Italy Ill-Tally: 2

On the overly-crowded water bus in Venice, Noah complained that he felt sick. Rachelle and I figured that a combination of seeing Liv pampered when she was ill and the swaying of the packed and hot boat contributed to his complaints. Oh, how wrong we were.

As we exited the boat, Noah filled a plastic bag as the exiting throng of passengers parted to give him some space. We boarded our bus and began the 40-minute drive to the airport. Fortunately, we had several more bags, and boy did Noah need them. The poor guy was not doing well. Although his stomach was empty, his vocal retching was loud enough to send all of the pigeons in St. Mark’s square a-flight. I am Noah, hear me roar. At one point, I noticed the bus driver glance up sharply in his rear-view mirror and I feared he was going to pull over and toss off the ill American bambino. Some of the passengers snuck peaks our way to see if Noah’s head was going to spin around when he let out particularly loud roars. We were not far from the Vatican where a proper exorcism might be performed.

As a side note, Rachelle and I – both being middle children - share an overly developed desire to avoid standing out in general, but especially as Americanos when we are abroad. For example, we try not to speak too loudly, we are excessively polite, and we do not wear tee-shirts emblazoned with, “I bleed red, white, and blue.” After 20 minutes of Noah’s yowling, we had to just laugh at our situation and give up any fleeting hopes of decorum.

The flight was quite bumpy and we took some comfort in noticing that Noah was not the only passenger with his face in a bag. As we landed in Rome, the storm that rocked our plane was in full force. We bought our bus tickets and were told to hurry outside to await the bus, which was supposed to arrive shortly. We huddled together with a group of 4 Slovenians, a family from Scotland, and some others waiting for the bus. The rain came down; the rain also came up, left, and right. The thunder bellowed and the lightning lit up the dark sky. With our fellow desperate bus-waiters, we created a tent of umbrellas with everyone in the middle. Despite these efforts, we could not have been wetter if you dunked us in the Venice Grand Canal. Along with our other drenched palls, we all just began to giggle and laugh at the absurdity of the situation as we waited an hour for the bus. Dripping wet and exhausted, we made it from the bus (see picture) to the subway and the subway to our hotel arriving around 11:30pm. We fell asleep before our heads hit the pillows.

You might think that we were comforted finding ourselves dry and in our hotel. This is partially correct. We were all glad to be out of the downpour and Noah was glad to be close to a toilet, but this was not the best hotel. Actually, ‘hotel’ is not an accurate name. The establishment consisted of about 5 different apartments on a hallway in the bottom floor of a building. In our flat, the bathroom had some sort of garbage disposal-like machine built in to the pipes, and each time you flush or run the shower or sink it grinds and churns loud enough to rattle your teeth. The assortment of towels, sheets, and blankets were of all different sizes, textures, and colors. They did all match in the fact that they were consistently thin, tired, stiff, and pilly. The blanket on Liv’s bed was more likely a small rug. None of these lovely sheets or towels were cleaned during our 6-night stay. There was teh dregs of some shampoo in a bottle and no soap in the bathroom. Breakfast consisted of a basket of Twinkie-like cake things in a basket on a less than clean table at the end of the hall. On the bright side, the grimy facilities encouraged us to spend most of our time out enjoying Rome.