Roman Holiday

---

It's the end of our first week in Rome and I'm not sure which I should get to recount our visit so far - my tired feet or my happy heart. Perhaps I should let them both speak. My tired feet would tell you that we have walked high and low over this eminently walkable city, and at this moment are being soothed as we sit down to a meal that we have prepared at home this evening, made entirely from ingredients purchased at the markets in Campo di Fiori just five minutes walk away. It is a dish of our own invention, so let's call it Vitello Chiavari - a “sandwich” of wafer-thin slices of veal (cut by hand by the butcher) filled with pancetta and a smear of pesto genovese, quickly pan fried and accompanied by new potatoes with rosemary (apparently mandatory as our favourite fruit & vegie man at the market made a point of adding a sprig into our order) and a salad of mixed greens, all washed down with a very nice chianti (no fava beans - we actually had them last week). But enough about food, because there is enough there for an entire other posting.

My happy heart would tell you about the delights we have encountered during our meanderings, although in the last couple of days we have been exploring with a little more purpose than in our first few days. Yes we've even been using a guide book, although we have still been leaving some space for walking about just to see what we can see. My experience is one that I haven't had since I first visited London in 1992 - it is of walking along the street and having all those books and pictures I've seen suddenly come alive around me; wow experiences abound. So that even though I knew that the familiar form of the colosseum sits along side a major road, and that it is just there in the middle of the city, rounding the corner and seeing it for the first time was still a wonderful experience. And yes I know it is a cliché but I can't resist including a photo of it here - like the sprig of rosemary with the potatoes it is virtually mandatory.

Most of our exploring has been out of doors - the Roman and Palantine forums, the Gianicolo Hill with it's sweeping views over the city, the elegance of the Borghese Gardens, the Castel St. Angelo and it's bridge flanked by Bernini's angels - although a showery day on Sunday had us resort to a wet weather plan and visit the Capitoline Museum, and its magnificent equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius (worth a visit just for that). And for us the joys of this exploring have been been not only in the big, bold and old, but also in the small and particular that catch the eye along the way - like the pink fiat bambino, and the barbers shop with a marble pillar incorporated into it's wall and a tumble of ivy. This is a city that really defines that now trendy term among designers for recycling old building materials - “adaptive re-use”.

And the good news in all of this walking is that we have managed to survive the Roman road crossings, and to a degree have got the hang of it, although not like the locals, whose fearlessness was epitomised by a man riding his bicycle (no helmet of course) weaving in and out the jumble of buses, cars, and scooters that makes Piazza Venezia a traffic battlefield (even with, or maybe inspite of, traffic police on point duty - love those snappy uniforms and hand signals) while making a call on his handheld mobile phone. Now that's bravura. So while I am not on the martial arts mat at aikido at present, engaging with the roman traffic is certainly doing wonders for sharpening my focus on intention - when one commits to cross the road it has to be 100%, no hesitancy is possible (well except for the occasional nervous leap back onto the footpath, but I'm studying the locals and working on it).

This evening it is our afterhours tour of the vatican and sistine chapel, which is our big splurge for the holiday, and so we are both really looking forward to it, and will no doubt have a lot to say about it (at least we hope so!) in our next posting. So do swing by in the near future for that story, and a thank you to all who have dropped in and said hello. It's great to hear your “e-voice” out there.
Ciao amici.

---

Photos

Bocca della Verita
And we really did see Audrey Hepburn there -- ooops, where's my hand gone!

It is Colossal!
A view that was both expected and unexpected

Bambino & Gelato
Molto Italiano - a scene from a stroll along the river

Masters of Adaptive Reuse
It's not just the big and bold that have the power to arrest your eye.

Comments

[MB]

Great to see you've found my car!