Roman holiday

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One of my last acts before leaving home was to download Roman Holiday onto my iPad, basically an excuse for Audrey Hepburn to offer 50s moviegoers a cheap tour of Rome. It's not that hard to retrace the movie's travelogue, though it turns out that Rome in July is a good deal sweatier than it looks from the back of a Vespa in black and white. To maintain a Canadian sense of presentability, especially when trying to meet vatican city's dress code, means packing paper towels and extra shirts in your day pack. Still, how can you not love a city that even at its most down and out looks so impossibly scenic? Rome is a whiff of garlic mixed with jasmine, a flash of scarlet oleander and the gleam of gilded bronze, cobblestones rough underfoot and corinthian columns soaring above in ancient stone, the smooth richness of a lavender and peach gelato and the crunch of a good thin roman crust topped with only the best cheese and fresh tomatoes; an accidental garden (flowering vines, rusty antennae and satellite dishes) sprouting from the tile roof of the centuries-old villa across the street; the loud keen of cicadas in the umbrella pines and the shouts of vatican guards trying in vain to quiet the polyglot crowd of sweaty humanity packed excitedly into the sistine's sacred precincts.

We had a good flight, arriving early but getting our first taste of the Italian sense of efficiency in trying to get our baggage. Our hotel, the San Anselmo, a bit of a splurge for our anniversary, is on the Aventine hill in a gorgeous neighborhood of old palazzos, and we are in the Divina room (!) with heavy gold draperies, gilded walls, a marble bathroom with an amazing jacuzzi/tropical shower arrangement -- this has become more significant to us considering the effect of a day under the Italian sun -- and our own little balcony where we can enjoy a glass of wine in the coolishness of the evening. Everything I'd hoped for when doing the research for this trip!

After settling in we took a walk along the Tiber -- where there is now a bike path along the waters edge --well below the level of the mammoth walls built to channel the river long ago -- and then had dinner al fresco in a nearby trattoria in Testaccio. An early night -- made possible by the very short sleep we'd had the night before -- has just about got us adjusted to the six hour time difference already.

Today, we started out with figuring out the roman subway -- nothing special there-- but found our way to the piazza Bernini, and from there to some of the famous sights. The Trevi fountain worked last time for me, so we threw a couple more coins in to ensure a return. The most fun thing in Rome, we found, is to merely stumble upon things that turn out to be oh say 2000 years old, like Hadrians temple, or the pyramid (!) outside our subway station, and learn that only by consulting one's guidebook because there are no fences or guards around it. The pantheon, jeff's top must see here, was as magnificent as imagined a dome exactly as high, 146ft., as it is across, though the gods that it was meant to honor were chucked out a full 1400 years ago when the Christians took over. Attempts to maintain a decorum as befitting a church in the tour-packed building were about as successful as those in St. Peter's, where we ended the day after a visit to the utterly overwhelming Vatican museum. Too much to tell, and not enough energy to tell it. More tomorrow, I hope! of wine in the coolishness of the evening. Everything I'd hoped for when doing the research for this trip!

T
After settling in we took a walk along the Tiber -- where there is now a bike path along the waters edge --well below the level of the mammoth walls built to channel the river long ago -- and then had dinner al fresco in a nearby trattoria in Testaccio. An early night -- made possible by the very short sleep we'd had the night before -- has just about got us adjusted to the six hour time difference already.

Today, we started out with figure out the roman subway -- nothing special there-- but found our way to the piazza Bernini, and from there to some of the famous sights.

After settling in we enjoyed dinner in a trattoria in the

We took a walk along the Tiber after settling in, then had dinner al fresco at a trattoria in the nearby

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