Sunday, February 22, 2015

Observations upon returning to Rome

I'll post pictures about Prague and everything later, but some initial thoughts as I wait to get off the plane.

1. I'm freaking exhausted

2. I love traveling but also I hate it. New cities and experiences= fun. The actual act of traveling= less fun.

3. We met a girl who's done this for the past three weekends. How is she not dead?

4. I'm seeing four countries while I'm here. Italy, the Czech Republic, France, and Germany. After being so drained coming back from Prague, I feel like four is a good number of countries to see.

The thing is when I came here, I really wanted to see Britain and Spain. Ireland and Greece too, but Spain was the top of my list. Unfortunately, due to time constraints and lack of traveling partners (it is really hard to find blanks on everyone's schedules, or people who want to go, and the two overlapping is rare) it looks like I won't be able to. And that's really disappointing for me. I've studied Spanish for four years, I really wanted to go to Spain.

But, you know, c'est la vie. It's a bummer, but what can I do about it? I'm not about to go traveling alone. 

It makes me sad, but I guess them's the breaks. I'm taking a few weekends to go to different places in Italy, and I have a few free weekends just for Rome. Which is think is really important, you know? The girl I talked to earlier- she's barely explored Rome, and we've been here for over a month. I think it's important that I get to know Italy deeply- there's a reason I'm living here. So Spain didn't work out this time. It does hurt, but I'll get over it. Maybe I can go with my sister for my college graduation or something.

Anyway, I guess what's I'm concluding as I wrap this up is that when we arrived back in Rome, the Italian felt so comforting after being away for a weekend. Rome, you may be a dirty, loud city that smells like garlic, but you're my dirty loud city that smells like garlic. (Subsequently, I've developed quite a taste for garlic since we've been here)