Saying Goodbye to Italy (Dec 2023)

Transiting from Venice back to Rome, plus some funny dinner stories

This is part of a look back at our time in Italy last December (2023). The post below follows this one.

We took the train back to Rome, sitting in regular seats this time. Truly, regular train seats are all we need, as they’re plenty spacious, unlike airline seats. There was even ample room for our luggage at the back of the train carriage.

After the ~4-hour ride back to Rome, we headed off to the taxi stand to get a ride to our hotel. It took a couple of tries, as the first taxi couldn’t fit our luggage, but after some gesturing and broken language we finally stuffed ourselves into one that fit us. The ride was fairly uneventful until the driver started talking about Mussolini and how great he was. Um, yeah, what? Fortunately, we weren’t super far away from the hotel at that point, but C had to ask him to change the subject.

We picked our hotel mostly based on proximity to the airport and the fact that it had a shuttle; important criteria since we had an early morning flight. It was a bonus that it had cute Christmas decorations and a restaurant where we could grab dinner.

Two funny stories at dinner. (Chris skipped, so it was just me and the girls.) First: While we were eating, I messaged my sister and this was our exchange:

And then minutes later (for real):

I was dying I was laughing so hard! The girls were so confused. Growing up, whenever “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over” would come on, my sister and I would lip sync with an air mic, and the end of the guitar riff in the middle always made us giggle. It was a whole thing. And it is THE last song in the world I expected to hear in Rome. But life is funny that way!

The girls and I ordered tiramisu for dessert (had to get one more in!). It sounded cute: It was an assemble-your-own version. Well, it was fun-ish to put together, but it tasted terrible. Part of what makes tiramisu so good is that the flavors of the espresso and mascarpone mixture marry together as they soak into the lady fingers, but there was no soaking in this version and there was basically no flavor. It was hands down the worst tiramisu we’ve ever had. Not the end of the world, but not how we wanted to remember our last dessert in Italy. If you ever have this option at a restaurant, do not order it!

We got okay nights of sleep and, speaking of sleep, this was a monumental moment for me: It was my final night taking the prescription sleep medication I had been on for years and had been weaning off of for ~6 six months. I wondered how I’d sleep moving forward (or if I’d sleep). I marked the occasion by taking a photo of the empty package in the garbage. Not very ceremonious, but it was the end of quite an era and it deserved a moment. (I journaled separately about my insomnia and my sleep medication weaning; it was an ordeal. If you ever want to know more, just ask.)

And that, friends, is a wrap on our time in Italy. There’s so much more of the country we’d love to see. One day, hopefully. But 9 days in Rome and 4 in Venice (plus two days of transit) wasn’t too shabby. Up next: Singapore!