Remembering Rome I pass two red lights on my way back home. Charming, sensual and elegant like its citizens, grandiose like their ancestors. The city of seven hills.
Feet pounding the cobble stone I roamed the city looking for a poster of the Godfather for my beau who was in a mafioso phase at the time. Explaining in broken Italian "foto ... Il Padrino". After flipping through Sophia Lauren's black and white pictures and posters of old Italian movies I can't recognize, at dinner time I finally find It. I go home with the unique father and son scene, only to find that a friend has gotten him the same picture in a glossy postcard format conveniently purchased from the United States (and that's when I scream "damn the supermarket culture").
The kiosks display postcards from Roman Holiday, Audery Hepburn and Gregory Peck at the Fontana di Trevi, La Bocca de la Verita, at the Coliseum, at the Piazza di Spagna, sipping coffee, eating gelato, speeding away on a motorino. Simply romantic in black and white... as the movie ends, Audrey Hepburn, when asked what city she liked most in her tour around Europe, casts all political correctness expected of a young princess like her, and says "Rome...by all means Rome"
ALL this build-up to find a piazza di spagna that is filled with tourists clad with shapeless shorts, armed with cameras and sipping fizzy drinks, people selling cheap imitation designer bags, flowers with colors too bright, and a huge Bvlgari ad behind the Obelisk. I simply hate the pictures I took that day.
Yet all this, plus the queues for the hop-on hop-off tourist bus (which by the way I don't recommend, go on foot), and the plastic neon miniature monuments, Pakistani carts selling fruits and juice, plus all the pick-poketing, and the commercialization of elegance (see photo above) do not devoid Rome of its charm.
I can still recall my first breakfast, delicious bread, zucchini, eggplant and goat cheese, at a bistro two blocks down from my hotel. Years after, while reading The Food of Love, I imagined the place as its setting and its owners as the people who run the restaurant in my book.
I remember fewer times when I have enjoyed walking by myself like I did when in Rome. Feeling the Roman Empire in the stones of the Aqueduct, and in the carved marble of the street sign of Via del Corso. Treadding narrow streets, following the sound of water at night, to find a vast piazza and a sight that takes my breath away, the Fontana di Trevi (not recommended by day). Wandering around to find I've come to the same exact spot (the plateau up Piazza di Spagna) but from the top of the hill, and looking at exquisite little balconies transformed into little family owned restaurants.
Feeling like a celebretiy while sipping a coffee that costs 5 euros at the renown Café Greco (that's in 2004, when coffee elsewhere cost 90 cents).
Doing the leche-vitrines*, to find that everyone -but myself and other tourists- is out of Vogue. (* French for window shopping, yes I'm being pretentious here)
There are few cities which I fail to describe in words, Rome is one of them.
Wait for my next trip, maybe that will let me depict it better.
Feet pounding the cobble stone I roamed the city looking for a poster of the Godfather for my beau who was in a mafioso phase at the time. Explaining in broken Italian "foto ... Il Padrino". After flipping through Sophia Lauren's black and white pictures and posters of old Italian movies I can't recognize, at dinner time I finally find It. I go home with the unique father and son scene, only to find that a friend has gotten him the same picture in a glossy postcard format conveniently purchased from the United States (and that's when I scream "damn the supermarket culture").
The kiosks display postcards from Roman Holiday, Audery Hepburn and Gregory Peck at the Fontana di Trevi, La Bocca de la Verita, at the Coliseum, at the Piazza di Spagna, sipping coffee, eating gelato, speeding away on a motorino. Simply romantic in black and white... as the movie ends, Audrey Hepburn, when asked what city she liked most in her tour around Europe, casts all political correctness expected of a young princess like her, and says "Rome...by all means Rome"
ALL this build-up to find a piazza di spagna that is filled with tourists clad with shapeless shorts, armed with cameras and sipping fizzy drinks, people selling cheap imitation designer bags, flowers with colors too bright, and a huge Bvlgari ad behind the Obelisk. I simply hate the pictures I took that day.
Yet all this, plus the queues for the hop-on hop-off tourist bus (which by the way I don't recommend, go on foot), and the plastic neon miniature monuments, Pakistani carts selling fruits and juice, plus all the pick-poketing, and the commercialization of elegance (see photo above) do not devoid Rome of its charm.
I can still recall my first breakfast, delicious bread, zucchini, eggplant and goat cheese, at a bistro two blocks down from my hotel. Years after, while reading The Food of Love, I imagined the place as its setting and its owners as the people who run the restaurant in my book.
I remember fewer times when I have enjoyed walking by myself like I did when in Rome. Feeling the Roman Empire in the stones of the Aqueduct, and in the carved marble of the street sign of Via del Corso. Treadding narrow streets, following the sound of water at night, to find a vast piazza and a sight that takes my breath away, the Fontana di Trevi (not recommended by day). Wandering around to find I've come to the same exact spot (the plateau up Piazza di Spagna) but from the top of the hill, and looking at exquisite little balconies transformed into little family owned restaurants.
Feeling like a celebretiy while sipping a coffee that costs 5 euros at the renown Café Greco (that's in 2004, when coffee elsewhere cost 90 cents).
Doing the leche-vitrines*, to find that everyone -but myself and other tourists- is out of Vogue. (* French for window shopping, yes I'm being pretentious here)
There are few cities which I fail to describe in words, Rome is one of them.
Wait for my next trip, maybe that will let me depict it better.
1 comment:
Collect them all, with the photos and all, and publish them in a book! Throw in some of your recipes! I am sooo craving your brownies right now.
Post a Comment