Bloggo Su e Giù III - Ups and Downs of Dottore Gianni's Travels: The second journal: March 1996 - Rome, Italy

As you can calculate from the date in the title of this post, it took me almost ten years to head abroad after my trip to London. During that decade I had finished my PhD (May 1990), got a teaching job at Ithaca College (August 1990), and ended my last long-term relationship with a woman (also 1990 - it is unlikely that I'll have another, looking at my situation twenty-four years later!). During this time I was able to save no money, as I was paying off college loans. I was about to become a tenured professor (1997) which gave me much more security, and some more money, very good news as I was really struggling financially, even after six years of teaching at the college level.

In fact I am trying to remember exactly HOW this trip came about. You see, it involved bringing my mother with me, her first time ever in Europe. How did we decide on the trip, and how did we decide on Rome? My journal yields no information on the subject, so I can only make a somewhat educated guess. I had wanted to see the Eternal City for years, and mom and I must have talked about such a trip on more than one occasion. Mom (aged nearly 73) was not getting any younger, and the idea of Rome excited her almost as much as it did me, as it meant getting to see the center of Roman Catholicism. Her religion meant very much to her, certainly more than it meant to me. I had lost the faith many years before, though I still enjoyed the drama and pomp of the ceremony. So somehow or other, possibly at Christmas of 1995, we had agreed that during my spring break in 1996 we would head to Rome - together!

Before I get into the details, I want to remind my readers of the rules of the game, as I did at the beginning of my last post:

Nota procedurale: Any direct quotes from the journal will be enclosed in quotation marks " ".  I will comment on the quoted text within the quotations occasionally and when I do  I'll enclose those remark in brackets [ ]. Any passages not in quotation marks have been paraphrased and much trimmed by me. I also use (many would say OVER-use and Dottore Gianni might agree) parenthesis marks (ahem). When you see those in a quoted passage the words within them were written that way in the journal.  I will add to the above words, taken directly from the second entry, that while I'm well aware that standard practice in moving from paragraph to paragraph of quoted text suggests that one not end the first paragraph with a ", nor begin the next with a " - here I break with the rule to be very clear of what I am quoting, versus what I am commenting on. Thus each quoted paragraph will begin and end with quotation marks, much to the chagrin of The Elements of Style.

I am still a bit boggled by and proud of mom's decision to take the trip. To get to New York she would have to fly on her own, and the logistics of this are covered to extent, as is my excitement about the journey, in the first entry in my journal.

Friday 8 March 1996: "I'm sitting in Mary's 'office' [i.e. Mary Pope Osborne's apartment on W. 8th St in Manhattan, to which I had a key and at which I was a frequent visitor] waiting for the car that will take me to JFK. [I have no memory of a car, and I had no money to afford such a luxury, so I assume that Mary, who was getting wealthy quickly from her brilliant children's book series, The Magic Treehouse, had treated me to it.] With a little bit of luck I'm off to Italia later today!"

"I use the term 'luck' because of the winter storm that is bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard...this could make for delays, but I know that planes ARE in the air, and that mom's flight from Orlando WILL make it to JFK on time. Then we'll hope for a safe-enough exit from America and our first ever entrance into Roma!"

"I'm very tired, but I am experiencing the dull stomach pangs that for me at least must accompany such a venture [this has not changed, and has even got worse in nearly 20 years]. My first time out of North America in just under ten years! The last trip was to London and Stratford in December 1986 [see Bloggo Su e Giù II] - a terrific ten or eleven days! This trip is necessarily shorter - five nights in Rome - and the weather there could be better, with a high just near 50 degrees and some rain in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday, but I look very much forward to this, more so than most events that have occurred in the last ten years...and those years have not been uneventful!"

"So, Addio America and Ciao Italia! With a little bit of luck...ciao for now!"

Saturday 9 March: "On what seems the longest day in the history of the world, we flew six hours. Mom blacked out on the plane, which put me in a panic and caused fear as well to those seated near her, causing also a lot of internal angst in herself." 

This was quite an incident! I'll not bore you with details, but I'm a bit surprised that I made no mention in the journal of the man who saved the day - a very alert and more than competent flight attendant who quickly diagnosed the condition, moved some people to other seats and relaxed her immediately. He mentioned the possibility of diabetes, and upon returning home mom went to a doctor and the attendant was confirmed correct. 

