Today we have come to the last installment in my meandering, lazy recollection of this summer's travels in Italy and France: Rome. I know now why they call it the eternal city - it's because it takes a fuckin' eternity to get out of the place with a car.
The plan was simple. I would put my two American guests, Albie & Court on a train in the morning, loll around the pool all day, eating chocolate and drinking soda and then go collect them in the evening, all bright eyed and shiny from the experience of seeing Rome for the first time.
It was not to be.
The fuckin' Italian trains were on strike this Friday, or so we'd been told, so yours truly had to get in the car and DRIVE all the way down to Rome, find a parking place, drag the yanks around town and then navigate out again. Dear reader, I have never been closer to suicide by car than that day.
First of all, while driving down to Rome we actually SAW a train or two passing us, probably heading for Rome. We became uncertain, but thought the trains might have originated outside Italy, and were therefore not subject to the strike (or so went our, ahem,
train of thought). But when we walked into the Termini in Rome, it was full of people and there were trains coming and going. I don't know if the strike was over, if certain trains were exempt or whatever. But there were trains running.
In order to get to the Termini area, which I had singled out since it's the one area of Rome I actually know, I indulged in some zen driving. For those unfamiliar with the term it can be found in Douglas Adams' books about Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and it basically means that you find a car that looks like it knows where it's going and follow it. Surprisingly often it will work. I finally managed to park the car in a shady spot on a relatively quiet back street, the one stroke of luck I had all day.
We then walked down to Termini and from there to the Colosseum. Naturally the yanks were agog at seeing it, and even more so when I told them what it had looked like way back in the day. We conquered a looooong line of people and walked around a bit in the boiling sun before yours truly found out that I had to get something to drink, as I was rapidly getting dehydrated. I walked around the place but there was nothing to be found. I asked a woman sitting in an office if there was any soda to be had in the Colosseum, but she answered me nay. She did NOT bother to volunteer the information that one might buy WATER in the bookstore, something Albie told me later.
By this time my body temperature (and my attitude to Italians in general) was near boiling point, so I simply headed towards the exit (which took some time and walking to find). By sheer coincidence I ran into the yanks on the way and told them I was going outside to get something to drink, but that they could take their sweet time if they wanted to.
I then went outside, bought two ridiculously overpriced bottles of beverage and proceeded to drink most of it, and wet my tired brow with the rest. I then settled in the shade and began to wait. And wait. And wait. The sun rose and fell. Seasons passed. Children were born and grew to adulthood. And still I waited. And waited. FINALLY the yanks came out of the arena. It turned out they'd gotten separated in the crowds, and spent the most part of their (and my!) time looking for each other. I smiled on the outside, but inside I was thinking dark thoughts of murder and mayhem.
Still, I was determined that they should see the good parts of Rome before they left so I ignored the protests and objections and the hints of finding the car and getting the hell outta there, and took them down toward the Forums. We dined in an overpriced, lousy restaurant on the corner of Via Cavour and Via dei Fori Imperiali, and then took a leisurely stroll down the latter. The sight of all those wonderful old ruins and my sotto voce guidance improved things considerably.
When we came to the Victor Emmanuel monument we took a sharp left and walked to the Torre Argentina, where I told them about Caesar's demise and of course the cats that now held sway in the area. We then walked up to the Pantheon where I delivered my usual hate & rage-filled diatribe against the fuckin' Catholic church for raping one of the loveliest monuments of the ancient world. We rounded our trip to Rome off with a quick look at Piazza Navona (still tacky!), before catching a taxi to our car.
As mentioned before, we then spent an eternity - more precisely defined as appx 2.5 hours - in the insane traffic out of town. When we finally reached the motorway and were clear of the lines I put the pedal to the metal and we enjoyed a nice dinner in Tuoro on our last night in Italy. All pics from Italy & France, including lots more from Rome,
can be found here.
The insane parking in Rome.
The interior of the Colosseum... supposedly you are allowed to go down into the pits these days, but I didn't see anybody down there.
The white stone marks the spot where Caesar was killed. Beware the Ides of March!
