Rainy Day Rome

Well I got back to Rome for one day.  This was just a stop over before I was to fly to Athens.  When I left the train station is was funky weather and was raining.  I decided to check into a different hostel than where I had stayed my previous time there.  This new place was called Alessandro Palace and Bar and it was a ton better!  I didn't have a reservation but they had plenty of rooms.  I got there a couple hours before check in and they wouldn't let me go up to the room right away which was kinda sucky.  Instead I just hung out in the bar area and played around on the internet.  Got to talking to an Irish couple who were really cool.  They were there on their honeymoon.  They like the atmosphere of hostels so they decided to stay in one, but they got a private room of course!  Finally 3:00 pm hit and I went up to my room.  It was an all girl dorm (ugh.)  I only say ugh, because if you've been following my previous journal entries you'll know I had a crummy time at the one I got stuck in, in Milan.  Anyway, it was me and 3 Asian girls, 1 Canadian girl, and then some chick that got in late night so I never really met her.  I made my bed and lazed around for a good portion of the afternoon.  I then decided to do some laundry which I hadn't done since I left Paris.  Hey, I still had clean underwear and that's all that matters!  My other roomies from the last time I was in Rome had told me about a place that they took their laundry to get done.  All you do is drop it off and then in about 2 hours you go back and pick it up, they do it all for you and even fold it for you.  So I decided to do that cause I couldn't be bothered doing it myself and trying to figure out an Italian laundry mat.  It only cost me 6 euros in total and it was well worth it.  Only thing is that they didn't end up folding it for me but oh well, I had a fresh set of laundry done!

Later that night the hostel I was staying at did a free pizza party starting at 8pm down in the bar area.  It was all you could eat for free until the pizza ran out.  I had every intention of going to the pizza party but then when I walked down there I looked inside and it was jam packed!  I wasn't really feeling sociable either, (weird, right!) and I also figured the pizza would be pretty plain and standard i.e. Margarita with only tomato and cheese.  Booorrriiinng.  So instead I went around the corner to Mama Angela's where I had eaten at once before when I was there just a few days earlier.  I got the Shrimp Risotto and they weren't lying when they said "shrimp" as that's all I got....1 shrimp!  It was like they used it as a garnish.  And to top it off it wasn't even out of it's shell!  I played around with it for awhile trying to get it out of the sucker and never did succeed!  So there you have it ladies and gents, shrimp risotto with no shrimp actually ingested!  After dinner I went back to the hostel with every intention of going back up to my room but I got to chatting with the Irish woman again and she wanted me to help her finish her bottle of wine she had bought at the bar.  Crikey!  Of  course I gave into peer pressure and helped her finish off the bottle of wine...and not just 1 bottle, I'm pretty sure we split around 3!  Her husband also plays guitar and he went upstairs and brought his guitar back down and sang us a few songs for some live entertainment.