FIVE NIGHTS IN ROME

I will start with the food, because thus lie my priorities.

On the advice of my guidebook, Maddie and I found the best gelato place in Rome (and on Earth): San Crispino. Their signature flavor is honey and cream, and it really was honey in gelato form. Each of the fruit flavors tasted like fruit—the plum had a bit of a bite when you first tasted it and then grew sweeter as you savored, the melon was smooth and melted away in your mouth, and the fig was simply amazing. The New York Times review posted on their wall described the gelato as fruit, only better. The meringue gelato had morsels of meringue, of course. Over the course of five days (because naturally, we discovered San Crispino on our very first), Maddie and I felt it necessary to make frequent pilgrimages. I have eaten perhaps more than my fair share of gelato, and San Crispino’s was unlike any other.

Several delicious meals were eaten in restaurants, as well, most notably spaghetti with a tomato and pecorino sauce plus a delicious bruschetta appetizer, a penne al’arrabiata in Campo de Fiore, and a linguini al pesto that came closer to Cinque Terre quality than anything I’ve eaten since that fateful, pesto-filled weekend last March. Pasto is very al dente in Rome; this will most likely influence my cooking style for years and years to come. Our hostel was four doors down from a grocery store, so Maddie and I had a culinary adventure making microwave gnocchi. After the first few bites, Maddie said, “Only in Italy could you get microwave food this good. My children are in danger of moving to Italy and eating microwave meals for most of their lives.”

We ate picnic lunches every day, most memorably sitting in the shadow of the Colosseum on one of its old, discarded pillars. The ruins in Rome are interesting, in that they are nothing more than piles of bricks, to be honest. The marble, the decorations, and even the lead holding the ancient temples and historic places together were nearly all stripped away at one point or another in the past to build St. Peter’s or simple for resale. This gave us much food for thought as we munched our focaccia bread…

Now that the most important items have been addressed, a list of memories of Rome:

