I flew to Rome from Alghero mainly to visit Raffaella, a friend of mine who I met in Scotland working for EF Languages. I told Raffaella when to expect me and she kindly booked a hostel on my behalf so that I didn’t have to worry about finding a place myself. I caught a train from the airport to the city centre and she met me there to show me to the hostel.
Most days Raffaella was happy to show me around the many places of interest during the day, and various bars in the evenings. The first place we visited together was the Colosseum, which I’d seen countless times in pictures and films before. This, however, didn’t do any justice to being in the presence of the structure itself, which stands almost 50m high, and covers an area of 24,000m². We walked for about twenty minutes from the Colosseum to Piazza Vennezia, which is dominated by the ‘Monument of Victor Emmanuel II’, where we met Raffaella’s friend Giovanna.
Giovanna couldn’t speak any English, so communication was difficult between us, luckily Raffaella was on hand most of the time. She seemed a lovely girl despite the lack of understanding on both our parts. One evening we went out together just the two of us. To this day I’m not sure how we coped the whole evening, but we had fun. Dinner followed by a drink and a walk home via Trevi Fountain, which was wonderfully lit up in an orange glow.
At the end of my month in Italy, the hostel where I was staying had organised a halloween party, and I was invited to go along with them. We hit the city with almost everyone dressed up as some kind of ghoul, not including me. Apart from one Irish girl in the hostel, I was the only one who wasn’t from Argentina. However, I relished the opportunity to use my Spanish since I hadn’t spoken it in months.
Other places:
