All Roads Lead to Termini

When I was booking out hotel in Rome, I asked Rik where we should stay. He recommended agains staying near Termini, the Grand Central Station of Rome. It's not a cool part of town, nor is it really central to stuff.

Now that rik has gone, I changed from the Red Rose B&B to The Beehive, a self-described "Hotel and Art Space." The B&B system here is not nearly what it is in the states. The Red Rose was a floor-through apartment owned by someone who lets out a couple of rooms. The room was clean and small, with a pretty decent bed. All I really care about. I chose this one because the site Cross-Pollinate, a rental agency owned by the same people who own The Beehive, said that they had A/C. The A/C was a stand-alone unit with a huge tube that lead out the window, which had to be kept open for this purpose. Kinda kills the A/C when the window is open. And the breakfast provided was lackluster. But it was cool and comfortable. And the woman who ran the place let me keep my huge suitcase full of yarn there, no charge, for 3 days. So it was well worth it.

I am staying in the 8-bed dorm of the Beehive for a measly 22 euro a night. The hotel is really special. It's a hostel, full of young people, but it is clean, pretty, has free internet access, a lounge, a cafe that serves up healthy and cheap alternatives to what is otherwise available in Rome. It also has a fat, affectionate cat named Ingmar that I have taken a liking to. She's an outdoor cat, so she's kinda icky, but last night I enjoyed sitting in the lounge, Ingmar cuddle up next to my lap as I tried to get a better look into what I wanted to do for the next couple of days.

Unfortunately, there is no A/C in the dorm, and when I walked into it after a ridiculous game of scrabble I played with two Navy officers, a 9th grader and her mom (I won, by the way), I could TASTE the stuffiness. And then I realized the one thing I forgot in the huge bag full of yarn and crap my wonderful boyfriend offered to lug back home for me... EARPLUGS.

Dammit. I brought a small cache of earplugs just for the 6 nights I'm staying in a dorm full of people. And I forgot them. Luckily, not too much snoring last night... I was much more concerned with the slight allergy attack brought on by Ingmar, I'm sure, and the fact that I could feel the heat rising up from my body as I tried, in vain, to sleep.

Bah.

I am tired this morning. Very tired. So much so that my breakfast included a cappucchino with an espresso dumped into it.

So, back to Termini. This station is glorious. The bus terminal is right outside the station, so whenever I'm somewhere in town, I can just look for any bus that says "Termini" and I know I'll get home. The station itself is like an airport; it's got a mall underground (the -1 floor. That's right. In europe, the main floor is called "0" and underground is represented by negative numbers.) and cafes where you don't get charged 2.5 times the price for a cup of coffee if you want to sit. Score!

There's a supermarket that has Total greek yogurt, which I am so happy to have for breakfast every morning. Even if it means luggin around my own jar of honey.

Also, last night I found myself very tired when it came time to eat. All I really wantd was pasta, as I didn't have anything really significant during the day. I just wanted a simple, filling meal. And I didn't want another panino (I'm fully bored of them) and to sit at a restaurant alone was not really something I wanted to do. I woman alone in Italy is not alone for long, and I'm not interested in making any friends. So I walk the 2 blocks to termini, and it turns out there is this place called Chef Express, a chain of caffes and self-service places that has its own self-service restaurant. It's like a big cafeteria that has a pasta station, a meat-grilling station, a salad bar, a dessert bar! And it was incredibly cheap: I paid 3.70 for a heaping plate of baked pasta; a nice cut of steak, grilled to order, was about 7. Unbelievable. and it's self-service, which means that there's no "cover" or "bread" charge just to sit down. I'm sure Rik is going to be sad about misssing this one. There was a garden and a piano player. he wasn't even that cheesy, especially compared to the Casio-playing dude at the NICE restaurant in Positano we were forced to listen to. It was perfect.

I'f you're living in Rome, live in Trastevere. If you're visiting Rome, stay as clost to Termini as you can get.