All of Day One it rained. And was dark. Ben and I bought fruit and salad things and cheese, salami, and bread at the outdoor market downstairs in front of our house. We unpacked. A geometer came by to measure our apartment and declare it large enough for our little family, and thus hasten our Family Reunification Visa. In fact, the apartment’s immensity continues to confound us, as we turn into a bathroom or livingroom instead of the kitchen. We rode the little toy Metro to Tom’s office and checked our email, bought train tickets to Switzerland for Christmas. We had a drink in a bar/café. We shopped at a supermarket called Crai, but managed not to cry this time over laundry detergent, the single most frustrating product in Italy. We checked each other once again for lice.
We watched Italian television, a version of Deal or No Deal that we could follow. A dubbed Fred Astaire movie with no dancing. We’ve been promised better weather.
Our third apartment in four months and I am beginning to understand the rhythm: It takes a week or so to get used to a place, to find its pattern, discover what’s missing. Here: bedside lamps, salt and pepper shakers, kitchen garbage can, an espresso maker that doesn’t express itself all over the stove. We are making our way, slowly.
Our last night in Rome, mid-December:
It’s been raining steadily and sometimes torrentially for five days. We went out last night to try to eat at a restaurant in our old neighborhood where we had had a terrific meal on our first night in Rome. But we didn’t know the name and arrived at 8:30 pm, the worst time to try to eat without a reservation on a Friday night. The owner couldn’t seat us until 10:15, so we went to Pepito’s for pizza instead.
After dinner, we walked across the massively swollen Tiber under a full moon rimmed by a thin halo of cloud. The raging water covered the sidewalks of the quais on either side, engulfed trees halfway up their flailing trunks, and came to within 10 feet or so of the arch of the bridge. Eve says barges had gotten stuck under the bridge by Castel St. Angelo – it was in the New York Times.
Having started out on foot, we decided to walk home under the auspicious full moon, including a detour up the quiet, demure Aventino holl where Tom and I stayed on our first visit to Rome in 2007. I was directing us toward a little park of orange trees with a marvelous view across the city, but sadly the gate was locked. So we had just another beautiful walk through nighttime Rome, a fitting farewell. It was midnight when we got home. Tom extracted a splinter from Ben’s finger (Ben had leapt into the air in Aventino to swat the spine of a plant that was jutting out from a raised garden above our heads, a plant that turned out to be a cactus. “One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, Ben said) and we fell into bed.
Assisi and Spello, early December:
View from Rocha Magiore
Assisi rooftopsTom was in DC for job interviews and Ben and I went to Assisi, home of St. Francis of Assisi, and the equally lovely neighboring hill town of Spello for the weekend with Eve and Nigel and their girls. On day one, in Assisi, we visited a medieval castle, Rocha Magiore: serveral towers to climb, a long low-vaulted passageway, very narrow, that the kids along not knowing where it went, the excitement of it sheer length and mystery. Ben says it’s his favorite thing in Italy so far. He’s sorry Tom’s not here to share it with him. He wants to visit every room, every tower, every corridor, to be sure not one spot is missed. The views from the towers are spectacular, churches and towers on hillsides across the valley. We see the jumbled town of Assisi and the Basillica below.
Hiking in the mist
The next day, in Spello, Nigel went off hiking by himself and Eve and I took the kids for a walk. Up a paved road that turned to gravel as it climbed out of the town through olive groves. We were bundled against the cold and fog in our hats and gloves and coats, thinking we were just giving the kds a chance to run a bit and giving our own legs a good stretch. But after a bit it happened: We spotted blue sky ahead and emerged out of the dense fog into the sunshine and gazed down into the wide valley full of fog and up at the mountainsides around us. We took each other’s pictures and ate snacks and lay down in the sun and soaked it up.
Olive trees, mist, blue sky
One tiny town emerged out of the fog in the middle of the valley like a fairy castle. Snow dusted the near mountains like powdered sugar on a sweet cake. We ate chocolate.
Back in town we bundled up again, though the fog was less dense now and we could even glimpse a little bit of the fabled Umbrian views down the cobbled streets. We stopped at the central stage for the Olive Oil and Bruschetta Festival going on and listened to a hipster band as they introduced one another and noodled a bit on the accordian. A smattering of other observers stood with us. The band joked about being so pleased to be here in Spello for the Bruschetta Festival, which we took to calling Toast Fest. As he was being introduced, the lead singer threw himself to the ground and thrashed, threw his tambourine into the air.
Napoli/Naples, late November:
Napoli street shrine
An incredible city: the centro is a rabbit warren of narrow winding chaotic working class streets, many supposedly pedestrian but motorcycles and mopeds race along them, charging crowds, the drivers helmetless, with their 4-year-olds riding shotgun. The two main streets of the centro were mobbed with Italian church-visiting groups and families out for Christmas shopping or simply strolling. Many were eating on the street – sfogliattelli, a flaky pastry cone filled with sweetened ricotta flecked with orange peel and cinamon, rum-soaked dough balls topped with whipped cream and, the one we tried, nutella. We spotted a crowd eating what looked like fried dough at the county fair and asked what it was: Pizza fritta, deep-fried pizza. Warm and light, not sweet, stuffed with a mild ricotta.
Napoli's narrow streets at night
I loved the feel of the city – at this time of year there were very few non-Italian tourists and very little in general that worked hard to cater to tourists. “Compared to Napoli,” I told Ben, “Rome is like Disneyland. Let me never again complain about the dirt or chaos of Rome.” Gritty is the word the guidebooks use, and I suppose it works: trash piled everywhere, every building covered in grafitti. Some rooms of the city’s main museum, which contained all the treasures taken from Pompeii, and some taken from Rome, had explanatory notes typed on index cards on 1970s typewriters, in Italian only, of course, now faded and yellow.
Two views of the Bay of Naples from Mt Vesuvius:
The gaping maw of Vesuvius' crater, and, of course, Tom, Ben, Sarah
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