"Italiatour [a now defunct wing of Alitialia, which flew us back and forth and arranged for our hotel] seems a pretty decent group, picking us up at the airport and gave us a great ride during which we passed the Colosseum, Santa Maria Maggiore and other beautiful sights before depositing us the Hotel Veneto, in one of the smallest rooms in the world! [A note to younger, less experienced travelers: no matter how much you love her, never stay in the same hotel room with your mother!]  Mom fell asleep almost immediately, but I was too excited to succumb, and instead took a walk through the nearby Villa Borghese to the Spanish Steps backed by Santa Trinita dei Monte, and on to the Piazza Barberini. Upon my return to the hotel I slept for about two hours, then re-traced my steps, this time with mom. We then ate at an old-fashioned neighborhood place called La Dolce Vita (a play on the nearby Via Veneto's location, connected with the great Fellini film of that name)."

"That walk was enough for mom on jet lag day, but I charged back out. They say that to find yourself in Rome you must first get lost in it - and I certainly did! The city kept drawing me into it and I wandered to the Trevi Fountain area, the Victor Emmanuel Monument, the Forum, then to the Pantheon. I began to get not hopelessly, but, yes admittedly lost! I ended up at the Piazza del Popolo and began walking determinedly, all the way it seemed uphill, until I finally found our hotel."

"Exhausted now, and about to fall asleep, I must say that Rome is one of the most beautiful of cities, and one with an amazingly complicated history...more anon!" 

The Piazza del Popolo - Sta Maria di Monte Santo left, lantern by Bernini - Sta Maria dei Miracoli w/18thc campanile - a note, all the photos are from the 96 trip

"Sunday 10 March (Domenica): It's three pm and I'm exhausted! My poor mother has been having quite a time of it, I'm afraid. This morning, after a nice continental breakfast at the hotel, she neglected to do, how shall I put this? Numero Due! She probably forgot to mention it, so excited was she to see St Peter's, which was our first stop of the day. So as we approached the imposing, amazing San Pietro, she had an "emergency," which wasn't helped by the ridiculously long line at the ladies' loo. She, sorry, be-shitted herself. When she finally got to the loo she was able to wipe some of it off, but of course she was mortified. And I helpless to do anything about it. But there was a high mass at THE Catholic Church of Catholic Churches, and she insisted on staying, even on taking communion in what was even this lapsed Catholic admits a moving service."

"Thus are mortals offered a glimpse of the divine...in a state of 'waste' to receive Christ, in a place where, as mom claimed, 'God must have come down and helped...'"

Bernini's colonnade and the dome of St Peter's in the background

"I have to say that she's not too far off in her assessment of St Peter's. There are many that would critique the political and religious manipulations that go into the creation of this great space. Still San Pietro takes my breath away. Michelangelo's Pieta is exquisite, even if it has to be viewed behind a wall of bullet-proof glass. Each of the intimate chapels is beautiful in its own way, but there was one particular wonder that really struck mom and me. We stood in the transept, just next to the altar at which none but the pope can conduct the mass, We actually watched a bit above the action, focusing on the baroquely beauteous St Peter's Chair above the altar...well! An exciting experience, to say the least."

Trying to get a glimpse of Michelangelo's Pieta in St Peter's

"Then it was, for me, on to the dome [mom waited for me below] - another magnificent sight - oh, Michelangelo! I was determined to look out over Rome from the cupola. It was a walk through straight, then circular staircases, not for the weak of heart, but what a view!"

"We then hurried back, via the Metro, to Piazza Barberini, ate panini and local beer, and back to the hotel, where as I write this, mom is finally able to wash off her...mortality. While she is doing so, I read a bit of my Literary Companion to Rome, indulging myself in some thoughts from the past on my present visit to the Eternal City."

As I look back on this journal, I am amazed at my mother's resilience - what a first full day for her! And a day of some su, and certainly some giù. She was determined to complete her trip to St Peter's no matter what her circumstances. Good for her! 

