Rome, continued

This may well be my last Italian day without drenching rain. The kind that fills buckets and soaks shoes. This, then, is the day for walking. Cafe bar life is slated to fill our hours tomorrow.

But first, breakfast. Two of the group are staying next door, so I'm just with Bee and her husband for our morning meal. I go easy on the food again. Well, slightly easy!

And right away, I learn this hard truth: traveling with friends ups my coffee consumption considerably! Lingering does that to you: three cappucinos later, I catch myself. The hotel staff at the Roma Times is so friendly, so accommodating that they will be at your side, ready to refill and keep you going. I need to be careful, or sleep will become very elusive for me in Rome.

Immediately after breakfast, my friends set off on their own. This is the one morning where everyone is going to be doing something different. I blame the Vatican for it. Gosia and her husband are heading for the Sistine Chapel. That's a whole production! We've lost them for the day. Bee and her husband are going to St. Peter's Cathedral -- a slightly lesser commitment, but still, a chunk of time is required for it. I'm not willing to give in to that either. I've already written plenty about my transformations with respect to Rome: used to not like it, changed my mind. With respect to visiting the Vatican, it's the reverse: used to appreciate the art that goes with the entire church hierarchy, now -- not so much. Not helped by the fact that the whole Vatican complex is the biggest draw for tourism here, so I imagine the crowds gathered there even in February will not be small. They were already not small yesterday afternoon in the Centro Storico. It's all too much for me and so we arrange a meetup "on the town" for the time after their Vatican visit.

Meanwhile I do what I love most -- meander through the streets of this fascinating city, heading first toward the old Jewish ghetto,  but passing a multitude of beautiful relics of the past mixed with structures that have to support daily life now, in the 21st century. Such a chaos of styles, accommodations and adaptations!

(Visible: the Colosseum. If some of these photos are familiar, that's because I believe I took a similar walk last year! All roads lead to the same parts of Rome!)

The Jewish ghetto itself is very quiet. Was I wrong to think that tourism has overwhelmed this city? It's so still here.

 

 

(how does anyone have so much white laundry anymore?)

 

 

(aha! a shoelace on a sneaker!)

 

(The presence of protective forces reminds you of the troubles of this world...)

And now a hop skip to the Campo de' Fiori. The colorful outdoor market of Rome. Again, fairly quiet. And very lovely! 

This is when I begin to appreciate my farmhouse readings on Rome. Much of it may have been useless, but every once in a while I did come across some interesting hint or tidbit and I'd note it down. In case I'm in that neighborhood, I should do this!  At the market square, there is a bakery (Forno de' Campo dei Fiori) which produces, among other things, fantastic pizza breads and especially Rome's favorite snack food. -- pizza bianca. I say snack food, because it's just about the only thing that a Roman would eat while on the run. Otherwise, Italians are not much into the street food scene, preferring to sit and talk over their ingestibles. Like these guys:

The pizza bianca is a slice of pizza bread without sauce, without any trimmings actually, save for a rub of good olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Fresh out of the oven, it is delicious!

(waiting for the fresh batch to come out)

(It's here!)

(And it's delicious!)

And now I am really close to Piazza Navona. I have always liked this square -- even in days when I didn't love Rome. And again, I'm thinking -- not too bad, not too crowded, nice!

(the cleaning of the fountains...)

And then, as I leave the square, all hell breaks loose. I veer toward the Pantheon (so close, after all...). And I hit the tumult. Crowds, seemingly coming straight at me. I'm to meet Bee and her husband here, but I think it is pointless. I dont want to go inside, I dont want to stand here and wait for them either. I hate the packed feeling of the place.

 

(it took me a while to find a moment when the picture frame wasn't filled with people...)

 

I text that we should meet up after they "do" the Pantheon.

And life just gets a lot worse for me before it gets better! To walk back toward the hotel, I pass Trevi Fountain. It's hypothetically a beautiful spot, but it's absolutely crazy there now. In February no less! So many people? Is this even fun?

I retreat to the Monti neighborhood (of my hotel). I find a beloved cafe (of one writer who lives in this neighborhood). The Er Baretto.

I go inside, order a salad (I'm so happy to be eating a big salad again!) and I think about Rome.

Why does this city feel so overwhelming in some parts and so beautiful in others? I mean, I am a tourist. I contribute to the problem of over-tourism, don't I?  

