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The Trip that almost Didn’t Happen

Mar6
It’s hard to imagine what we would all have missed!

Feeling indecisive about what to pack and what to leave at home, I stood at the foot of my bed inspecting piles of clothing that I’d placed on the bedspread. On Saturday, three days from now, my daughter Tammie and I were leaving on our long-anticipated trip to Rome. Excitement and nervousness coursed through my body. It seemed surreal that the time to leave was now so quickly approaching.  

Our flight to Europe would take off from Minneapolis airport. Since my daughter had come to Wisconsin a few days ago to attend her cousin’s wedding, the plan was for me to go back with Tammie to her home in Saint Paul. After the trip was over, Niki, my other daughter, would drive to the Twin Cities to take me back to Central Wisconsin.

I could hear Tammie getting ready for bed. She called out, “Are you packing? We’ll be leaving right after I finish work tomorrow afternoon.”

Pulling a suitcase closer to me, I answered, “I’m trying to pack.” A moment later when Tammie walked into my bedroom, I explained, “I’m not getting anywhere with packing because I’m trying to imagine what I’ll all need for the next two weeks. That’s how long I’ll be gone from home, between going to Rome and my staying at your place a few days before the trip and a few days after.”

Nodding, Tammie suggested, “Pack two suitcases. One for everything you will need while in Rome and the other one for what you will need while visiting me.”

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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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44 B.C. Crime Scene

Jan31
Crime scene In Italy, over two thousand years after the crime.

I looked forward to seeing the spot where Brutus killed Julius Caesar, but every time my daughter Tammie and I talked about going there, she kept talking about, “Santuario dei Gatti di Torre Argentina” which could be found at the same location. “It’s a cat sanctuary,” she excitedly informed me. I had the distinct impression she was more interested in seeing the cats than seeing the famous Emperor’s historical murder site. The incongruity of the two sites sharing the same space was lost on me.

My interest focused more on the 2,067-year-old crime scene. Not knowing what it would look like all these years later, I wondered with a chuckle, “Would there be a large ‘X’ marking the spot where it happened, and yellow tape cordoning off the area?”

When we arrived at Largo di Torre Argentina (Tower Square), the place managed to surprise me. It was a large open space the size of a city block, surrounded on all four sides by tall, solid buildings, some of which were ornately decorated. Within the walled-in block there were many ancient pillars and paving stones below street level, which dated back to the Curia of Pompey, the Roman senate building, the very spot where Caesar is believed to have been assassinated. Also contained within that block were the remains of four Roman temples built there in the centuries following the crime.

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Reaching New Heights

Jan24

The outskirts of Rome fell behind us as our bus merged onto a busy highway north of the city. I leaned forward to peer out of the window, eager to see what the Italian countryside looked like. For the last seven days, my daughter Tammie and I had been exploring the city of Rome. Today we were leaving ‘The City of Seven Hills’ in the Lazio region, to visit Orvieto and Assisi in the Umbria region and to stop for lunch in the Tuscany region.

Rows of pale green olive trees marching alongside the road flashed by. Vineyards with vines pruned to increase production, dusty tobacco fields, hay fields and harvested grain fields dotted the countryside. Clumps of extremely tall pampas grass, and an Italian high speed train shooting through the countryside fascinated Tammie and me.  Driveways to farmhouses that were lined with Italian balloon pine trees or palms made us want to stop to investigate. Mountainous ridges formed our horizon to the left and right. The highway appeared to be on a flat plain between them.

The medieval town of Orvieto was our first stop. Our bus drove uphill as far as the road went. Getting off the bus, we entered a vehicle called a funicular, which is a cable railway system used on steep slopes. Funicular systems have two counterbalanced carriages called cars or trains. They are permanently attached to both ends of a haulage cable, which results in the two cars moving in opposite directions at the same time. As one goes down, the other goes up. The unusual name, funicular, is from the Latin word for rope (cable). 

Getting off the funicular, we hadn’t reached the city of Orvieto, yet. There were still two flights of stairs to climb. I wished the funicular had continued up this slope. As I ascended, I counted each step, and the grand total was 48. Our guide explained that medieval towns were built on hilltops because enemies were unable to launch surprise attacks on them and the towns were more easily able to defend themselves.

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Hidden Beauty

Jan17
Sunny Sunday morning in front of San’t Isidoro in Rome.

I rinsed dish soap off a plate and placed it in the rack. Turning to where my daughter Tammie was sitting at the table, I asked, “Can you find an English Mass celebrated, here in Rome? An Italian one would be all right, but I would prefer understanding the words of each prayer.”

