Now About Rome
The Unexpected Adventure
The Unexpected Adventure
Before we’d even left the US, we bought tickets for a concert in Rome happening just 15 days after landing in Sarandë. (Yeah, I know, crazy.) Two reasons:
Jeff is a diehard Grateful Dead fan and the concert was one of the top tribute bands
We HAD TO see Rome. No question. Rome, because… IT’S ROME!
The immense history embedded in Rome is overwhelming. Rain was forecasted for the late afternoon of Day 2 of our excursion, so I planned everything we wanted to see outdoors for the first day-and-a-half. No problem.
Our flight landed at 7:00AM. Our plan was to take the bus from the airport into Roma Termini, walk to our hotel, drop off our backpacks, then head out. Easy peasy, right? Not quite!
Upon disembarking our plane, we walked into the terminal, and right past the only bus ticket kiosk(unbeknownst to us), through a few doors and…slam! Oh crap! Did they just lock? Why yes, yes they locked right behind us.
And our phones weren’t working either, which prevented us from buying tickets online. We had been awake since 3:30AM, so we definitely needed to find coffee and wake-up a bit to get things figured out. Thank God there was a small cafe open in the airport! After a few minutes and taking a few deep breaths, plus some strong coffee, we finally got tickets, hopped on our bus, and off we went. WE WERE GOING INTO ROME!!!
Arriving at Roma Termini, in the center of the city, was exciting. Another first! As we were driving up to our bus stop, we noticed a group of teenagers gathered, which we thought, “oh cool, they’re touring Rome”. There were some police officers around, but it’s a city. It was definitely not an unusual sight for Americans.
So, we walked to our hotel, dropped our bags, and headed back to start walking toward the Coliseum to pick up our passes for buses and entrance into the various attractions.
We walked around a corner and suddenly there are police everywhere! Some were in RIOT GEAR?! And now there’s a police helicopter flying above us.
Then we see it; THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS gathered, holding signs, chanting, loud music playing…what the heck had we gotten ourselves into?
We were in the middle of a “Friday’s For Future” protest rally.
Never heard of it?
“Friday’s For Future” was created by Greta Thunberg, a young Swedish climate activist pushing world leaders to change policies immediately to save the planet for futures to come. On this particular day, there were demonstrations in not only Rome but, Berlin, Jakarta, and Tokyo. To say it was exciting being there is an understatement!
It didn’t come without its own drawbacks though; mainly the cutting off of main routes to the major historical attractions. The gist of it; 3 hours on foot to our destination for what normally would be 20 minutes. Honestly though, a huge shout-out to what we later found out was a group of 5000 students peacefully protesting for their better future on earth.
“But wait, that’s not all…tell ‘em Johnny, what else did they win?”
“Well, Bob, it’s a chance to be where a political rally during election weekend was being held.”
Yep, we had no idea. It was Italy’s election weekend too!
We were so hungry by the time we got through the protest, we started wandering to w-h-e-r-e-v-e-r we could get to. It took quite a bit to actually find a place because we would walk down one street and you couldn’t go left. Or you couldn’t go down a street because it was blocked. We’d turn a different direction toward a restaurant area and there were more barricades. Finally, we found an open area with about 4 different restaurants, picked one, and sat down.
As we were ordering, we noticed a stage being set up, with lighting, speakers, etc. like a concert. Then we looked around and the street we had just walked through was now closed too.
As our food was arriving, we noticed what appeared to be a high-ranking military official speaking with a group of high-ranking police officers. After watching all of this, we decided to ask our waiter what was going on and he said, “some big political rally”
When we returned to Sarandë, we found out about it being the election. Then…SURPRISE! Video news coverage of that exact location. We, literally, laughed-out-loud.
Throughout the weekend though, we were constantly reminded of how much history had been made in this city. More history than we could ever truly comprehend. And I was taken by the fact that, in the midst of so much violence in the world, there is a generation standing up and wanting change to ultimately lead to peace. As we walked along the area around the Roman Forum, we were greeted by hundreds of pictures created by school children, promoting peace.
As Jeff said in his Facebook post, “That wasn’t the Rome we came to experience. But it was definitely an experience we had in Rome!”