First night in Rome

Rome, Italy
Saturday, June 21

Having arrived at Rome a day earlier than anticipated, we immediately called our hostel, Hotel Acropoli, to make a reservation for that night. The number listed on the Hostelworld.com reservation, however, belonged to a hotel booking agent who instructed us to meet him at a particular Piazza, whose name remains unknown to this day. We did not immediately realize, however, that this man was not a member of our hotel staff, but two big clues led us to an Encyclopedia-Brown-like resolution of the mystery – the man’s screams at when we told him it would be easier if we just met him at the Hotel and the fact that the Hotel receptionist told us that we had probably spoken to a “conductor.”

For dinner we went to a pizzeria with a menu identical to that of the first two restaurants from where we’d been booted for being late, and for only ordering one pizza, respectively. We watched Italy lose to Spain. A chocolate cake bought from a baker across the street turned out to be a rum cake, each bite of which tasted like a shot, making me then wish I had chaser.

Shortly after we got back to the hotel, we were greeted by who I am sure will be one of the most memorable characters’ we’ll have come across this entire trip – Ostello the 80 (+/- 5) year old man who, upon dropping his bags onto the floor after entering our 6 bed room, greeted us with a hearty “Buono Serra.” It’s important that you understand how the room is laid out, if you’re to fully appreciate the horror and hilarity of that night. There were 6 twin beds lined up next to each other, with a half-wall partition the length of the beds, in between the first four and the last two. Keone and I took the farthest two, in the set of four, by the window as the room was unbearably hot. Ostello, took the bed that was farthest from us on the opposite side, a bed we couldn’t see because of that wall partition.

We heard strange croaks and gurgles coming for the first hour or so, and Keone admonished me for suggesting that we might wake up next morning with a dead man in the room. About two hours into the night, at around 1:00am, we were jolted awake by a blood-curdling scream, dripping with anger and pleading – “Bella! Bella!” – that was coming from the other side of the wall partition. These screams/cries/sound emissions were then quickly followed by thumping/slapping. We had absolutely no idea why he was screaming the Italian word for beautiful, and we had even less idea as to how he was making the slapping sound. This continued throughout the night. In the morning, Keone couldn’t take it anymore, and went to see what was going on. He was apparently, in his sleep, crying out “Bella!” and slapping his black leather shoe against the wall over and over. I kid you not, it was terrifying at the time.