Looking up from her phone screen, Tammie announced, “I just found one. It’s called Chiesa di San’t Isidoro. Since it’s close to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, would you like to spend the afternoon visiting those places?”

On Sunday morning, we got up early to allow travel time. We didn’t have to wait very long in the shade of a lovely small tree for the bus to come. The large, lumbering vehicle was full. Shortly after we boarded, most of the passengers behind us began to sing a song in French. I turned and noted that our impromptu choir consisted of a jolly-faced, zucchetto-wearing Bishop and several of his collar-wearing seminarians. They got off the bus before Tammie and I did.

Pointing to a shaded street that curved around several large buildings, Tammie explained, “Even though the street curves, we’re to walk straight up that hill to the end of the block. Then we should be able to see the church.”

We walked past several sidewalk cafes that hadn’t opened yet due to the early hour. The huge shade trees along the way had unusual, gray, smooth trunks, and large leaves. Looming up in front of us was a very steep, long flight of stairs. Reaching the top, we saw a lawn enclosed within a fence and a dirt driveway. Beyond it, further up the hill, was the church we were looking for. Several cats were roaming around the yard and sitting in boxes under shaggy evergreen bushes.

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Nero’s Pleasure Palace

Jan10
Hallway in Nero’s Pleasure Palace.

I wanted to find some shade. The fall sunshine shone as brightly as light refracted through a magnifying glass. The bus we’d just exited pulled away from the bus stop. Hot-smelling fumes coming from the vehicle’s exhaust pipe made me turn away from it and cough. My daughter Tammie said, “The map said it’s just a ten-minute walk from here.”

Ten minutes later, there seemed to be no end to the street ahead of us. I complained, “When maps say things like, ‘It’s an easy walk,’ they aren’t talking about people with a walking disability. We walk too slowly and frequently stop to rest for that estimate to be correct.”

Tammie ignored my rant and stated, “It isn’t much further. We’re looking for a gate.” She was right; at the street’s end was a gate to a park. Walking through the gate, I glanced around at the trees, lawns, and paths before questioning, “I thought you said we were visiting Nero’s palace today.”

My daughter confirmed, “We are. It’s his Domus Aurea, which means golden house. The subsequent emperors and his subjects hated Nero so much that after he killed himself, they stripped the house of valuables and buried the building.”

To my surprise, we had to descend several flights of stairs to reach the huge, excavated dwelling. I murmured to Tammie, “The people must have really, really hated Nero! Burying a place this big, even with modern-day backhoes and scoop shovels, would be a huge job. Back in the first century AD, all they had were buckets and baskets! What did he do to be so despised?”

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Cooking with Wine

Jan3

The bus moved along quickly, despite Rome’s busy and sometimes winding, narrow streets. The cooking class Tammie and I had signed up for was several blocks from our Airbnb apartment. After riding for what seemed to me a long time, my daughter finally turned to me and nodded. Our stop was coming up.

Even before the bus lurched to a stop, we were on our feet moving toward the exit, clutching the handrails. When the bus pulled away a moment later, I looked around and asked, “Where is this cooking school we’re going to?” Tammie studied the instructions on her phone and motioned toward the end of the street, saying, “We have to walk a block or two.”

Hot, late afternoon sunshine beat down mercilessly on us as we approached a shaded street corner. Next to it was a large, multi-street intersection. My daughter urged, “Come on, Mom. We need to cross here, now. The traffic light is in our favor.” A tall cement wall on the other side of the street looked like it was holding back one of Rome’s famous seven hills. In the wall was an opening, and as we approached, I realized that it was a steep stairway with weeds growing out of cracks.

At the top of the stairs, we found an unremarkable city street lined with dingy buildings. Two men were leaning against the top of the wall smoking cigarettes. One of them motioned toward the first doorway and informed us, “If you’re here for the class, go right in.” I glanced around, looking for a sign or some other way that would indicate we were in the right place. Seeing none, I felt uneasy and unsure of myself.

Opening the door, I was surprised to find myself in a large, well-equipped kitchen. A man greeted us and escorted us past a dining room with a long table set for a dinner party to a small living room. There were six people already there sipping wine and making small talk. Our guide disappeared as introductions revealed one couple was from Chicago and the other two couples were from Newfoundland. The man returned and handed Tammie and me glasses of white, sparking wine. He noted that it was, “Prosecco.”

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