When I first saw the Lizzie McGuire Movie at the impressionable age of eight years old, I witnessed a near perfect work of cinema. Travel, adventure, finding your famous doppelgänger… and all with your best friend at your side. I wanted to experience something like that someday. Now, overlooking a few major flaws in that film (e.g. a 14-year-old girl taking off with a 40-looking 17-year-old in a foreign country was not a great move), I finally did it! I went to Rome. And of course I couldn’t help but notice when I saw all the landmarks that appeared in the movie. This is where Lizzie did a cartwheel! That’s where Lizzie met Paulo! Over there is where Lizzie’s feet started bleeding from blisters! Okay, maybe that last one was just me…
Anyway, I decided to look it up. As it turns out, when you toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain, the wish is already predetermined. The first coin means you’ll return to Rome; the second coin means you’ll have a love affair; the third coin means you’ll get married. A love affair sounds a bit dramatic for my taste, so I tossed one coin. I also visited what Paulo refers to as one of the most expensive shopping districts in the world. Did I set foot in a single store? No. Did I climb to the top of the Spanish Steps and do a bit of voguing where Lizzie did her famous (in my mind) cartwheel after her makeover scene? Of course. I also want to talk for a second about Lizzie’s hotel experience. She went to Rome on a class trip for her eighth grade graduation. So, suspending my disbelief enough to overlook the fact that her family and her school building itself didn’t seem to be in the type of socio-economic class to send their 14-year-olds off to Italy, what’s with the luxury hotel they stayed in? Seriously, the thing was beautiful. Two queen size beds in a room to sleep only two girls, the room was huge, and it was covered on stunning decor. And with all of that, the manager of the hotel (who seemed to be the only person ever working the front desk) didn’t speak English? That was nothing like my experience. I didn’t pay for a fancy hotel, so my expectations weren’t too high, and the overall experience at the place we stayed, Hotel Osimar, was sufficient. Twin beds, a tiny room, a perfectly clean bathroom, and an entire staff that spoke at least some English. And usually they were fluent. In fact, that’s something we noticed all across Rome. Obviously, when you work in hospitality, knowing such a prominent language as English seems likely, but pretty much the entire city of Rome is full of tourists all the time, so it seemed like most people spoke English. We only went to one place our entire stay where no one did, and that’s out of the hotel, tourist attractions, stores and restaurants. The scene where Gordo walks up to two random strangers because he sees Lizzie on the cover of an Italian magazine and he asks if they speak English and they do, fluently, seems way more realistic than the manager of a fancy hotel speaking barely any English at all.
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About the blog.I started this blog in 2017 with the goal of seeing all the U.S. National Parks and writing about them. But as I kept writing and posting, I realized there's so much more I want to document in my life. So, the blog grew into something much broader and even more special to my heart. Archives.
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