Our second stop was Rome...... Ahhhh.... Roma...Belissima Roma. What can I say about Rome that hasn't already been said before? Rome was fucking amazing and beautiful and crazy and alive and the Roman people were just like me: loud, emotional, passionate....I finally went somewhere where I didn't have to apologize for being the loudest one in the room! I just loved Rome!
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| Spanish Steps |
I know I sound like a broken record, but here I go again - I am 1/2 Italian. My father's family comes from here:
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| Calabria |
Cozena to be exact. We are just shy of the toe of the boot. We are famous for our cheeses, sweet onions, Versace and the 'Ndrangheta (La Mafia) ......si si. So going to Italy, anywhere in Italy, was a dream come true for me. It makes turning 50 a bit more bearable.
Those Europeans got it good! To fly from Amsterdam to Rome took less time than driving from Pasadena to Santa Monica. We flew on EasyJet which is like the Southwest of Europe.
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| There's our ride! |
We found our seats and braced ourselves for all that is Roman. And can I tell you about our cabin crew?.....wow wee - they were some serious eye-candy! They were like the
poster-children for the cliche Italian man. Francesco and Marcello - gorgeous and beautifully tanned, perfectly accessorized with gold pinky rings and pointy shoes and such beautiful white teeth, they could be used as beacons if the plane went down.
When we hit Rome, I couldn't wait to get off that plane! I just knew the airport would be gorgeous and full of well dressed, beautiful people. I expected to see Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni hanging out, having espresso. But that was not to be......We stepped right off that plane and right into a Roman heatwave! Boy was it hot. Crazy hot. Holy shit was it hot! We were warned that it would be hot, but not 95 degrees kinda hot, mixed with a humidity factor of hot bath kinda hot. This heat was like a heat I don't know. It made Arizona feel cold. And the airport was anything but lush - it was crowded and muggy and smelly and HOT! This was Rome? We found our luggage, found our driver and we were off!
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Yes, driver.....you didn't think we were gonna drive in Rome, did you? We're not crazy! Now my cousin L.C. has balls the size of fire engines, so she drove thru Rome with no problem - but I wanted to watch the fights, not be in them. And let me tell you, the speed biking in Amsterdam ain't nothing compared to the driving of my eye-talian brothers and sisters. They're not bad drivers and they're not crazy drivers....they're just emotional people forced into ridiculous driving situations. And the streets of Rome are RIDICULOUS! While the freeways are pretty much like ours (except they go a bazillion times faster and it's legal), the city streets are NOTHING like ours! The streets are made of cobblestones and go from narrow to wide, from flat to hilly, from straight to curvy and there are no marked lanes - everybody just sort of weaves in and out and tries to find a space wherever they can. It's fucking nuts!
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| silly car name |
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| another silly car name |
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| no....it doesn't say that...that word has no 'n' |
So we're in Rome, and we're driving along and I'm staring in total disbelief at how these people can drive on top of each other with no accidents, and I am just praying to God that I get to see the much talked about and much revered, car-to-car/guido-to-guido argument when we round a curve and right in front of me, this pops up.....
The Arch of Constantine - just there!
And before I can say "Holy......" these guys pop up.....
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| ...the ruins of the Roman Forum! |
And before I can curse again...I see it....The Main Man....The Head Honcho....The Big Cheese.....
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| The Goddamn Fucking Colosseum! |
It was the biggest, most grandest, most amazing, most eye-popping-out-of-your-fucking-head thing I have ever seen in my entire life!!! You've seen the pictures and you've read the books, but no description can do this thing justice. It’s so goddamn massive and beautiful and jaw dropping, that I just burst into tears - Yup, I did. (I'm crying now)
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| The view of the Colosseum from our hotel. |
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| Inside the Colosseum |
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| Colosseum at night - Bellissima! |
They call it the Ancient City for a reason....it's ancient! Everywhere you turn, you run into a ruin. Some buildings are built right into the ruins and some buildings are built with parts scavenged from ruins. They consider the newer construction only 100 years old. HA! Crazy to think that you can just stand there and place your hand on a building that was built 2,000 years ago. The only thing I know that's 2,000 years old, is me!
We stayed at Hotel Nerva, located in the Ancient City itself, directly across from the ruins of Emperor Nerva’s Forum. And I mean like across across, like you could walk out the front door and use those 2,000 year old walls for some handball.
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| Our hotel is on the left - Nerva ruins on the right |
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| the front of Emperor Nerva's Forum |
Our room was outside of the hotel, around the corner and up the hill. Grazie a dio it was air conditioned!
