From Rome with love

I know you’re all hanging on the edge of your seats, wanting to know what happened yesterday.… Aren’t you?… Are you?

Anyway, I went to work. At twenty past nine, I got ready to make a phone call to Danda to come for breakfast. And then I got a text message from him. A text message which threatened to ruin everything.

It said ‘Problem with taxi. Got to go to garage. Call you later.’

NOOO! This was not allowed. It wasn’t part of the plan and therefore it was not allowed! My wonderful plan started to crumble around me. I called Danda and he was like, ‘Yeh, I dunno how long they’ll keep it for. Hopefully they can just fix it quickly.’

I acted as casual as possible. ‘O… But I…. Er .. was really… Er… Looking forward to breakfast at the deli with you. O well. As soon as you know something, give me a bell.’

So I walked around, trying to kill time and not freak out. The plan, the plan! If he was stuck at the garage all day waiting to get it fixed, I’d have to tell him over the phone and get him to leave the cab there and come straight to the airport or something. Panic, panic.

Finally, at about ten to eleven, Danda said it was fixed and he was on his way to meet me for breakfast. So, an hour and a half behind schedule, he arrived.

The plan got under way. I faked a story about having breakfast cooking for him and to wait a mo while I grabbed something which came for him from Amazon. It was, of course, the book which had the message in about the surprise. So he opened it and was like, ‘O did you order this for me? Thanks. It looks great.’ And he put it down on the table, without looking inside.

‘Does it look interesting?’ I said, trying to encourage him to flip the page over. He did and found my message eventually. Lacking his reading glasses, he read my message as, ‘Pack your bags, we’re FRYING tonight’ (instead of ‘flying’). As in, a fry-up. Or a stir fry. He thought I was telling him I was making him a stir fry for dinner.

With a little help from me, it dawned that we were going to Rome. And we were going in a few hours!

A flurry of packing, repacking, checking in online and organising parking ensued. We got to Gatwick airport with two hours til the flight and waited around while we were delayed by another hour or so.

We finally arrived, called our contact man and navigated the train system, getting out at the stop called Colosseo, being greeted by this….

Amazing. It’s at the bottom of the road we are staying on which, by the way, is well known as the Gay Street of Rome. We found that out when we went into a little cafe to get something for dinner and everything had ‘bear’ written on it. Posters, flyers, shops. Apparently ‘bear’ is the nickname for a gay man in Rome. I got a wrap with cheese and truffle and it was phenomenal. I have decided it is my mission to eat as much truffle as possible while in Italy.

Today is colosseum day. Will take lots of pics and report back.

P.S. Danda wants you all to know he was blown away and thinks ‘it’s the best surprise ever.’