Don't get me wrong here. There was trash, muddy banks along the river that made running unpleasant, beggers, unsightly garish shop windows, stalls selling plastic Vatican replicas and cheap trinket renditions of ancient buildings. In fact, there is so much of this tat that it's easy to imagine we'll all drown in some enormous plastic waste site some day if we don't stop making it all. But that stuff, sadly, is almost everywhere. Visit a WalMart.
But there's only one Pantheon, there's only one Colosseum, one Vatican, and so on. Those of you who've been will know. Those of you who haven't been and who enjoy a city holiday, put Rome at the top of your list. I'll take personal responsibility for your enjoyment. Those of you who prefer the countryside, the beach, or just plain staying at home, you may in fact be the wisest of us all. I don't know, but what I do know is I loved this city and I can't wait to go back. Can you tell?
Now, part of my reaction may well be that this holiday involved two things I've never had a chance to experience before, each one very special. First, Rose and I got to see Claire and Neil after a span of several months of not seeing them, and we got to see them over the tail-end of the Christmas season and the New Year's celebration. We've never done the Christmas holiday quite like this before and it was superb. Few things compare to those great long hugs. Secondly, we got to leave the desert for its opposite. The cool rainy welcome to Rome was a type of blessing. And on top of all this, we got to spend time with a close friend, too. Scott came with Claire and Neil so I got to have a real runner to run with and a real friend to hang out with when the shopping became too much. Dull indeed would he be of soul who could pass by an opportunity so full of family, laughter, and cool experiences. Wordsworth knew of what his words were worth.
But enough carrying on. Two quick stories. It's Christmas Eve, Rose and I have been in the city since noon. We've been to a local grocery, bought fresh pasta, wine, cheese, fresh Italian bread: the stuff of Heaven. The pasta is on the boil, the wine is half gone (as am I), the cheese and bread quickly disappearing. I plug in the kettle for some tea. Instantly all the power goes out. Both windows are shuttered. The place is absolutely black. Outside rain is falling lightly but steadily. Luckily my phone is in my pocket so I turn it on and in the dim glow of its digital beam I look about. For what, I don't know. There are no candles nor matches that we can find. Were I to find an Italian fuse box I'm not sure what I'd do with it. There is no breaker switch in sight. The lights in the hallway are on, as are the lights in the apartment upstairs. It's just us. I dash to a phone booth with my slip of paper to phone our landlord. Providing no shelter, the phone booth experience proves laughable. Within moments the ink has run and the number is obliterated. I've managed to get it dialled but I'll never remember it for next time. Blissfully unaware last-minute shoppers waltz happily by in the rain. No one tells me that there's an extra button you have to push on an Italian outdoor phone after you've dialed your number. The phone goes dead. In my mind's eye, I see Rose on the sofa sitting somewhat glumly in the soft blue light cast by her iPod. . . . "Dull would he be of soul . . . " I race to the grocery, hoping against hope. It's open. Oddly, one has to dash through a clothing store to get to the grocery store entrance. Ha! The Italians. What will they think of next? Struggling to make myself understood, I finally learn two things: the store is closing and they don't carry candles. Upstairs, on a table of shirts for sale, there happen to be some Christmas candles for sale. I buy four and dash back downstairs for matches. As the steel doors are rolled into place, I make the universal sign for lighting a match, pleadingly. I learn two things: they are closed and they don't sell matches. I begin to run back to our flat, remembering a tobacconist's along the way. He's open and he has matches and suddenly, running in the rain, soaking wet, clutching my Santa, reindeer, and north star candles, I am a supremely happy man. I start chuckling out loud, saying to myself, "I'm running in the rain with a Santa Claus candle at 8:15 on Christmas Eve along cobblestone streets in Rome! How often does anyone get to do that?" I think of Rose in the by-now-dimming light of her iPod. I stop chuckling to myself. Home, dripping but happy, I light the four candles and almost instantly find a little recessed niche in the wall by the main door where quietly sits a breaker switch which, curiously, is off. I turn it on and all the lights come on, the pasta begins to heat up, and I don't plug the kettle back in. Meanwhile Rose has completed 16 games of Shanghai successfully.
My second tale is much shorter. Ahem . . .having been warned about pickpockets, we plan each outing carefully as to where our wallets, phone, and other things we don't want to lose will be kept. All goes well for several days. On our second last day, Scott and I decide we want to go to a famous art gallery while the others beguile themselves with shopping. (This reminds me, other than doughnut shops in Owen Sound, I have never seen a concentration of shops anywhere in the world the way that Rome is crammed with shoe shops. There cannot be that many feet in the world, it seems. But I digress.). The gallery, sadly for us, is not letting anyone in without a ticket for the next three days. It is late in the afternoon and we decide the best thing we can do is find some comfortable spot for a drink and thus soothe our disappointment. I buy an Irish coffee for about 20 Canadian dollars in a very swanky streetside bar and it is delicious. Scott, sensibly, has red wine, also delicious. We stroll to the Rome version of Toronto's subway and find the platform very busy and the trains absolutely packed. Another train pulls in, the doors open, no one gets off, and the train is steel-strainingly full. Suddenly from behind, we both end up being pushed onto the train, squeezed into the people already on board so closely packed as to make me blush. Scott is in a bear hug and our pusher is a short burly man, so burly in fact that I expect his last name is Burly. His whole family is probably pictured in some dictionary by the word burly. We're all on there now, the doors are still open, my left hand is squeezed into my pants pocket and I feel a strange wiggle against the plush paper napkin I've borrowed from the swanky bar. Mr Burly has his hand ever so gently deep in my pocket feeling about for something of value. There's only the napkin. I grab his hand, twist three fingers up into the tiny space between my left shoulder and his face and give him a glare which has absolutely no effect on him. Suddenly all apologetic and bewildered, he takes his hand back and just as the doors begin to close, with the practiced art of the seasoned con-man, he takes one step back onto the platform, the doors close and we are whisked away. We stare at one another for a moment, open-mouthed (as you do), and in the space freed up by the thief's departure do a quick accounting and find nothing gone. Thanks in part to the coffee and wine, we find we can laugh about the experience. Nonetheless, it was not only pretty weird but somewhat disturbing, too.
The ceiling of the Sistene Chapel is as gorgeously impressive as people say. The Colosseum gets its name by rights: it is enormous, jaw-droppingly so, and architecturally astounding to boot. The monuments; the churches; the piazzas with trees, fountains, and statues; the paintings, the parks, and the pizza. A stunning holiday in a stunning city. Even when it rains. Go. Your soul will thank you.
One of our morning cappuccino stops.
Ummmm . . . Gladatorial umbrellas?
A non-Sistine ceiling, but beautiful nevertheless, and about a kilometre long. OK, I exaggerate, but only slightly.
Me in my new hat, scarf, and jacket. Oh, and the rest of the family too. At our as yet to be finished hotel.
And . . .
. . . the five of us on New Year's Eve. Have a superb 2011 everyone. From all of us.