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| Round that corner to air conditioned heaven! |
A little note about the hotel rooms in Italy: The rooms are normal sized but the bathrooms are small and the showers are smaller. Mr.P is a big fucking guy so every time he took a shower, he looked like a bear stuffed in a shoe box. And FYI - those guidos love a freshly washed ass. Every hotel bathroom had a bidet. I couldn't pry Mr.P off that fucking thing....and I have to admit, by the time we hit France, we all had a squeaky clean culo.
Now that we were settled it was time to go and explore our neighborhood. It actually looked fake.....like we were on the Universal Studios Tour. I kept expecting the tram to stop and the flood to start. Big, beautiful, stuccoed buildings with large windows and shutters, cobblestone streets, people out and about, walking or shopping or eating at outdoor cafes. It was as picturesque as a postcard.
Our neighborhood was wonderfully small and we were lucky there weren't a lot of touristas.....but with Mr.P's love of a Hawaiian shirt and my love of a sneaker, it was obvious we were tourists....and worse...Americani! I can't blame those guidos for not liking us. The Americans were awful! Whiny, loud, rude....ugh. They seriously fucked it up for the rest of us. So everywhere we went, the locals met us with Malocchio (the Evil Eye). We couldn't go anywhere without the sneer. To say I was upset, especially since I was Italian, would be an understatement.
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Filling our water bottles at a public water spout.
As hot as it was outside, somehow that water was ice cold |
Within minutes we found a tiny little gelateria with gelato so good, it was as if the Pope made it himself. And you gotta love those eye-talians.....the scoops of gelato in Rome are the size of Hummers! We ate our straciatella (cream with streaks of chocolate) and gianduia (chocolate hazelnut) and looked for a place for dinner.
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| Stairs in the Vatican Museum |
Now we had a lot of people telling us where to eat and what to eat and who had the best this and who had the best that, yada, yada, yada, bim, bam, boom! But we were in Rome! I mean any place was gonna be better than the fucking Olive Garden, right? It was just a matter of finding a place that seemed ‘right’.
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| So we see this guy.... |
.....walking out of his negozio di falegnameria (woodworking shop) and into a restaurant called Non c'รจ Trippa pe' Gatti (No Tripe for the Cat). What caught our eye wasn't the name (although that was pretty awesome) but that the guy was carrying his dirty dinner dishes back into the restaurant. That's my kind of take out! We figured if this guy was eating here, it had to be good.
This place was as cliche as you could get: colorful table clothes, wine bottles on the walls, chianti bottles covered in candle wax, Italian pop on the radio and a couple of cats at a table taking a bath. One look at the menu and I was felice! I hadn't seen or eaten this kind of food since my grandmother was alive.
I ordered Vecchiarella and Bucatini alla Amatriciana.
Ok - here comes Italian Food 101:
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Vecchiarella: (vek-kee-yar-rell-lah)
batter fried zucchini blossoms |
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Bucatini alla Amatriciana
Buctatini: (boo-kah-tee-nee) -
long, hollow pasta, like a straw
Amatriciana: (ah-mah-tree-chan-nah) -
a sauce made with tomatoes, bacon, onions, garlic
& tossed with Romano cheese |
Mr.P ordered a margarita pizza and the RedHead ordered ravioli. In America you eat, in Europe you dine. You show up for dinner at 8 and you don't get outta there until 11. So we waited for our food by getting sufficiently snookered on some warm chianti (remember, Rome was like a fucking oven).
Finally an older gentleman showed up and placed 4 pizzas on our table. I told him these weren't ours. He said they were. I told him no. He said yes. And there it went, back and forth, back and forth. Mr.P said it was like a tennis match. It escalated into crazy hand gestures and flailing arms. I felt like I was having it out with the OldMan! Finally the old guy stops and calmly walks into the kitchen. Within seconds he starts screaming at the chef, the chef starts screaming at him, they start screaming at each other, we hear some plates crash, we see the old guy walk out of the restaurant followed by a young guy who comes to our table, picks up the pizzas and walks away. 30 minutes later and still no food....we thought we were being punished. After much worrying and fretting and some Hail Marys and a couple of Novinas, our food finally arrived and it was delicious! It was worth the wait......and the fight! And you know what....we went back the next day! Lo amo Roma!
Not only was Rome crazy-on-fire-hot and super-shvitzy-muggy, it was crazy crowded! Actually, crowded isn't the right word...packed like sardines in a can left on the stove is a more accurate description. So every museum, every ancient site, every church, every gelateria, every bus was so crowded, the only thing we saw were bald heads and nostrils.
