I fell asleep in the last minutes of the Life of Pi, which I was able to watch on the airplane TV. I thought it was actually quite good considering my initial reaction to seeing the trailer months ago hating the idea of relying on so much animation to tell a story that I felt was too human and beautiful as a book to be Hollywood-ized. After watching it, however, I felt that the animation was so well done you could hardly notice it except that the story would actually have been nearly impossible to tell if it was filmed entirely live.
With a few hours of sleep under my belt I got off the plane in Frankfurt and wandered around the airport to find water, food, a bathroom, and a place to nap and wait for my last flight. The airport was strangely deserted in the concourse where I arrived but after going through security again I passed through a glazed glass door into what was essentially a shopping mall whose stores were interspersed with gates. American airports are nothing compared to this in terms of sheer number and size of duty free, jewelry, perfume, electronics, and other stores. My last flight, with Lufthansa, was on time and I arrived at Roma Fiumicino Airport around 5:30. After waiting for my luggage for an hour and a half I had to come to terms with the fact that US Airways botched it a royally and had lost my bag. The baggage service agent said they would contact me when it gets into Rome and they will ship it to me but I can't expect it any time soon. Oh well, having all my stuff is not the reason I'm in Italy!
I took the train into Roma Termini in the city proper and found a hostel two blocks from il stazione because I had missed the train to get out to OGC the same night. After checking in I went out in search of my first pizza italiano and found a nice little hole-in-the-wall pizzeria nearby where I got some slices and a Peroni. I continued wandering around for a while and came across this gathering in a piazza nearby.
Some lady was singing opera on a temporary stage while accompaniment blasted over the sound system. I have no idea what this was about but seeing a couple thousand people all listening to opera in the piazza seemed as good an introduction to italian culture as any.
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