When in Rome…

When in Rome…

It’s the end of day one (well, technically day 2.3 if you count how many days some of us have been on the road trying to get here). The point is we are, in body, mind, and especially spirit, in Rome. Italy. The kind of place where even uttering the name elicits feelings nothing short of fantasy. It actually must be uttered aloud for fear it disappears. Rome. Italy.

And there is a bit of familiarity about it, funnily enough. Some of the imagery that flies off the screen of a favourite scene in a movie, the shapes of buildings recalled from a recent trip to France, and even some of the people in our midst as a few of us are back together again, ready for a new adventure. And what would an Italian adventure be without a serenading taxi driver taking us to the hotel Santa Maria. His repertoire of operatic arias to the more familiar Italian fare gave us just the right amount of cheer, and elicited just the right amount of smug jeers from other less musically inclined drivers at the airport.

How Natascha managed to find the most quiet of oasis in the heart of a city such a Rome is beyond our normal understanding of most things. Our rooms open up to lush gardens of fragrant and hard-to-identify the species of gardens, including orange trees and lemons growing on vines. After a short rest we managed to stumble out into the streets of the surrounding jewish quarter to get not only a sense of our bearings, but also a sense of the place and its atmosphere. We have seen our first fountain and our first church. Check and check. And gotten a whiff of the Italian language as it flows as melodiously as a song. I, personally, am starting to feel like I can utter “gratis” as a thank you with a bit more poise as my confidence was shaken earlier at customs when “ola” came flying out of my mouth instead of the customary “bonjourno”. Must learn more words.

We capped off the evening with a meal, of course, at a quaint restaurant where the wine flowed and pasta was ingested. It was hard not to think of our kids back home as the restaurant owner would say “mange, mange”, even to the point of taking fork in hand and force feeding some of our ladies. I guess that’s how they do it Rome. And we’ll just have to either get used to it, or learn to sit with our backs against the walls.

Ciao for now,
Liza