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| Swiss Guard at the Vatican |
It was at this point that we thought we'd take one of those hop on/hop off bus tours thru Rome. We thought it would be faster and cooler than walking.....HA! What on earth were we thinking?! There is no 'faster' in Rome and certainly nothing was 'cooler'! Even the fucking bus was on fire - we roasted up top and poached down below.
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| random ruins |
We hopped off at the Vatican (praise Jesus) but Mr.P's shorts were too short to go in. So we wandered around and found a great place for a snack. Not only did they sell pizza and beer but they also sold religious items - and believe it or not, they had real, honest to goodness, no fooling around, air conditioning! Grazzi de dio! So while drinking my Peroni and checking out the Pope Francesco section, the power went out. Even in the pitch darkness people continued to shop, like nothing was wrong. Within minutes an old woman came around and started putting candles everywhere. She put a few in a box of Rosaries, and a couple in a box of Mary magnets and one big one on a stack of Jesus on the cross statues. A tourist (American of course) was freaked out and yelled "These candles are fire hazards!" and the old lady just shrugged and walked away. There was a lot of shrugging in Rome.
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| The Vatican |
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| Inside St. Peter's |
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| Michelangelo's Pieta |
We were warned numerous times about the crime in Rome - most specifically, the pickpockets. Even my Aunt was pickpocketed in the fucking Vatican. So Mr.P wore a money belt. This became pretty embarrassing because he crammed that belt so far down the front of his pants that each time he needed some cash, it looked like he was grabbing his dick to get it. He finally settled on a little wallet and put a few euros in there to get us thru the day.
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| Trevi Fountain |
We explored as much of Rome as we could in what little amount of time that we had. We walked thru the Colosseum which made me cry....again! We visited the Vatican and it was fucking awesome! You would have thought I won the lottery when we were able to send postcards from the Vatican post office!
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Stamps and cash from the Vatican.
Doesn't the Pope on those stamps look like Bob Newhart? |
I made Mr.P get some water from the Vatican water spigots (it's holy goddamnit!). We pushed thru the crowds at the Vatican Museum and wept along with everyone else in the the Sistine Chapel.
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| You can't help but convert when you walk in here |
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| I could swear that hand was coming down to get me! |
We threw coins and made a wish in the Trevi Fountain, we climbed the Spanish Steps and then drank a crapload of beer to cool off! We walked by the Largo di Torri Argentina which is where Julius Cesar was murdered....and is now a cat sanctuary
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| Largo di Torre Argentina |
We ate pasta in Campo dei Fiori, we toured the catacombs of the Church of San Clemente, we marveled at Trajan's column
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| Trajan's Column |
Soaked in the history of the Roman Forum, drank espresso at a tiny little bar while waiting for our laundry to finish, ate ricotta cheesecake, prosciutto, provolone and crusty bread for breakfast every day and had cappuccino and ciccolato to wash it all down, ate pasta, pizza and gelato twice a day, drank wine and beer much more than that, argued with cab drivers and people who thought we weren't crossing the street fast enough (vaffanculo!) and generally had the most amazing time....
I didn't want to leave Rome - but Florence was calling our names. So we bid arrivederci to Via Tor 'De Conti and our little Hotel Nerva, climbed aboard the FrecciaRossa train to our next stop.....
Firenze...
To see the Italian countryside via train was like watching an episode of Martha Stewart - it was too perfect. Meadows of sunflowers and lavender, ancient farmhouses and castles, beautiful blue skies and puffy clouds....I was secretly hoping I’d see a Cracker Barrel hidden in all that gorgeous stuff.
Actually the climb up wasn't so bad, but it wasn't like climbing up to the underwear department at Macy's either. The steps were very small and they wound up and up and up and after 15 minutes of huffing and puffing and shvitzing and plotzing we landed on a very narrow walkway inside the Dome itself. From here you could see the Last Judgement, the amazing painting on the interior of the dome and some even more amazing statues. From this point we had to climb more stairs where it got darker and darker and hotter and hotter and I was getting tired of looking a the same guy's sweaty ass in front of me until BLAM! We were on top of the world! Florence and Tuscany were at our feet! We could see everything - castles, vineyards, churches, mountains, bridges, rivers. It was breathtaking. And it was so quiet and peaceful that the RedHead and I didn't want to come down. But Mr.P is not a fan of high places so we didn't stay long. The view was sublime and surreal and that feeling of crazy awesome will be with me forever.
