have returned! after much hassle and anticipation, i am back in the eternal city.
antonio is absolutely just... a gift from God. i emailed him about 2 weeks ago, and very dramatically promised that if he would let me and blake stay here for a few nights we would not only cook him fabulous meals (including FRIED CHICKEN...stay tuned for that) but we would sing him Moulin Rouge love songs (he loves moulin rouge, as do i) and make him laugh. so he agreed, and at 10am this morning, 3 hours after climbing out of my evil, ungracious sleeper-train-from-venice bed, antonio and i embraced and did the cute italian cheek pecks and i came back to my favorite apartment in the world.

blake has been in berlin this past month on a journalist-convention type trip where they pay for very smart, inquisitive people to go to deutschland and get educated about the countrys history. he had a week off between the convention and his plane ticket home, so he agreed to come to italy to visit me (i say agree because blake is a little bit of a snob about italy...bedbugs, misogynists, not germany, etc...). we are going to stay in rome for a few days, and then i will return to udine for school, and meet up with him in venice next saturday.
i left for rome yesterday afternoon. i had a 7 o'clock flight out of venice on ryanair, so i figured getting to venice 2 hours before my flight would be pleanty of time. unfortunately, i am a bit of a jump-the-gun-type non-researcher, and forgot that there are 2 airports out of venice: marco polo, the big one, which has busses running to-and-from every 15 minutes for the 5 minute ride, and treviso. which is in Treviso. an hour away. and has one bus that runs every hour. so when i arrived in venice at 5:04, i had missed the 5 o'clock bus. at 6 my bus finally arrived. and at 7 we got to the airport, in time to see my plane take off without me. was. sad. i went to the info desk and was advised that i could either a) sleep on a bench and then pay 90euro for the 8am flight, or b) take a night train from venice. a night train sounded romantic enough, and certainly cheaper. so at 11:30, after a beautiful evening walking around venice and watching an orchestra perform in st.marks square, i hopped into my 2-feet wide cot in a train car with 3 women from napoli and managed to fall asleep. wasnt too terribly bad, actually, though the blanket was even thinner then the matress and i had to chose between covering my butt or my knees.
arrived in rome 7am. breakfasted at a cafe in campo de fiori. washed face, armpits, bangs in sink in bathroom of cafe where women kept coming in and peeing in a hole in the ground behind me, changed into a clean dress, and sauntered to meet antonio.
apartment is just how i remember, though antonio has taken to taping up inspirational messages to himself on random surfaces. is good; i read them and feel...inspired.
so now i am here and in love all over again.
oh, but, oh no! aside from it being my favorite place and blake being able to come etc, i totally returned to rome to find the jude law boy. but today, when i strategically positioned myself behind a thin metal pole in an effort to hide myself in manner of an osterich, and stared into the cafe where he works, he was not there! fear the worst. will be so distraught if i cannot find him again and show him how composed and alluring i am these days...oh well, anyway, greeks are silly.
so now it is evening and i have the apartment and, in a sense, the city, to myself. blake arrives tomorrow morning at 9 (trying to give him directions to campo de fiori was hilarious...he is so use toberlin, orderly, straight lines and road maps...i was like "just sort of walk up and around and to the right, in the generally opposite direction of where the sun will be rising, and if you hit the tiber youve gone too far"), so i will meet him at a cafe and say "ciao" and other cute things. i think tonight im going to go into trastevere if the rain holds off...