There are about 35 million tourists that pour into Rome each year and 10 million more than that who go to Paris in any given year. I never feel overwhelmed in Paris! Why is that?

I think the condensed nature of Rome's principal attractions -- the narrow streets, the closed spaces -- this is where the problem lies. The Centro Storico is small. Packing in 35 million there is just crazy. I love Rome for its neighborhoods, I don't love it for its "main attractions." If I never see the Fountain of Trevi again, I wont care.

And yet. Say I bought a grandchild to Rome. Wouldn't I want to check off the main sights? I tugged my daughters to the Sistine Chapel, to the Trevi Fountain. But in those days, it wasn't Disneyland on steroids. It was just plain fun. I cant imagine Snowdrop, for example, having any sense of Rome at all if it took her to the Pantheon, or Trevi, or the Vatican. And why go to Rome if you wind up not having a sense of the city at all? 

I wish people would love cities with all their senses, for the taste, for the life-unfolding aspects of them and not feel compelled to all crowd into one square, stand before one painting, feel satisfied with tossing a coin into one fountain. Or maybe that's unfair of me? If I could not travel often and indeed had resources for only one trip to Italy, would it be fair to tell me to skip the "big attractions?" The seventh wonder of the world (i.e. the Colosseum)?

As I sit and mull over these imponderables, I text Bee and tell her I retreated to our neighborhood and am eating lunch at a local cafe and I'll join them after they're done with the sights. Wait for us! -- she texts back. And I do. And this is how we wind up eating together, finishing with a delicious canelloni and (dont tell anyone) a cappucino. (I do the forbidden thing in Italy: cappucino after lunch.)

We then shop for our friend Gosia whose name day it is today! Alright! Done!

In the later afternoon, Bee, her husband and I have tickets for the Borghese Gallery. I thought ahead of time how I would approach this incredible collection of paintings and sculpture. To me, any canvas that dates back in time more than a couple of hundred years is too difficult to understand without help. At the same time, I hate guided tours, hate little speaker things attached to your belt droning away at you, hate following along with herds of other from one famous canvas to the next. So instead, in advance of this trip I bought a guide to the Gallery (Amazon is so great for these off the wall purchases!) and back at the farmette, I read it very, very carefully. I almost bought a book on the life of Caravaggio as well, because this painter was one wild dude, but I ran out of time, so now I'm relying on bits and pieces of information about this artist's manic engagement with life. In any case, all that prep work was well worth the effort.

I truly loved seeing the sculptures by Bernini...

 

 

... and the Borghese canvases, in all their glory. Especially those done by Caravaggio, even though again, I have qualms about viewing art that was so ill-begotten. (The way the Borghese clan acquired the paintings way back when, leaves much to be desired. But, the government now owns the art, so there's that. Though the descendants of the original acquirers are still alive and spinning their aristocratic wealth in Italy.)

 

 

 

I have to say that in the end, there was too much for me to digest at the Gallery. On the second floor, aside from a few famous paintings by such notables as Titian and Raphael...

 

 

 

... few others were memorable for me. The park just outside the Gallery provided a welcome relief. 

 

 

 

And guess what we saw -- the flying parrots of Rome! My bird identifier tells me for sure that they are actually the rose-ringed parakeets. And of course, the park has a number of the beautiful umbrella pines of Rome.

We walk back by way of the Spanish Steps. For the view again.

(my precious friends...)

And we have just a few minutes to recover before it is time to set out for dinner at Colline Emilia. Others were charged with putting together most of the plans for our stay in Rome, but I was charged with coming up with (walkable) dinner places. A terribly risky proposition, as tastes are fickle and varied, but I figured there's always pasta for the hard to please. You cant go wrong with that! 

(it's Gosia's name day!)

 

And the dinner is great: meats, cheeses, artichokes. Pasta made earlier by this expert pasta maker (I passed by and watched):

 

And served by a wonderful crew of waitstaff.

 (the classic Roman winter dish: the artichoke)

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow is the challenge: the rains are coming to Rome! We will see how that will play out. Until then, good night! Under the light of the almost, almost full moon...

