins the next day and just put the whole situation in God’s very capable hands.

Crazy Cab Ride

The next day, I got up early and made my way into ancient Rome–or whatever they call it. Downtown? Center City? Where the tourists hang out?

My sister told me the night before to take a cab to Anagnina. Unfortunately, she didn’t specify, “be sure to look on Google maps for Anagnina the Metro stop, not the nearby town.” Naturally, my cab app told my cab driver to take me to the nearby town. What did I know?

It has often been my experience, when traveling abroad, that I have a ridiculous cab ride. It happened in London, during my second year of law school, when I tried to take a 15 pound cab ride home, and the English-speaking cab driver misheard me and took me some forty-fifty pounds out into the middle of nowhere. I was on the verge of tears then… this time, I handled it much better.

Since I had no idea how far away this metro stop was, it didn’t phase me after we’d been driving about 25 minutes. When the cab driver pulled up to a random driveway in the middle of nothing and said in Italian, “This can’t be where you want to go…” my heart sank.

“No,” I said. “I wanted to go to the metro stop.”

“That’s thirty minutes away!” he exclaimed. God love him, he seemed more saddened than bothered.

It was clear to me what had happened. I apologized and in broken Italian–no one speaks English there nowadays–I said, “Mi dispiace. Puoi portarmi a metro Anagnina?” Can you take me to the metro Anagnina?

And then he did. On the way, a friend called him, and I could hear him telling her about our crazy ride.

“La ragazza”, he said, (I was happy to be a girl in this story) told him to go to this random place when she wanted to go somewhere else. He felt horrible. He didn’t know what to say.

At first I was upset. Then I thought… what can I do? What’s the point of getting upset here? It’s no one’s fault. We make mistakes. This one cost me more than I had planned, but there was no point crying over this spilled latte.

By the time I got to the metro, the driver turned around and in slow Italian said to me, “I am speechless.”

I replied, tutto bene. It’s all good.

Because it is. I was in Rome. Sure, I’d just paid 68 Euros for an unnecessarily long cab drive, but whatever.

I was in Rome.