Archive | February 2024

Taxi Cabs

Feb28
All metered taxi in Rome are white.

I opened my eyes to a dark room. The sound of traffic was sporadic out on the street below our apartment windows. Wondering what time it was, I turned on the bedside light and slipped on my glasses. The watch on my wrist showed ten minutes to five in the morning.

A flood of emotions washed over me. Today, my daughter Tammie and I would be traveling back to the United States. I felt sad that our wonderful vacation was over; looked forward to returning home; was nervous about taking a taxi to the airport; dreaded the long flight across the Atlantic Ocean; and realized that after waiting for hours in various airports I’d be totally exhausted by the time we arrived home.

Slipping out of bed, I padded into the kitchen to make tea. As the water heated, I prepared for the day. Tammie’s alarm clock went off by the time the tea was ready. Uncharacteristically, she immediately got up. Our plans and responsibilities for the day that lay ahead were affecting her as well.

With our luggage lined up by the door of our apartment, my daughter and I took turns checking all the rooms to make sure we wouldn’t accidentally leave anything behind. Earlier, I had washed the dishes and put them away, bagged up the wastepaper baskets, and hung used bath towels neatly over the edge of the bathtub. Satisfied with our efforts, we pulled our luggage out into the hall and locked the apartment one last time.

When my daughter and I arrived at the Rome airport eleven days earlier, we had taken a train to the city, then rode the Metro to a station close to our apartment, then walked the two blocks to our destination pulling wheeled luggage. For our return to the airport, Tammie and I agreed that taking a taxicab was a better plan. The ease of doing this outweighed the cost.

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Restaurant Ratings

Feb21
A five star meal of wild boar at a restaurant in Rome.

“Where are we eating tonight, Tammie?” The afternoon was growing late, and I felt hungry. Reading could no longer hold my attention.

Studying the screen on her phone, my daughter questioned, “What are you hungry for? There are dozens of restaurants within walking distance of this apartment. I’m checking for the ones that have the highest ratings.”

Shrugging, I commented, “Ratings don’t mean anything if the chef is having a bad day. As for what I want to eat, I won’t know until I see a menu.”

“Well, I know what I want to eat,” Tammie confided. “It’s on the menu at a small, four-and-a-half star-rated restaurant a few blocks from here. They also offer beer and honey marinated wild boar ribs, which I know you’d like.”

Tossing my book aside, I asked incredulously, “Are you going to order what I’ve heard you call the most iconic Roman noodle dish, pasta Carbonara? You can’t! Well, you shouldn’t! It’s made with dairy products.”

Waving my objections aside, my daughter assured me, “I can’t visit Rome without trying carbonara. Don’t worry, I’ll take Lactaid and I’ll be all right.”

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Ticket, Please!

Feb14

On our first full day in Rome, we spent an enjoyable afternoon sightseeing and exploring stores near the Vatican. When my daughter Tammie and I were tired, we decided to stop at a restaurant for a meal and return to our Airbnb apartment until it was time for us to board the nighttime bus tour. Glancing around, Tammie shared, “Let’s find a tobacchi shop, or a public transport machine to buy tickets for our bus and Metro rides for tonight and tomorrow morning.”

Looking down the street, I questioned, “How are we going to find a tobacchi shop? There are so many store fronts, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Tammie assured me, “Tobacchi shops are all over. You can spot them easily because they always have a large blue or black sign with a huge letter ‘T’ hanging over their door.”

We spotted one of the iconic tobacchi signs at the same time, just half a block away. Before stepping into the store, my daughter mused, “Let me think, we need tickets to get to the bus terminal tonight and tickets to return to our apartment. Then, we’ll need tickets to and from our pantheon visit tomorrow.” I nodded in approval. Tammie was good at planning ahead and she knew how to use the public transport system. Compared to her, I felt like a country mouse visiting the big city for the first time.

I followed my daughter into the tobacchi shop and looked around. Like many shops along the streets of Rome, it was small, but offered a vast array of services. Besides selling transport tickets, this store served as a mini post office, a place to pay utility bills, buy phone cards, stationary, candy, trinkets, and lottery tickets. It appeared to be a cross between America’s 7-11 store and a gasless gas station.

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Roasting Chestnuts

Feb7
The chestnut shells looked charred from the grill.

My daughter brightly chirped, “The outdoor market we’re visiting is just a short walk from here.”

I chuckled. I’d heard Tammie say, ‘It’s just a short walk from here’ every day, sometimes several times each day, since we’d arrived in Rome a week and a half earlier. She especially liked to share this information within moments of stepping out of a bus or subway car to reassure me we wouldn’t be walking a long distance. Often, the two blocks felt like miles to me.

Each small shop called to me as we passed, “Stop and shop!” I was drawn to a leather purse, a table runner, and a bottle of Limoncello. Although I’d shopped every day for the last ten days, everything looked fresh and interesting as though I was seeing it all for the first time. Tammie laughed at my enthusiasm. I grimaced and admitted, “You know what’s going on, here, don’t you? We’re flying home tomorrow, and this is our last day of vacation.” Pausing, I continued solemnly, “One summer day when your grandma had terminal cancer, she shared with me that the sky had never looked bluer, and the tree leaves never looked more vibrantly green to her.”

My daughter nodded in understanding of my analogy and added, “Knowing she’d never experience another summer, she wasn’t taking anything for granted.”

The narrow Italian street we were walking, came to a large open, cobblestoned, oblong piazza, filled with water fountains, statues, and crowds of people. Tammie asked, “Do you remember this place?”

Amazed, I looked around and exclaimed, “We visited this place on our second day in Rome, but we entered from the side furthest from where we are now.”

Pointing to a side street, Tammie announced, “The open market is one block away. I can see some sales booths from here.”

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