(earlier, at the Borghese Gardens...)

to Rome

The train speeds east and then south at 300 km/hour (186 m/ph) and it's like the story of my life unfolding before me. We stop at Milano, Bologna, Firenze before finally pulling into Roma (and after, but without me, proceeding to Napoli). All that's missing is Venezia and I will have had before me pages from all those years of deep affection, for trains, Italy, men. Yearnings for those whom I wanted to travel with me here, memories of those who did, whom I loved so much, who for one reason or another no longer ride the trains of Italy with me, no longer pause for an aperitivo at Milano Centrale, who don't want to give Firenze's old streets another walk through. But they all had such a walloping impact on my life -- some especially so, and some still do, except not in Italy, and so once again, Italy is just my own. Reflection, recollection, return, revisit, reimagine now at age 70.

*     *     * 

My last morning in Turin. When I look out the window, I see the pink light falling on the mountains. So pretty! (It doesn't last. Before I'm out of the hotel, the mist will have returned.)

Breakfast, still on the light side. 

And then I check out and pull my suitcase to the train station in Turin. At the last minute I changed my booking to an earlier train. I felt that two more hours in Turin would accomplish nothing, whereas the extra time in Rome will net me some more walks, solo today, because my friends aren't flying in until late in the evening. 

Here's a forewarning: the length of my writing will greatly diminish for the next four days. I expect that I will have no time for it. The purpose of being in Rome is, after all, to spend time with people whom I rarely see. Retreating to my room to work on Ocean is not an option and I do know this about me right now: I cannot stay up at all hours to write here.  I need to carve out time for sleep. So, yes, I'll do updates, but they wont be 37 photos long (yesterday's post, insert smiley face here!).

*     *     *

And now there's Rome. Much has been written about it and I cannot improve on any of the carefully studied and detailed accounts. Tomes on the history, volumes on the culture, the people here. A copious number of travel guides that will spell out fun facts about every stone in the city. All I can do is describe my Roman walks, with some fleeting mention of time spent with four friends who traveled from Warsaw to Rome to meet up with me here. (There were to be two more, but unexpected infirmities got in the way of that.) These four have appeared many times on Ocean pages. Indeed, one of them spent a day with me in Rome just last year. I've known these guys for more than fifty years (well, with a midpoint introduction of some new spouses) and you could say we've been through a lot, together and apart. Nonetheless, true to national character (of my generation), they're guarded, and I hesitate in saying even that, for fear of being too revealing. A true sign of my straying from my past is that I am not at all like that. For you, this means that as always, you'll read too much about my own stumbles through the day and too little about anyone else. This, of course, is as it should be. Blogging is much like painting a canvas, only with words. You paint or write what you observe, not what someone else sees or experiences.

But I've strayed. Back to Rome.

For a long time I did not especially like the city. I came here as a child and none of it struck me as approachable. My love for Italy, to the point where I signed up for an Italian language course in college, excluded the belly of the boot. Viva the Dolomites! Viva the Venetian Lagoon, the Fenician Boboli Gardens, Sicilian olive and orange groves, Amalfi sunsets. Am I forgetting something? Perhaps deliberately? 

Sure, I brought the kids to Rome on their first Italian adventure, but it was more out of duty than out of a true passion for this sprawling city. (In retrospect, I think much of my distaste for coming here had to do with the fact that I always seemed to visit Rome in July or August. Never come to Rome in July or August.)

My younger daughter turned me around on it though. She picked it as a place to spend a week when she was already post-college (in May!). The two of us did a thorough reexamination of all that's here. I came to love it then (insofar as I ever love big cities). 

But not for its big ticket sights. The crowds around the Vatican, the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps are, to me, off-putting. Yes, I know I am a tourist and I bring an extra body to the mix, but still, hearing absolutely zero Italian around me seems so, well, sad. You've traveled far to be here and now you can't even do an informal study of what shoes Romans wear because in those places there are no Romans.

Instead, I like the neighborhoods of Rome, with the occasional fountain thrown in. Okay and a few Caravaggios, but not too many.  What I do love is to meander. To pause for something to eat or drink. To listen, even though I can't always understand what is spoken. With Italians, you can infer all that you cannot translate. Rome is well suited for observation. For comparison. How does the Monti neighborhood (where we're staying) feel these days? And Trastevere, how has it changed over time? 

So when my friends proposed Rome, I was delighted. Even though we may split at times as they pursue far more Caravaggios and churches and fountains than I will.

*     *     *

It's such a lovely, leisurely train ride! I needed the rest!

(under the Tuscan sun...)

