25 June - Pazienza!

June 25, 2019

There’s a word in Italian that has a double meaning; pazienza. Literally, it means “patience.” But the Italians also use it to say, “Oh well” or, “What are you gonna do about it?” We have experienced both meanings today. Oh...where to begin? 

Our plan was to leave the apartment at 08:00, and head over to the Musei Vaticani. Well, we got there a bit later than we wanted, and ended up waiting in line for over an hour and a half, just to buy the tickets. The line still went on for another 30 to 45 minutes...maybe more. It was getting late enough that we knew we wouldn’t be able to give it the time needed to really appreciate it, so we left the line and decided we’d try again tomorrow morning, leaving the apartment at 07:00, and taking a faster bus. Well...pazienza!

When we got back, we got our laundry together and got that taken care of. We feel much better in clean clothes, now. Anyway, while the laundry was going, I went out and grabbed some pizza and brought it back. I like how the pizzeria did their bacon pizza. Just put the slices of bacon on there! Don’t mess with chopping it up. It was really good. After lunch, we got our laundry just in time to fold it and get ready to go to the temple. 

We had an appointment to do Baptisms for the Dead at 17:30, and other appointments at 18:30 and 19:30 for other ordinances. We also wanted to have plenty of time to walk around the grounds and take pictures, so we decided to leave the apartment in Trastevere at 15:00. That should give us plenty of time, right? WRONG!

Today, the ATAC (public transportation system in Roma) had a partial sciopero. How do they say it in “Newsies?” Oh, ya…STRIKE! So, this meant that certain routes wouldn’t be running as frequently as normal. Some lines wouldn’t be running at all, apparently. One of the lines we needed didn’t run today. There was a group of people from Arizona waiting for the same bus to go to the temple, but they got there 20 minutes before we did. We waited for a very long time for that bus, praying that Heavenly Father would send us the bus soon, so we could make it to our appointments. Apparently He had another lesson for us to learn today...pazienza. The bus didn’t come after 30 minutes of waiting. Sherry Ann and I both had the impression that He didn’t bless us with the bus because he knew that we had had a week and wiggle room in our schedule. So, we all crossed the street, and waited for another bus to take us back in to town. Again, we waited another 20 minutes before the next bus came to take us back to Piazza Venezia. By this time we had finished all of our water and didn’t dare leave the bus stop to buy more for fear of missing the next bus. Pazienza. 

At one of the stops, the doors at the center of the bus malfunctioned and they shut the bus down right there. It was jam-packed with smelly sweaty people. Ugh. Pazienza. Most of the people got on the 66, but we waited for the next 60, which was only about 3 minutes behind the other one. When we finally got to Piazza Venezia, Sherry Ann and I both filled our water bottles, chugged them, and filled them again. Water is great! We finally got back to the apartment at 18:40. Yep, that was 3 hours and 40 minutes full of Pazienza. It took a bit of time for us to regain the energy we needed to get back out there and enjoy Rome. 

We decided that it would be a good idea to get some other snacks to take with us as we try to go the places we want to go tomorrow, so we went out to find a grocery store. Well, that’s a bit tricky in these parts. You’ve got to know where to go and find those hidden neighborhood markets since there’s not a big call for supermarkets in the middle of the Centro Storico. We found one, but it didn’t have what we were looking for. They mostly had vino, pasta, vino, soda, vino...you get the picture. So we found an alimentari near our apartment, but they really didn’t have anything either...pazienza.

So, we decided that we’d just go and find dinner and then our evening gelato. We found a restaurant on a small piazza with al fresco dining. Sherry Ann had rigatoni with red sauce (which she said tasted a bit like the one I make...I’ll take that as a compliment…), and I had the spaghetti alla carbonara (I really like that stuff). She really liked her dish, and I sort of liked mine. I prefer the one I had the other day...pazienza. 

After dinner, we went and got our gelato. Sherry Ann had the blackberry, and I had mango. They hit the spot. The perfect ending of a “pazienza-filled” day.

**Side note...I had zero success when trying to sync my iPad to the Drive last night, so I was not able to post this until this morning...Pazienza, eh?