A Night Out...

We had met Alfredo on the street earlier in the day and he told us to come to this club called Gilda. He gave us a card with the address and his phone number so we could call or text him. Alfredo is this guy who is on facebook and can get you in free to clubs and kind of exclusive parties (I guess). So we took the tram to it’s end and got off and started walking to the Spanish Steps, where we had been earlier in the day. It was a ways away and we didn’t know exactly where we were heading so that only made it seem further. Once we got there we called Alfredo for further directions. He said from the Spanish steps go left, so we turned and started walking we walked for about 5 blocks and still hadn’t find the street that was listed on the club’s card, so we finally asked a lady walking towards us where it was and she said we were going the opposite direction! So we turned around, I was really glad I hadn’t even packed a pair of heels to wear on this trip. So we walked back, past the Spanish steps and finally stopped again to ask a cab driver. He said to continue going the direction we were headed, so we did and went for ever. Pretty soon we arrived at Via della Mercede. I yelled back to the rest of the group with a southern accent for effect, “Well this is Mercedes Street and sure as hell ain’t what we’re looking for!” They all laughed and we decided to try one more down. Before we had continued onto the other block, we past a pair of couples, the girls were speaking English and I’m pretty sure they could tell we were lost even in their drunken stupor. They said they might be able to translate so we asked where Gilda was and they just said the exact same thing to the two Italian men they were with. The guys pointed down the street the way were were headed so we continued down. We soon discovered that we were going down a darker and darker street. A worker from the supermercado was headed out the door with trash and we asked him where to go. We had to repeat it slowly and then he said to go back up to where we came from when we tried to explain that that was where we were, then he said in Italian, o well do you want me to come with you? We just laughed and said no…We headed back up and once we turned the corner asked someone else. He finally told us the first left and the first right. Sure enough after 5 different sets of incomplete directions we had found the club. Freezing cold we walked up to the entrance and Alfredo walked out. He welcomed us and we just commented that we walked a marathon to get to his venue. He apologized and tried to get us in quickly. We got in free but no sooner had we walked in the door did we have to check our coats, which would cost us 3 Euro later in the evening. We all made a beeline for the bathroom and also discovered you had to pay for that as well. I didn’t have to go so Mellinah and I walked up to the bar to check it out. We didn’t want to ask how much drinks were so we kinda waited around hoping we could find some American looking people to ask. Finally the rest of our group came out and they went up and got drinks. It WAS 10 EURO for ONE drink! Ridiculous…needless to stay I remained 100 percent sober for the rest of the evening. The club was really neat, they had a dance off competition thing going, it was ok, but the creepy old Italian men and mostly old school tunes really weren’t cutting it for me. We left after less than an hour there and headed out to find a new party spot. When we finally reached the main road Kerry and I were a good 2 blocks in front of the rest of the group and being completely sober decided there was no real point in starting our night at 2:30 in the morning. We decided we would just continue home. The rest of the group called to us as they reached a bar near the main road and we just told them we were heading back. It was a long way back, I hadn’t realized how far we were until I started walking across the Bridge back into Trastevere and realized we still had another 30 minutes of walking left. After managing to get past the drunk Italian men crowded outside the bars smoking and rolling down their windows at intersections yelling at us in Italian we made it to our apartment safe and sound! I was so starving so we spent 30 min in the kitchen chowing down on our little food stores and then headed off for bed, it was a late night and tomorrow was definitely going to be an early morning!