Well, if one believed in the auspiciousness or its converse – inauspiciousness (very occasionally, English is eminently practical) – of signs, we might have thought seriously about travelling at all, based on how day 1 of our trip began. It would have to go a considerable stretch to have started off on a glummer note.
After rattling out of bed very early and shuffling to the kitchen to begin the morning rituals (1. COFFEE!), I opened the window blinds that overlook our street and found myself staring at two City of Ottawa Police Service cruisers and, in my neighbour’s driveway, two Emergency Medical Service ambulances.
What made the whole image especially ominous is that not one of the vehicles had its lights flashing and the dozen or so uniformed personnel seemed to be giving off no sign of any need for speed. Sure enough, not long after, a black mortuary service vehicle showed up and the body of my long-time neighbour was gently removed from one of the ambulances, placed into one of those awful black zip-up body bags and taken away.
Ed Taber had been our neighbour since we moved into the neighbourhood in the summer of 1991 and was another of those classic, wonderful gentlemen cut from the same cloth as both my Dad and Leslie’s Dad – the kind they don’t much make any more. We’re going to miss him. I left his wife, Irene, a note later that day just before we left, expressing our sorrow at her loss, and our regret that our trip would keep us from attending any funeral services.
A few days later in Rome, I read Ed’s official obituary in the online Ottawa Citizen, and gave him more than a few kind thoughts as I recalled what a great neighbour he had been for over 20 years. This year would have been his and Irene’s 60th anniversary. Rest in Peace, Ed.
= = =
When we did get airborne out of Toronto later that afternoon, as comfortable as the flight was, I didn’t sleep a wink the whole eight hours. Needless to say, I caught up on a boatload of reading and found a “Classics” folder on the in-flight movie channel. Between the two, the eight hours passed quite quickly.
Leslie had done all the bookings for the trip and one thing I like about Leslie’s approach can be summed up in eight words: “How often are we going to be here?” It doesn’t mean money is no object, but it does mean that if spending a few extra dollars or Euros buys us a little extra comfort or convenience, or allows us to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience as long as we’re in the neighbourhood, then spend the few extra dollars or Euros, because… (Altogether now), “How often are we going to be here?” What it meant right at the start was that, for the first time in my life, a highly professional looking driver met us at the airport customs exit carrying a sign with Leslie’s name on it.
Giovanni was his name (Well, of course it was!) and the run into Rome from the airport to our hotel in an exceedingly comfortable Mercedes mini-bus was a combination of both expert driving and very well-informed local history and lore.
When Giovanni found out we were Canadian, he told us a rather startling fact about his own experience. For some 15 years, he had been a driver for the Rome office of the Government of Québec. In that capacity, he had met and chauffeured – several times – René Levesque and Jacques Parizeau. Studiously avoiding the local federal politics we had left behind just hours before, we turned to commenting instead on the passing scenery and architecture.
To hear Giovanni describe it, there were only two periods in all of Roman history when any building at all took place: under the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, and 300 years before Christ. Every single building he pointed out to us seemed to be either one or the other.
By the way – if you’re taking notes, and mindful of my introductory comment that I will be making a lot of recommendations in this travelogue – booking a private limo and driver from the airport cost us exactly two Euros more than the fixed cost of a taxi for the same trip. (Altogether now… “How often…?”) If you’re staying at a hotel, before you leave home ask your hotel to recommend a limo company and then get them to book it for you. (There actually are a few Rome hotels, in fact, that may include this service for free if you’re going to be staying a minimum number of nights – our hotel required five – with them.)
Our home for the next few days was the Lancelot Hotel and to describe it as “central” is an understatement. Our room (#60) had a marvelous private balcony set with a bistro-style table and chairs. Surrounded by a railing full of greenery, it offered an amazing view of the already-mentioned Coliseum.
Granted, I have cranked the zoom on my camera here to frame the Coliseum itself as seen from our hotel balcony, but even allowing for the miracle of modern optics, it was no more than a 15-minute walk away. Ten, if you’re power-walking. 25 if you’re ambling back after a big dinner and a bottle of Montepulciano at a nearby ristorante.
Despite our arriving after what amounted to a 24-hour period of being awake, we opted for no more than a brief power nap of a couple hours because, on Rome time, we still had most of the day in front of us. So – feeling surprisingly refreshed – we set out on a get-to-know-the-neighbourhood walk and to recapture the amazing feeling we experienced last fall of being in old Rome… REALLY old Rome.
This remarkably well-preserved little circular temple (It’s about 2200 years old!) was originally thought to be dedicated to Vesta, goddess of the hearth but is now believed to have been built to honour Hercules Victor (“Hercules the Winner”). It sits beside a couple of gorgeous Mediterranean pines in the Piazza Santa Maria di Cosmedin, not far from the Coliseum.
Here’s another recommendation. Whenever you’re walking about in Rome, or pretty much any city in Italy, make a point of popping in to just about every church you encounter. We are talking, after all, about the very heart of the world’s Roman Catholic Church and in Rome, they take those religious roots very seriously. To enter a church or basilica in Rome is to be reminded of just how profoundly the depth of faith resides in the people of this country.