The interior of the Colosseum in 1996,
before the ramp and viewing platform was placed in it

11 March: "What a day! As in exhausting, as in exhilarating, as in enthralling! We had a late start, as mom began to panic about going out before [I wrote in the journal "before she pooped" but please Jack! Surely there is a better way to say it.] After she had finally done her business [better? I'm not sure] I dragged her a bit after 11 am to the Colosseum. Breathtaking is a silly understatement - the feeling of centuries whirling round in my head, everywhere I could see! I paid the L 8000 [L is for lira - no Euro as yet] that it cost to get to 

Arch of Constantine & Colosseum

the upper level. Mom was thrilled as well, but she was quite content to wait for me. She was right to, as the steps are very steep, tough for me to handle - would have been impossible for her. For me it was more than worth the money and the climb. Looking out from its walls one can see the Forum and a bit of the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, along with a grand view of the Arch of Constantine. I overheard people on a tour in the Colosseum exclaiming to each other "My God! Only six minutes left!" I was so glad that we were not on any such schedule. After the Colosseum we wandered through the Forum, then went in search of a place I knew was nearby - the Capitoline Hill, Michelangelo's famous piazza. But there are many steps up, and mom was simply not 'up' to the climb. I pondered how to get there before we leave...and realized at that moment that as I've grown accustomed to this place I must return to Rome, whether or not a throw a coin over my left shoulder into the Trevi Fountain, to be further bewitched by a city I'd already fallen in love with."

The Capitoline Hill - Renaissance symmetry

"After our visit to the Forum and the Colosseum, and a look up the Capitoline Hill, I found us a trattoria on the Via Cavour, where mom had an excellent minestra [that's soup - I was trying my recently learned un po d'Italiano whenever possible on the street and in the journal, though it strikes me now as a tad pompous] and I had a very nice lasagna with a bit of vino rosso to keep it company! Thus fortified, we plunged on to our next sight, Santa Maria Maggiore, an absolutely beautiful church. Then back to the hotel via the Metro, which daunted mom more than a little...at about 4 pm."

"Mom was beat, but after I rested for about an hour I struck out again, to buy tickets for the opera - alas it was chiusa! [Jack's Italian again, for "closed"]. Then headed out to find the Circus Maximus, which I did - now a running track for healthy Italianos - after which a walk along the river, and on to the beautiful church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, currently undergoing major renovations, that houses the bocca della verita."

Santa Maria in Cosmedin

The bocca della verita (the mouth of truth - see Roman Holiday - I get a kick out of this photo - hard as I tried to get a shot of just the bocca, there was a line of tourists, including these two from a large group - I finally gave up and photographed what people doat the bocca della verita - put their hands in, always fearing slightly that they might not get those hands back!

"I continued along the river, at sunset - lovely - and found my way to the Teatro di Marcello, much of which is still intact as it serves as a base for expensive apartments built atop it - clever Romans! Passed the tortoise fountain, the synagogue, the oldest bridge across the Tiber, the Ponte Fabriccio, which leads to the Isola Tiburina [a small island in the river], forward from there to the central important transport hub of the Largo Argentina, which is home to Roman ruins and also an important theatre, whose interior one day I want to see. Onward from there to my metro stop and back to the hotel. Dinner at 7:45, back in the hotel at 9 - it's now about 10 and time to sleep! Vatican Museums tomorrow, so more then!"

Ponte Fabriccio, oldest bridge on the Tiber, to the Isola Tiburina (on the left)

12 March: "Confession [where better than in Rome, right?] - the pressures of the trip are beginning to tell on me, despite my best efforts mom is beginning to get on my nerves, and I'm just plain tired. Other than that, however, today was quite wonderful. We did and were done in by the Vatican Museums - a vast complex that is capable of holding in addition to its brilliant collections a writhing mass of humanity, particularly apparent as visitors are ushered from room to room (including the Raphael rooms with their amazing paintings and other rooms with beautiful tapestries) until the gold at the end of the rainbow, the Sistine Chapel! What a sight! But packed again with that same mass of humanity, looking up, gasping, identifying favorite frescoes they've all seen in photos, reserving the loudest gasps of all for Adam and the hand of God! It was beyond beautiful - amazing really - but I wish I could have seen it alone, or at least with perhaps one-tenth of those who were packed like sardines in with me."

"After the Sistine Chapel our way was less crowded. We walked through galleries of jewel-encrusted chalices and missals and crucifixes, ceilings and walls crammed with painting after painting. An incredible experience, after which we were very happy to sit in a beautiful open courtyard for a rest. Then we moved on to the Pinacoteca to see some lovely early Christian art, and somewhat less interesting later art, mostly religious in nature [well, it would be, wouldn't it?]."

