A fairly uneventful day in comparison to the rest of the week, but a good day for relaxing all the same. To begin, I woke up and Vanessa, Damien and I went to the Trevi fountain, even though it was pouring out, and stupidly I forgot my umbrella. Vanessa and I actually shared one, and Damien had his own, but I think it had a bit of a leak in it. Anyway, we took some pictures there, them of me, and I of them, and then we walked back through the very wet streets of Rome, and let me tell you, the streets of Rome do not adapt themselves to the rain too well, because there were huge puddles and such everywhere with little to no place that the water could travel save into the road. As we came back from the fountain, we walked by one of the central fountains of Rome, where there must have been in surplus of 40 emergency vehicles there and loads of personal all over, I truly thought that I had hit Rome in the middle of a true terrorist attack and that everyone would learn of this and worry for me. I later learned that it was a drill that they were doing to prepare themselves for a terrorist attack in future and that they actually had three such sights. After getting back to the hostel, Damien and Vanessa grabbed their stuff and took off, and I took a picture of them, and promised to email them when they returned to Australia. I was so glad and happy to meet them, and I am hoping that if I ever find myself in Perth, that I may have some friends there, and of course it would always be nice to have visitors in Denver, or wherever I find myself. The rest of the day, I just found myself sitting at the hostel really and not doing very much save to be waiting for my bus and by extension plane (perhaps the other way round?). So, I actually ended up talking more to those charming Irish girls, and more the Canadian girl for a while, and what a better way to end one’s stay in Rome than to watch Gladiator? So this is what I did, and I found it to be most amusing.
It was great to see the Colosseum as it most likely was back in the day and it was great to see the Forum and the Emperor’s palace in all its great and glorious full splendour. As I watched it, other people would come in and out including this very nice girl named Anna (I think) from Hungary, and she was quite the social and discursive person, even more verbose than I if you can believe that. Anyway, after the film ended, I played a good deal of Zelda, and such like that, and finally found myself thinking it was time to leave this enchanting realm of the capitol and powerhouse of the ancient world, and left there back to the airport and then to London Getting back to London from such a good weekend was probably the worst move I could have done, or at least the most frustrating one. This is because when I did get back, I had to deal with the British passport control, who tend to be most disagreeable, and after the intense (or so it seemed at that time) interrogation of if I intended to work (to which I replied that I did, doing ‘odd jobs’ and then being asked what I meant by ‘odd jobs’. I replied I did not know exactly, that is why they were odd, they are not well established career tracks. I then ended up getting frustrated and said no, I did not want to work there, where I was then informed that if I did and I was found out I would be in very serious trouble.
This did not begin things well, trying to get home in what I thought of as my new country only to learn that I was considered to be more or less of an intruder by the government. After this little episode which took longer than it ought to have, I found that the Stanstet Express train was no longer running, as it was just barely after midnight, so I had to catch a coach, but the company that belonged to the Stanstet Express train line, was not actually doing it, so I had to go by proxy to another vendor that was substituting for them, but unfortunately I still did not have my ticket that I did pay I think £24.00 for, though half of it got me to the airport in the first place. This vendor however would not issue me a ticket and I could not for the life of me get the machines for the Stanstet Express work, so I eventually had to go and pay something like £14.00 for another coach company to take me to Victoria Station. On the way back to the station, I sat next to an odd girl who was of Italian and Swedish descent from Sweden, who studied presently in London, but she was very obviously not fully Scandinavian. We finally got off, and I tried to find a night bus back to my flat, but I had to wait for about half an hour or so just to get this. I finally did get back at about 3:30 in the morning, and I was little amused, because my plane had landed around 23:45, so almost four hours earlier!