I arrive at Roma Termini at about 2:30. I take the time to check my departing train (Sunday). An email tells me that there are schedule changes. I want to make sure I understand that the train will be leaving an hour earlier than the schedule indicates. Weird but true. Good to know!

I walk to the hotel Rome Times. It's not too far. Maybe 20 minutes from the train station. And the weather is just incredible! Better than Turin! Sunny, bright, 21C (70F)! Again, hold your envy, it will all turn on us very quickly.

It's during this walk that I pick up a call from Ed. One more chicken, the only named one left (Unie) is dead. Ed thinks she was in a catatonic state after the attack. Could it be that a hen would suffer a heart attack? We are down to two now -- the greatest attrition since we started chicken raising. (Of the remaining two, we have one more that's suffering great trauma. She spent the night on the garage roof rafters and as of today, Ed has not been able to coax her down.)

Sigh...

But the weather here!

 

Yes, please do notice the shoes. They are not sneaker type anymore. Oh, you think it's the young who parade in better stuff? Here's someone my age...

 

On the walk, I pass a small cafe/pastry shop. I'd had a few bites of an eggplant and buffalo mozzarella sandwich on the train, but I could use a coffee. It's an inauspicious entrance...

 

 

 

But inside? A marvel of bite-sized sweet treats. Perfect with a macchiato!

And now I'm at the hotel and I throw down my suitcase and pretty quickly head out again. A chance to walk the streets of Rome, aimlessly, with eyes wide open in this drop dead gorgeous weather.

 (Here's a big difference between this city and the one I just left: Turin maybe flocked by high mountains, but the city itself is flat. Rome? There are the hills...)

With hills come good views. Somehow I find myself at the top of the Spanish steps. From here, the view all the way to the St. Peter's is legendary!

Perhaps it's unfair to make this next comparison while standing on top of the Spanish steps, but it is so obvious that I have to say it -- Rome is much more crowded than Turin. Rome is listed at 4.5 million people. Turin is at nearly 2 million. But the presence of tourists here make those numbers irrelevant. If Turin seemed empty, Rome feels dense. I veer away toward the Borghese Gardens. Here is where you have to stop with the comparisons. I remember first walking through this very park and thinking -- well, the one in Warsaw if nicer. This, I see now, is unfair. The Borghese park is different and very Roman in its integration of nature and art and the burdens of urban life.  I try to look at it from the perspective of a person living here, say with kids. Suddenly I sense the quiet (at least as compared to the streets below). And I notice the benches where you can expect some peace, and maybe a little privacy.

 

(What catches your eye? the Roman trees? Her shoes??)

The park is on a hill, so again, there is a view: toward Piazza del Popolo.

I walk down the hill...

My, oh my, does Rome have the churches! Italians show a steady decline in church attendance, especially over the last decade: fewer than 19% claim to go to services on a regular basis. Americans, by comparison, have a much higher attendance rate, though there too it's declining.

 

Blame the young people! Maybe these girls?

I turn toward the river. There are no great tourist sights here and the tourist flow is significantly diminished.

And yes, the sun is setting. And it is lovely.

By the time I make it back to the hotel, it's nearly dinner time. Here's a funny mistake I made: I found a trattoria type place serving simple Roman food nearby. Hostaria Romana. A twelve minute walk. Very doable. Much loved by locals. But my friends are getting in around 8, so I needed to book a table on the early side. An impossible assignment! And yet...I go to the reservation service for the Hostaria: it opens at 6:30! Perfect. I book it immediately. And I head out. But what's this -- I see that it's closed? I knock on the door. A woman leans out and tells me -- we aren't open until 7:15. But, but, here, let me show you my confirmation for 6:30! She looks at my phone, she scrolls. She laughs. You booked a table at the Hostaria Romana in Miami Beach! 

Ooops.

In the end, I lucked out. I found a pizzeria place -- L'Antica Fraschetta -- just by my hotel and they were open and it was crowded, but they found a place for me. 

 

 

 

And I discovered the new Italian pizza that's the rage right now (at least it's new to me!) -- the pinse. It's a puffier softer crust. I ordered the one with veggies and it was in fact delicious!

And at the hotel, after dinner, I finally meet up with the awesome foursome. We try to catch up in the few hours that we have tonight, but it's no use. There's so much to review! We'll save the rest for tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that...

 

 

Time to get some rest. Under the nearly full moon of a Roman night.

 with love...