The Piazza Navona, and at the center, Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers

"After being overwhelmed by the Vatican we took a taxi to the Piazza Navona, built on a Roman circus, thus its elliptical shape, with fountains, the center of which was Bernini's swirling Fontana di Quattro Fiume (Fountain of the Four Rivers), and of course restaurant after outdoor restaurant. I managed to lose us a tad on our way to the next attraction, [and one of my very favorite in Rome to this day], the Pantheon. It is as stunning as I could have imagined with its amazing vault reaching to the heavens and open to the sky. Then we hailed another taxi which took us back to the hotel. Great fun, by the way, to take taxis in Rome - you see the city in a blur, and you begin to feel the city's pulse."

The glorious Pantheon

"A brief digression on the pulse of the city. It's an incredible feeling, one I've not felt before, but I'll compare it to the pulse of New York City, with which I'd become accustomed over many visits and the three years I spent there working on my PhD. New York is ridiculously

Interior of the Pantheon

fast-paced, as is Rome, but in New York that pace is marked by a heaviness, a constant honking of horns (taxis mostly) pushing cars trucks and buses to go faster, closer together. Then New York's subway, also a weighty, noisy apparatus. Compared to the heaviness above ground and below in Manhattan, Rome's pulse is lighter and higher-pitched, exemplified in the whirring and whining of the ubiquitous Vespas and other scooters zipping through its streets as if they own the place - hell, they do! But very little heavy-handed blowing of horns, and even the taxis seem as gentle as they are fast, compared to NYC, for me. Rome's is an exhilarating, exciting pace, energizing me me with the revvings of scooter engines. Those high-pitched bursts fill me with bursts of high spirits. The last ten minutes of Fellini's film Roma captures this spirit well. I didn't understand it when I first saw the film, a lightning tour of Rome as seen from a hoard of motor cycles and scooters - but it's perfectly clear to me now - this IS the city, and while it can be as exhausting as NYC it drains your energy in a more ...hmmm...I was going to say SPIRITUAL manner...and perhaps I will!"

The magnificent dome of the Pantheon

Hmmmm...my "brief" digression was lengthier than planned, and that it seems has not changed in my writing one little bit. At times even today Dottore Gianni's digressions are longer than his primary text!

"We dined at a decent place we had et at before, Pastarito/Pizzarito, a place scaled frankly to the taste of tourists, but the food is quite tasty, as is the waitstaff! A beautiful, tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed Italian with the warmest handshake I can remember attended on mom and me on both Sunday night and tonight...sigh...as Dean Martin so aptly put it, 'that's amore!' And that's as close as I get to love - AMORE - in ROMA - che sera, sera! Okay, I admit I'm pleasantly plastered, but not so much that I won't stoop to one more Peroni before bed. I had a lovely arrabiata to eat tonight, and mom had a more bland form of pasta (pomodora fresco), which suited her, and a very good dessert mousse a fragile. I drank my dessert, as we'd ordered a bottle of Chianti Classico, of which mom consumed about a fifth, and I the rest! Salute!"

"Last day in Rome tomorrow. I'm pooped, and know not (quite) what to take in tomorrow. We're talking Baths of Diocletian and Santa Maria della Vittoria, the small church near the baths that houses Bernini's Ecstasy of St Teresa, then later a visit to St John Lateran. I still want to explore the Capitoline Museums and to find the traces of Pompey's Theatre, where Caesar was assassinated, but at least one of those places may well have to wait for another trip. This has not been the sort of journey where one sits languidly in front of one of the fountains, or contemplates at length the Foro Romana, but it has introduced me to one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Ritorno? Si!"

13 March: "Last day in Roma! Mi dispiace! I don't want to leave, though I'm exhausted and have seen many of the major 'sights.' It would have been nice to vacation here at leisure, take a room with a view, stroll through an occasional art gallery, peruse an occasional monument, sit and gaze, read, maybe write...Bella Città!"

"Today I made certain that mom and I would get non-fumare seating on the flight back to the U.S. [Oh yes, my younger readers, in the bad old days the air quality in commercial jets was even worse than it is today, as smoking was permitted in sections – and as we know, smoke does not obey the rules of sections! As I look back on it I think it may be one of the reasons that mom passed out on the flight to Rome.] Then I picked her up at the hotel and off we went to St John Lateran, a monumental cathedral, along with Santa Maria Maggiore and St Paul’s an ‘extraterritorial’ area of Rome. The architect Borromini designed the gigantic space – impressive, if a bit much. A walk through the cloister, then into a small room with relics and a deawing by Raphael - was more to my taste."

the Piazza di Spagna, with its famous Spanish Steps and above, the church of
Santa Maria Dei Trinita

