Rome

Rome

Cooking classes complete, we were on our way to Rome. Italy is not a big country, so we took the train. It only took 45 minutes, and we were deposited in the centre of the city. Ya gotta love the train for that.

Finding our way to the subway and sorting in out to our stop went off without a hitch; the short walk to the Hotel Empire Palace, less so. It was 35 degrees and humid when we surfaced at the corner of Via Vittorio Veneto and Via Leonida Bissolati, scaling Via Leonida to Via Settembra, losing our way every few steps while we searched for cross-streets on our map. The streets of Rome are not what I would call a grid. We’d only gone a couple blocks so far, and if those few steps were any indication, finding our way didn’t bode well, so we decided to keep out of the warren for a while until we found our bearings. That went better. We had to double back a couple short blocks, but we arrived, a little warm and flustered, but otherwise without mishap. We knew our best routes before too long and kept to them.
There were restaurants along the way, shops and wine outlets. They were good, but we’d been spoiled. No meal could compare with those we’d prepared under the tutelage of Claudio. We had to remind ourselves that they weren’t bad. They were better than most restaurants we’d ever ate in, as a matter of fact. But nothing compares to home-cooked, if done right. And we’d done right.

On impulse, I ducked into a Brioni outlet, where I could have bought an uber-expensive Italian suit, were I so inclined. It was not large. Rather narrow, in fact. The shelves were not so packed with wares as we’re accustomed to. Everything was just so. So much so that a sales clerk followed my every move while I was within. Just in case I stole something, I suppose. “Not to worry,” I told him after he’d shadowed me for a minute or so, “I may not look it," (shorts, T, and sandals) "but I can afford anything in this shop.” I could. I own Canali and a few customs, if that means anything to you. I just chose not to. I didn’t need another suit. I just wanted to take a peek at James Bond’s (the Pierce Bronson years) tailor.

The Colosseum

We began the grand tour the next day, taking the subway to the Colosseum. The guidebooks had warned us to get there early to avoid the lines. What we thought early was not early enough, apparently. There were long lines already. We bought our Roma Passes and set about waiting for the line to move. It did not. Not to worry; we did not wait too long before being headhunted.

“Why are you waiting in line?” a young man said. “Buy a tour with us?” he said.
I was reticent. I told him I’d been warned about scams. He set me at ease.
“You are not buying the tour from me,” he said. “You are buying a tour from that lady, over there,” he said, pointing at a young woman with an abundance of people around her.
“What’s in it for you?” I asked
“I get a commission for bringing you to her,” he said.

The Forum

“Sold,” I said, eager to get out of the line and into the shade she was in. We lucked out. It was not a scam. She was a travel agent of an actual agency situated just outside the Vatican. More than that, the tour we were booking was not just for the Colosseum; it included a tour of the Forum in the afternoon. We passed the line, having booked their tour, only then realizing that the line we had been in was only the tail of a much longer line. We’d likely saved ourselves hours, if not the whole day, booking with them.

Great tour. Of course I’d say that. I love history. I especially love the Cradle of Civilization stuff. I’d taken Classical History in university, after all. I barely listened to the guide, already knowing what I was looking at, its history, its legend. So too the second tour of the Forum, although I did listen more carefully to David, our Italian/Brit guide, from time to time.

When the trip was winding down, David said, “See that small cluster of tourists in the shade by that column?” We nodded. “I want all of you to go there. They’ll leave when we arrive.” We did, and they did. “I hate the sun,” David said, looking up at it through the trees, glaring at it as it glared back down on him and us. All people who live under the glare of the sun hate it, David said. But we had a shield of leaves, then, and its baleful glare was reduced to a whimper.

I paid even closer attention when David gave us travel tips. He told us how to look out for and to avoid pickpockets. “They’re so good, they must have a university to teach them how to do it.” He told us not to buy water from street venders, but to refill our own from the fountains about the city. He told us where the good restaurants were and how to recognize them. He also told us that he was conducting another tour the next night around Trajan’s Column, if we were interested. We were. We signed up for that, too. It was much easier signing on with these consecutive tours than trying to sort them all out, ourselves. So we told ourselves.

Trajan’s Column

So, the next night, we met him under Trajan’s Column, we proceeded to the Parthenon, and then, crossing the Piazza Venezia and the National Museum, where Mussolini made his speeches from his balcony to the gathered masses, we mounted the Spanish Stairs and loitered outside a Roman apartment building. We walked a Roman street under the Commune di Church. We crossed the Tiber on the Ponte Fabricio, again on the Ponte Cestio, and again on the Ponte Sisto, finishing our tour at the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza Navarro.

David informed us that if we were thinking of touring the Vatican, he was taking names. Why not, we thought, and signed up for that tour, too. Then he brought us to his favourite restaurant a couple blocks outside the piazza, where we had the best pizza of our lives. David gave us two more tips before he left us: never eat in the piazzas, he said, they’re overpriced; and never rent rooms in a hotel if you are staying a week, when you can rent an apartment for a quarter the price.

Vatican City

The Vatican was full, but not as full as it could be, we were informed. We were also informed that if we wished to skip the crowds when visiting the Vatican, February was the best time to come, when tourism was at its lowest and there were only five thousand visitors per day, and not twenty- or fifty-thousand. We shuffled along with those twenty thousand others, following our guide’s raised baton and listening to her lectures by earphone.

Bev lagged behind for a moment. Only a moment. Try as she might, she couldn’t close the gap between us, again, no matter how many times she said “excuse me.” I had to reach through the gap and haul her back next to me.

The Sistine Chapel

We inched through the Borgias apartments, finally allowed to sit in the Sistine Chapel for five minutes before being ushered out. We were the lucky ones, the last allowed in that day, for security reasons. The Pope was going to lead a prayer vigil and the Vatican had to be cleared, for some reason.
We were not denied St. Peter’s Basilica. We were told to take our time, in fact. And we did, marveling at sheer size of it, at the majesty of the domes and the chapels, lingering before the statuary (most notably, Michelangelo’s Pieta) and the altar(s), before buying a few religious trinkets in the gift shop, all blessed by the Pope, apparently (I had the rosaries I bought blessed by Father Pat, just to be on the safe side).

Our final day was spent at Pompeii. I had to go--Classical Studies, and all that—to see the famed city with my own eyes, its cobbled streets, its frescos and its gladiator school. Let’s not forget its brothels; the frescos there were only slightly more risqué than those in people’s homes.

We remembered, our last night, that we wouldn't be allowed to bring the bottles of wine we’d bought with us. Airport security, and all that. So we partook of a bottle, leaving the one that remained for our cleaning lady, with a note, thanking her for her attention during our stay.

And with that, it was time to be on our way.

Roman Holiday, Piazza della Verita

One last thing: Have you ever seen Roman Holiday? You have? Then you know where I’m going with this. Everyone ought to go to the Piazza della Verita. Gregory Peck did, after all, and he brought Audry Hepburn with him. We went, too. There’s a little church called the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin there. There’s a marble face at its entrance, the face of the sea god Oceanus. Why’s it there? Who knows why? But it’s been there since the seventeenth century. It’s not called the face of Oceanus anymore, though; it’s called the Bocca della Verita, the Mouth of Truth. Go ahead. Stick your hand in its mouth.

Maybe not. Not if you lie. Not if you want to keep you hand, that is. Rumour has it that it bites a liar’s hand off.

I risked it. I put my hand in its mouth. So did Bev. And look...we both walked away with our hands still attached.

So yeah, you can trust me…can’t you?