Roma

Arrivaderci Roma!

Rome is an odd town. It’s absolutely filthy. Every inch – even in what I suppose are the nicer sections – is covered in graffiti. I suspect tagging is the Italians’ national sport. There are no traffic laws. People stop when they feel like it, go when they can, scooters and motorbikes assume a stoplight is the signal for them to go winging between traffic to get a better position for when the light turns green. Crossing the street: even with a pedestrian signal is like playing Russian Roulette with at least three shells in the six-shooter.

You go jaunting down the street, rolling your eyes at the graffiti when you’re not on the constant lookout for gypsies, pickpockets and Paki street vendors, you turn a dirty corner on a dirty street and there’s Trajan’s column outlined by 19th century apartment buildings. You wander down through a maze of churches, doubling back on the same staircases and dead ends over and over and there, from in front of the Mamertine Prison, looking through Septimus Severus column is the Coliseum.

Or you’re walking west towards the Tiber, more or less lost and annoyed at how much time you’re burning on foot when you’d planned to take the Metro from Piazza Republica but turned left too late and missed the Piazza altogether. You figure you’re going more or less north, so turn to head due west and Castel Gondolfo emerges flanked by the Caesars on the Ponte San Angelo. Beyond that St. Peter’s looms over the square. And to get to the museum, you have to walk a long way outside the Vatican City walls.

It’s kind of like that everywhere. Cross through Piazza Novona, hold on to your valuables, weave like a drunken man through a few dead end streets and pop out in front of the Parthenon. Follow the crowds to the east down a pig’s misery and there’s the friggin’ Trevi fountain. It’s been pretty much like that for three days.

And none of that is even considering wandering through Firenze with my cousin and seeing Lippis, Giottos, Donatellos, and Michaelangelos by the score. IN our last stop before heading back to Cortona we slipped past the statue of Dante crowning the stairs and went inside. You couldn’t go far because of Sunday Mass but there, flanking the entrance to the chuch, was Michaelangelo buried next to Dante with Galileo – presumably minus his finger – keeping watch on the other side of the nave. You could be forgiven for thinking that no other city in the world did very much for Western Civilisation.

And that’s good-bye to Italy. I am definitely coming back. Probably to visit Tuscany. In fact, my next trip might just be to visit Normandy for a week or two and head directly for Tuscany to sit on my fat ass and drink wine for a month. Sounds like a plan.