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My Brother-in-law & Other Stories Ciao!Rome, Italy— Ciao (pronounced Chow) is an Italian word which means “hello” or a greeting of welcome. We found out later from the front desk at the hotel that it can also mean “goodbye”. Which is which? Anyway, we think that Italian is a strange and hard language, so we did not bother to find the difference. After some two stops from the airport when traffic clogged, we reached the City of Rome in 1-1/2 hours. There were 51 of us in the tour bus and we were booked in a hotel at Via Andrea Alciato in the heart of the city. The tour director was there to welcome us. After getting our room assignments, we took the elevator to Room 301 given to us and got off at the third floor. Our room was not there. It was on the 4 th , hence we have to drag further our luggage on the stairs one floor up, since the single elevator was busy. We learned that in Europe the 2 nd floor to us is only their 1 st floor, since they do not include the ground floor in their counting. We walked to the next block to look for a restaurant for lunch. We were joined by a young couple from our tour group who we thought were Filipinos. We found out that they are of Indonesian origin, now living in Philadelphia, U.S.A. The 51 people in this tour came from various countries like the U.S.A., the Carribean, Guatemala, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, all converging in Rome, Italy. We were the only Filipinos in the group, except one, a Filipina nurse, who came from San Diego, California, but is already an American citizen. After a five-minute walk from the hotel, we came to Via Cornelia at the next block, a main thoroughfare, and found a small store operated a la 7-11 type, with three coffee tables in front of the counter. We were introduced to our first lunch of panini. This is almost a foot-long sandwich of meat and vegetables which, we did not know, will become our regular lunch fare in the next few days since we will not find our favorite rice anymore! |
