Sept 16th Part Two: The Keyword is Rough

As much as it seemed like nothing could go wrong this morning, the catch phrase of the afternoon became "that was a little rough!"

The trouble began when we didn't take into consideration that it was a festivo day. That meant our perfectly timed train from Assisi to Rome didn't run that day, and we had to wait an additional hour and a half at the station. It was also at that point that I started to suffer horribly from sunstroke, and faded into a shell of my normally sunny self. Then our train, when it finally arrived, ran to the next station and then stopped with an an announcement that it was finished for the day. We had to wait an additional hour and a half before the next train to Rome arrived. I attempted to call TD Canada collect to sort out some minor internet banking interruptions. Utterly failing I sank into a despair fueled greatly by the aforementioned sunstroke. It was at that point that Nina was forced to revive me with lemon Fanta and a purloined (left behind at a cafe table...we think) copy of British Cosmo.

Due to the interruption of our first train, the second train became increasingly crowded. While this wasn't so bad for us, since we already had seats, we watched, with great sympathy, a parade of people pass through our car trying to find a place to sit.

Finally we arrived in Rome. We made haste for the metro to find our campground: Camping Roma, described as being located beside the Vatican. Three metro stops past the Vatican, and half an hour on the most crowded bus I have ever experienced later we arrived at the campground located conveniently in a patch of nature next to the freeway. I had sunk into such a low mood at this point that my conversation skills became a series of glares and low mutterings. This was mostly due to the guy who tried to wedge himself onto the bus, and held the doors open for five minutes until he was threatened by the driver and gave up. I was glaring distance from him giving him my meanest look while I was trying to ignore the sweat dripping down my legs, itching me fantastically, that I could not reach to brush away.

Last but not least, after finding our tent Nina and I made a bee-line for the bathroom to refresh ourselves in a number of ways. We were confronted with a cheerily decorated room done up in primary colours with small animal motifs painted on the walls. Nice, we thought, country charm chic...that is until we saw the toilets. Accessible through swinging saloon styled doors were the smallest toilets I had ever seen. They presented a number of logistical issues, but Nina and I being troupers, went ahead and used them anyway. It was only after exiting our mini stalls and noticing that the bank of sinks was about knee height, did we realize that we were in the children's bathroom.

That night as we fell asleep to the sounds of drunken Australians peeing behind our tent, we thought - this was a little rough. We left Camping Roma the next day without any sadness and made our way back to civilization in Rome proper.