San Pietro in Vincoli et al

Things are settling pretty rapidly into some sort of routine.

We didn't sleep in too late.  We had gotten a cantaloupe at the fruitarria across the street and had that for breakfast. Unconsciously we made ourselves some coffee (also from across the street) in the little Melita-style coffee maker in the apartment.  It was only later that we realized that this was American style coffee, otherwise totally unobtainable in Italy.  I remember the hostess saying something about the difficulty in getting filters but I hadn't put two and two together.  The point being, our hostess has gone to some lengths to make Americans comfortable.  Thank you, grazie mille, Paola.

Yes, I'm on this vacation too.

After this we thought we'd try a bit of "normalcy".  We went to a cafe on the piazza and had more cafes then Nancy set up for beading which occupied her for an hour or two.  I had some things I wanted to do on the computer so I went back to the apartment.  After I finished up I headed back towards the cafe only to meet Nancy headed back to the apartment; we both had gotten done at the same time.  (Twin souls and all that.)

So, how to spend the rest of the now dwindling morning?

San Pietro in Vincoli

As it was basically 4 blocks (and about 1000 steps) away we went over to the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Saint Peter in Chains.  I suppose that everyone knows that Jesus' disciple Peter went to Rome, was imprisoned, and executed there.  You may not know however that the actual chains which held St. Peter in prison were preserved and are held as a holy relic at this site.

The obscure object of desire

More pix from the church including the second billing, Michelangelo Buonarroti's Moses.

So nice, to quote Lawrence Welk.

The church roughly bounds a park which I remembered from days of yore as being a green refuge in this part of the city.  Sadly, as I had heard, budgetary problems have led to lack of maintenance; a nice view though.

It had really started to heat up, 90s, so we headed back to the apartment, just around the bend as it were.  Unfortunately while I bent correctly I ended up on a dead end about forty feet above our road.  Oh well, a little backtrack and we were shortly "home".  Other than popping out to the fruiteria and then for a snack we laid low until a little after 6pm when we went to a meeting at another church.  Rush rush rush to get there and the gate was locked with a small crowd waiting.  Ultimately we had a good meeting and Nancy was invited to either tell her story or introduce a topic at next Sunday's meeting. "Be prepared for either" I suggested.

Stopped at a nearby cafe for a late, 9pm, dinner.  (Late for us, shank of the evening for Italians.)  After which I went for a gelato; pix to follow.

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Update from "tomorrow", 9/1; more pictures.

Paul, at his best

Nancy's photo of the nighttime action

First "Wake up and get going" Day

So, as yesterday was arrival day last night was, to some extent, collapse night.  Unusual for me. Usually I pass out some time in the afternoon and then am wide awake at something like 2am. This time we held out to, what, 10pm? and then we both slept through until 10:30am or so.  The point of all this is that we (a) got thoroughly rested and (b) got a late start.

Nancy, so beautiful, even first thing in the morning.

The start looked like cleaning up and then walking a half block to the piazza for cafe and, for me, a brioche marmelade or a croissant filled with an apple preparation.

The 12 Steps in Maori, don't ask.

Above, "Keep it Simple".  Below, the Serenity Prayer. 

Alley entrance to St. Paul's meetings

After (or rather in the midst of) this we realized that there was an English speaking meeting at 12:45 so we, as much as possible, hurried up the hill and after some confusion found the entrance, through a gate to an alley and down some stairs as shown in one of the pictures above. So, a nice small literature meeting, reading stories from the Big Book. Four people besides us.

St. Paul's Inside the Walls

There was an Italian speaking meeting immediately after that.  Nancy stayed and I went for a stroll. First I went into the church hosting the meetings, St. Paul's Inside the Walls, shown above.  I just sat an read from my Kindle, starting The Leopard, an Italian classic (in translation).  Somewhere in the midst a couple came in and after photographing everything else started on each other.  As is usual inthese circumstances I offered to photograph them both.  (A great way to meet people and start a conversation.)  Turns out they were newlyweds as of last Saturday, she Russian and he Dutch; a nice couple.  That got me up so I walked to the corner for a acqua minerale frizzante, carbonated mineral water. I then fetched Nancy and we both went back and had another water; high times boy.

An image of the Madonna in a chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore

Nancy loved these doors

As this left us at the top of the hill it seemed like a good time to stroll over to Santa Maria Maggiore, just by the by and one of Romes oldest churches. This is well known for is mosaics which is right in Nancy's kitchen.  

A quiet interior courtyard

And then stroll back down the hill. We stopped and bought some ridiculously ripe fruit at a little shop about 100 feet from our door.  Then we hung around and completed some business with the apartment owner who left us with a pile of business cards from good local restaurants.

Youth in the piazza at night

So, what to do then?  Time for a passeggiatta, an evening stroll. We wandered past the again crowded piazza up to the Cavour Metro station which I suspect we'll be using a lot and then back to the piazza for a Coke and gander.  In the few feet back to our apartment there was an original cinquecento, a Fiat 500. The ones being sold now as Fiat 500s are much larger and they don't have the original's 500cc engine.  (I haven't owned a motorcycle with an engine that small since I was a youth.)  Anyhow Nancy just loved it so she got memorialized with it, below.