• Ubiquitous nun tourism. It was delightful. Wandering about in little habited clusters, they were all so happy to be in Rome. My favorites were the nuns from somewhere in Southeast Asia I saw in the Vatican Museum; they were wearing huge floppy hats over their wimples—indoors.
• Our Nestea-fueled statistical study conducted from a sidewalk café just up the street from the Trevi Fountain in which we tallied Asian hat-wearing tourists versus non-Asian hat-wearing tourists. There were twice as many non-Asian hat-wearing tourists as Asian hat-wearing tourists, but there were also twenty times as many non-Asian tourists as Asian tourists. We found this to be statistically significant.
• I initially navigated us down a back street as the most direct route to San Crispino. There were two carabinieri standing at the entrance to the street, but as we walked by, they didn’t try to stop us. Seeing an excellent photo opportunity, I asked Maddie to frolic down the street. At this point, one of the policemen said something Italian to me, so I smiled at him in the hopes that he was just being friendly and we continued on our way…And we soon realized that we were on an entirely deserted street. The building to the left was huge and very official-looking. I felt that if no Romans wanted to be on that street, neither did I, but there wasn’t another side street diving away, so we walked quickly, hoping it would end soon. As we neared the end, a third caribinieri started following us in his little car…Three or four evenings later, thanks to Group of British Boys #1, we learned that the building on our left was where Berlusconi lives.
• Maddie being incensed about all the Egyptian obelisks and other artifacts pilfered by various Romans that are now on display all about the city.
• The general fantasticness and ancientness of everything I saw. For example, after dinner and wine at Campo del Fiori one evening, we walked back to the Colisseum because that just happened to be the location of the nearest metro stop. (And on the way, we passed the Vittoriano Emanuele II monument, also known as the Wedding Cake.)
• Climbing the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. Its wall is hollow, in that there are two domes: one outside, which you see in all the photos of the Vatican City, and one inside, which is the one designed by Michelangelo and covered in mosaics. After one very impressive set of stairs, we were able to touch the mosaics, and then we ascended another set of stairs which wound around between the two domes. The nearer the top, the more we had to lean sideways, until finally we emerged out into the sunshine and soaked in the view.
• The Vatican Museum was the most crowded museum I have ever seen, and the clamor of the Sistine Chapel made me claustrophobic, but I must say that it is a staggeringly impressive collection. I was just as excited as the rest of the masses to see the Rembrandt rooms and Michelangelo’s ceiling. (I was not expecting the cuneiform tablets, which gave me a seventh-grade flashback and were therefore really neat.)
• We took a thorough tour of the Colosseum one morning. Its construction is amazing—at least, what remains of it—but when you stop and contemplate how many people died on its stage, you get a very unpleasant shiver up and down your spine.
• The same day, we toured the Roman Forum—again, what remains of it—with the very handsome and very captivating Alex. (Half Italian, half Scottish, and man of Maddie’s dreams. I hope she doesn’t kill me for saying this, but it is necessary for contextual purposes!) He was such a good tour guide—and so attractive—that we took his evening walking tour of Rome as well…
• One evening, we had planned to go out but providentially did not, as I was drawn into a highly competitive Uno game by Group of British Boys #1 while waiting for Maddie to finish her shower. It was very fast-paced, there was a point system, and there were multiple additional rules raising the level of complexity; thus they called it “Male Uno.” They were easily talked into letting me play, however, and pulled up a chair for Maddie as soon as she appeared and I introduced her as my sister. We played late into the night until I happened to mention that Venice was our next destination, at which point all four of those delightful boys threw their cards down on the table and sighed, “Ah, Venice!” in unison. They gave us their map of Venice with all their favorite spots indicated for our touristic enjoyment…
• We ventured off the map in an exciting public transport escapade to see the eerie Catacombs of San Callisto. Because they extend for miles and miles underground, no one is allowed to wander about without a guide, but I really wanted to dive off down a passage to see what I would discover…To get to the catacombs in the first place, we had to stroll along the Appian Way, which Roman citizens still drive along quite nonchalantly. Walking back into the city, we stumbled upon the first mile marker of the Appian Way. It was fantastic.
• Spending a morning lounging in the Borghese Gardens while waiting for our turn to visit the Galleria Borghese. There was a man playing a pipe flute nearby, and a dog tried to steal our picnic of pecorino cheese. We philosophized on our lives and told stories…The gallery was lovely as well, although all visitors are kept to a strict two-hour time limit; the highlight was incontestably Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne for me.
• Our final afternoon, we stumbled upon the Leonardo da Vinci museum, which houses a large number of machines rebuilt after da Vinci’s diagrams and which was generally fascinating.
• Our hostel kitchen had a sign on the microwave which read, “PLEASE DO NOT USE THE CATTLE AND THE M’OVEN AT THE SAME TIME.”
• My failure to ever throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain. This was indirectly the fault of Group of British Boys #2, who we met because we had met Group of British Boys #1 the night before. It was our final night in Rome, and since we hadn’t managed to go out the night before, we determinedly set off for the Trastevere quarter. The plan was to swing by the Trevi Fountain on our very long walk back to the hostel (as the metro stops running at a very inconvenient hour for young people), because every time we had previously passed the fountain, it had been an absolute madhouse of tourists flinging coins and having their pictures taken. Thus, I had refused to sacrifice my coin in such an environment and thought that maybe, if I walked past the fountain at 1 am, I could throw in my coin peacefully. But as Maddie and I sat in that sidewalk café in Trastevere, waiting for our drinks to arrive and trying not to watch the sword-swallower perform across the street, Group of British Boys #2 made eye contact while walking past, swerved over to our table, and took a seat when invited. They were excellent company. However, at 3 am with a 9 am train on the horizon, a detour to the Trevi Fountain is just not tempting, but such is the sacrifice of a girl wearing a pretty dress on a summer night in Rome.

Pictures.

(In other news, I am off to Paris tomorrow! Also, my French flirting skills are improving as the stack of French-books-read on my shelf grows higher…)