And for heaven’s sake (I guess that would be “literally” for heaven’s sake), look up. I’ll be describing and showing you a few churches in this travelogue – most of which are (insert countless synonyms for “moving” here because they are just too beautiful for a humble wordsmith to describe, so I’ll let my camera provide the proverbial worth of a thousand words). But there are also occasionally ones that tilt away from the sacred to the downright macabre in what they have chosen to preserve as “relics”.
As a general rule, we found that photography is not a problem unless there is a specific sign posted right inside the front door – or a stern warning from your guide or an official inside the church when he or she spots your camera – prohibiting it. (The Sistine Chapel is rigid about its prohibition, as you’ll read later on.)
Here’s a couple of teasers: Not far from our hotel is San Pietro in Vincoli (Saint Peter in Chains), a basilica built to honour the man to whom Christ is said to have offered the “keys to the Kingdom” and the mission to found His church on earth – St Peter. It is also where you’ll find what is probably Michelangelo’s third best-known sculpture (after “David” and “The Pieta”): “Moses”. Moses sits with very little fanfare in an alcove to the right of the main altar. Even its illumination is offered as an option by a little coin box into which the insertion of a Euro will throw more light on the sculpture.
I’m trying to imagine what a US setting would do for an artwork of this significance… probably throw a ton of ever-changing coloured spotlights at it while a Disney-animatronics robot of Michelangelo stood just off to one side – looking a lot like Charlton Heston and playing an eternally looped speech about the difficulty of working as a starving artist in the middle of the Second Millennium for Popes who thought the simple glory of crafting religious statuary should be payment enough. In Rome, most statues speak with beautiful eloquence entirely for themselves.
Michelangelo’s powerful representation of “Moses” is in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli. A, quiet, perfect example of humility of display or, as someone once put it, “When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.”
Looking up in San Pietro in Vincoli. Directly below this half dome, which frames the basilica’s main altar, is a reliquary in which is displayed an ancient set of shackles that give the basilica its name, and supposedly are the chains that, on the order of Herod, bound St. Peter until he was crucified (upside down, choosing not to be crucified in the same manner as Christ).
We finished the day with a wonderful dinner at a restaurant called The Aristocampo. The staff, who were unanimously young and male, understandably devoted most of their attention to a table of young, female customers – fortunately not far from where we sat so on the one or two occasions when we had to get their attention, a simple wave was enough.
This next bit is going to sound hopelessly cliché but I’m mentioning it here because it’s also quite funny. In Europe, the bathrooms are different. It’s almost universal in Italian restaurants that the toilets are down a full flight of stairs from the main dining room. (How in God’s name anyone with a physical disability is expected to be able to use them is beyond me. I can only assume that people who are mobility impaired either don’t eat out, or they are members in a club with a secret list of known “handicap friendly” toilets throughout the country.)
But beyond their inaccessibility to wheelchairs, Italian bathrooms also are typically arranged so you enter a common door to the washing area, and then hive off to stalls behind closed doors on one side or the other, depending on your gender.
The first time you encounter this can be a bit disconcerting when you casually walk through the door marked “Toilet” to find yourself almost crashing into a woman using the sink. My expressed “Whoops” was quickly overridden by this young woman, who pointed to the right and said simply, “Men’s on that side”.
A few minutes later, I emerged to find her still standing in front of the same sink. Stepping up to a second sink, I noticed a faucet, but a complete absence of water controls. “Wow… pretty modern in some ways,” I said, and waved my hand around in front of what I was sure would be some kind of sensor to activate the water flow. “I already tried that,” she said. So for the next couple minutes, we both tried to get a flow of water from our respective faucets by waving our hands all over the place. Nothing worked, so after agreeing that our shared perception of “modern in some ways” was prematurely optimistic, we compromised and scrubbed our hands vigorously with paper towels.
She returned to her companions at the centre-of-staff-attention table and I returned to our table, regaling Leslie with, “Don’t plan on any water to wash your hands”. When it came to be her turn to visit the facilities, however, she returned a few minutes later and said, “You didn’t look around enough… foot pedals under the sinks.”
Well geez… the only place I’ve ever seen foot or knee-operated water controls are in environments like hospitals or kitchens where you’ve washed your hands with sterilizing soap and want to rinse them off without picking up any potential contamination from the faucet controls.
Later, on our way out of the restaurant, we stopped to chat with the young ladies who, it turned out, were visiting from Arizona at whose state university they were students. After letting them in on the Great Bathroom Sink Water Mystery Secret, we shared travel plans. Turned out they were on their way to Florence so of course we both recommended as a must-visit, the famed Uffizi Gallery.
ASU is home of the Sun Devils, Sun Devil Stadium and an amazing athletics program but not, I'm thinking, much depth in its fine arts programming.
And being a bit of a clown, I added that they would get to see all of the “original Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles” in the gallery: Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo. This prompted one of the girls to ask, “Oh wow – like a pop culture exhibit you mean?” Leslie and I then both realized that our first question, before recommending a visit to the Uffizi, should probably have been, “Do you like art?”
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