Nancy and cinquicento

Travel & Arrival

As it was raining, or rather looking like it might rain, we left for the airport four and a half hours before our flight(!). Delightful Shirley and Camille, my neighbors, drove us all the way up to Tampa and saw us off with hugs and kisses.

Shirley

Camille

When we finally lifted off it was an uneventful overnight flight getting us in to Frankfurt at around 10:40am local time.  Convinced that we were going to miss our connecting flight we rushed down there to sit for an hour or so.  Again an uneventful flight over the Alps, Venice, Bologna, and what must have been the Apennines but I didn't see them..

From the airport in Rome we took a cab and Nancy immediately got to do what she came to Italy to do, talk Italian to an Italian.  She chattered quite successfully with the driver all the way in.  We got to the apartment and lugged our immense pile of stuff up to the second floor (third American floor) unit. It's just slightly shabbier than the online photos which in a way is a relief.  The photos looked so good that the price seemed wildly out of line and so possibly a scam.  As it is it's homey and comfortable.  While our intention was to go immediately to bed it being 5pm, we each decided we needed one or two things out of our big bags and so ended up completely unpacking which ultimately is a good thing.  Then just before dark we got dressed again and went our for a cafe.  We thought about dinner but it was just too much effort.

And so, back to the apartment where I'm typing and Nancy is deciding which of the twenty-three beading projects she brought that she is going to work on. There are AC and WiFi in said apartment. Our VoIP phones work well there to make calls home (but not to Italy) and to send and receive text and email messages.  Oddly the PC is having problems with email but nothing else such as blog typing.

Half a block a way is the gathering spot for Rome's youthful tourists and again, we're just down the street from the Colosseum.

Candace, I updated this page and somehow your comment disappeared; sorry.  Not intentional.

Lift-off Day

So, today is lift-off day. The next time I'll have an opportunity to provide an update will be tomorrow and Nancy and I will be on another continent.

Our flight (Lufthansa 483 for those who care) leaves at 7:40pm so, as I am travelling with a person of the opposite sex, I will leave for the airport 4 hours early.

Yesterday was spent in a (unusual for me) frenzy of nail-biting; re-packing and all that. Did I allow enough time to change planes in Frankfurt? A 22 minute hold on the phone to Lufthansa for a 30 second reassurance settled that one. Both our bags are grossly overweight, especially mine, again unusual for me as I've been known to go over the pond with nothing more than my carry-on. But as I've gotten heavier so have my bags. I'll never forget being dropped off on the wrong side of the Grand Canal in Venice and having to drag my immense suitcase over the Rialto bridge which is nothing more than an arch of steps.

We will finally arrive in Rome tomorrow, at 2:05pm local time if my calculations are correct, where it will be as hot as the hinges of hell; a high of 97F per weather.com. The good news, as the chart at the top shows, is that it gets cooler every day culminating in a week with a high of 77F and a chilly overnight of 63F. That will be a pleasant change after a summer under the laser beam heat of south Florida.

This blog thing is an interesting thing. I did my first travel blog in 2001. (ItaliaEtAlia for those that care.) I had to hand code the entire thing as blogs, if they existed at all, were new then. Now they're passé . Everybody tweets I suppose. If it doesn't have a picture and has more than two lines of text it can't engage the current audience. Who would have thought that a half page of text would become thought of as "long form" narrative?

p.s. Does everyone recognize the image at the very top, the header, as coming from a promotional poster for the film Roman Holiday?

Run up

The first sentence of the book Irrational Man is:

The story is told (by Kierkegaard) of the absent-minded man so abstracted from his own life that he hardly knows he exists until, one fine morning, he wakes up to find himself dead.

This is a lesson I thought I had learned a number of years ago.  A friend, about my age, woke up one morning immobilized; he had a stroke overnight.  I thought about that and my goals and desires then quit my intensely high paying job and went to Italy for three months; I had always wanted to go.

Well, that lesson seemed to wear off.  I made other trips then life happened and I had other concerns; relocating, new friends and relationships, concerns about money, things got put off. Then about three months ago I woke up with an intense pain in my hip.  The slightest movement would set it off but if I remained frozen it just lingered in the background.  Well, that went away slowly and has only slightly recurred but it was a wake up call.  There is really nothing except my health standing in the way of further travel but my health at my age is problematic.

I decided to return to Italy, to Rome which I love, for an extended stay, a month.  In one form or fashion I laid the above on my beloved and said 'I would love you to go with me but I'm going'.  I am so pleased to say, she's going too.

So I may be an irrational man or a supremely rational man; it matters little because next Monday Nancy and I are getting on a Lufthansa jet and flying, ultimately, to Rome where I was fortunate enough to find an affordable apartment in the heart of the city.  Pictures (from a website), maps, and such are below.

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The red pin in this map and the one below is our location. 

The green door is to our apartment building.  That's the Colosseum at the end of the street.

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For all those "program" people out there, there are English speaking meetings every day within walking distance of the apartment.  In the map below you'll see their locations.  The red circles are their sites, the red rectangle ours, and the blue rectangle the scale.  That's all uphill though so you'll note the blue oval with a white-on-red "M" noting a metro stop right up there.  There's another, which didn't show, about 1000 feet east of our apartment (about where it says "Bar Monti").  A useful website: https://alcoholics-anonymous.eu/meetings/