"Back on the Metro to the Spagna stop - Piazza di Spagna, aka the Spanish Steps - gorgeous! Then a walk down Via Condotti - Rodeo Drive and then some - one very rich shop after another. We walked all the way to Piazza di Popolo, lunched at a Trafforia, back to the Barberini Metro stop, put an exhausted mom in the hotel room, then went off in search of the remains of the Theatre of Pompey, via a long walk from the Circus Maximus, moving back this time over relatively familiar territory along the Via Teatro di Marcello, where I discovered a tiny theatre offering Albee's Three Tall Women, then past the Largo Argentino after which...I got lost again! I asked a passing poliziotto and FINALLY found my Teatro, though there's not much to see of the place where Caesar was stabbed."

"It's later in the day. A restaurant called Cesarina, just one block from our hotel, was open - what a way to eat that last meal in Roma! Veal picatta and insalata mist, washed down with a bottle of Frascati and the usual aqua minerals. And the Dolci! Ai! Mamma Mia! for me, gelato with a heavenly chocolate sauce, and under all of that a sponge cake SOAKED in liquor! Mom had a lovely cake concoction and all was well with the world."

Love this photo of mom and me dining - not so much my own image, which is rather idiotic looking, but mom's face shows just what a wonderful time she had

"After I dropped mom back at the hotel I plunged out again for one last look at the Trevi Fountain. And yes, I three that coin over my left shoulder, ensuring a return to Rome - a beautiful last day in Roma. Now to sleep, the airport, and then back to life in the USA - sad? No, not really...well, in a way. Sad to leave a city I have fallen in love with. Before I left the US I had scoffed at its pleasures compared to those still unknown in Florence and Vecice, but I should not have been so hasty. Roma is one bellissima città! Buona notte!

14 March: "Last morning, our bags are packed, in 20 minutes we head downstairs and onto the bus to the airport - mixed feelings - don't want to leave, but mom and I are exhausting and beginning to irk each other - and I have papers and exams to grade - back to the "real world" - but what a place!"

16 March: "Well, here I sit at home in Ithaca, about to grade papers, but stealing a bit of time to wrap up. The trip to Rome was wondrous and revealing. It introduced me to a city I truly love and only begin to know, and it introduced me to something I already knew but all too seldom acted on - that I must continue to travel, that THIS is a way to spend money wisely, to educational and stimulating ends. What will the next trip be? Perhaps this summer another jog to Canada, perhaps next spring, I hope, a week in England. [Hmmm... that didn't happen, alas]. I know that other cities beckon, Paris, despite Parisian disdain (from what I'm told) for those who haven't the French language; other cities in Italy. a trip back to Germany, and certainly to Czechoslovakia; Scandinavia...well, I ramble and dream when I should be grading!"

"But I'll never forget this trip, and the Eternal City..."

p.s. to 16 March: "Did I mention, I wonder, my walk through the Palazzo Borghese? I think not. There was a surreal element - viewed from the outside it seemed a huge old palace in a state of disrepair and renovation. It looked like everything was being worked on, And yet the ground floor was open, offering mostly sculptures and a few beautiful paintings, while the floor itself was being renovated. It was impossible to see all of Bernini's Daphne and Apollo as it was enclosed by a scaffold on which two art restorers toiled, though the tease of glimpsing bits of it pleased me no end. His David's was in full view, and a beautiful sight it was, the figure in action, in intense concentration. Walking through these figures in the late afternoon, dust from restoration efforts everywhere, is a moment in time from Rome to which I keep flashing back, those figures in the past being prepared for a future gave me then and give me still a thrill and a bit of a chill."

30 March: "Two weeks later and I'm still conceptually in Rome. I know I WANT to be back there, wandering the streets or eating pasta at whatever trattoria beckons. I'm dying to get back to the Museo Borghese, but sense that "you can't go home again" - not to that specific magical environment of a palazzo filled with exquisite art in the process of being restored...and at twilight..."

"I'd really better put this journal out of reach!"

"My longing to be back in Rome may well have less to do with Rome itself than with my rapidly increasing wanderlust. I LOVED studying about Rome, then applying the study IN Rome, and letting it sink in after as I notated my photos from the journey...next stop?"

"STORE this journal, Jack! Until the NEXT exploration..."

A note from 2014: I did not wait all that long for the next exploration, in fact returned to Italy in January of 1997 - a birthday present to myself for the big 5-0, a trip to Florence, which turned from a festa to a fiasco in Firenze! Stay tuned...