The last day: Italy turns against us

[jere7my]

Sunday, July 5 - Rome

On our last day, Italy began informing us that it was time to go.

The train from Ravenna to Bologna was nightmarish, the worst public transportation experience of my life. We were wedged with all our luggage among hundreds of locals returning from the Vent'anni di Ravenna festival — imagine the most crowded subway car you've ever been on, add twenty people, and make the ride last for two hours. For two hours I stood completely immobile, a Tetris block locked into a row of other blocks — one of the S-shaped ones, since my feet were displaced a foot to the right of my hips by my suitcase and my head was immobilized by a cage of armpits. My muscles started to scream after an hour; my toes were wedged beneath my suitcase. I was desperately trying to keep an eye on adfamiliares as more people climbed aboard at every stop and she was forced farther and farther away. The time it took to pack more people in at every station made the train run late, and I grew frantic about missing our connection.

All the while, six feet away from me, the prototypical Italian princess was holding court amongst her luggage, spread out on the floor with room for her and her teenage friends to sit, refusing to comprehend, with elaborate shrugs, that she could take up less space. Eventually I resorted to tapping them on the shoulders and pointing, with acid glarings, at the empty spaces they could move to. When she got off the train, I yelled, "Ciao, principessa!" That was the rudest thing I did in Italy.

We did make the connection in Bologna (since it, too, was delayed), which ensured we'd step out of the station in Rome in time to see a heavyset man in a red T-shirt pelting across the street with a briefcase and a purse. Around the corner, a lanky, pallid, Wonka-esque Canadian with a comically oversized map was lurching from side to side, crying, "Where is it? Where is it?" He was jet-lagged and panicked and nearly incomprehensible, but eventually we got him to tell us that someone had stopped him to ask for directions, and while the map was blocking his view his briefcase (with his passport, his camera, his books) had disappeared. I had to tell him that I'd seen it go. He seemed so lost, so heartbroken, and there was so little we could do. It unsettled me — I was one big exposed nerve for a while afterward.

After that, we managed to have a good last day, recapitulating some of our greatest hits — the Largo Argentina, the Piazza Navona, the Imperial Fora, shakerati at Caffè Sant'Eustachio, mozzarella at Ōbikā. We bought some of Enzo's artwork at Santa Caterina dei Funari, and Enzo (who spoke not a word of English) was clownish and grateful and a little sad. Even the unsettling experiences of the morning had their upsides — the kind and patient Lebanese tourist, more useful than us, who stopped to help the panicked Canadian; the rowdy boys on the train who looked like they were going to be trouble but instead made the trip more bearable by leading us all in cheers when the conductor successfully squeezed a few more people in. (They also inflated a condom and batted it around the cabin for a rousing game of condom-ball. One of them ran out at a stop, stripped off his shirt, and dunked his upper body in a fountain before running back on. Lively, cheerful, civic-minded hooligans!)

For most of the trip, I managed to pretend that Il Vittoriano (aka the Typewriter, the False Teeth, the Wedding Cake) didn't exist, despite it being visible from nearly every spot in Rome. On our last day, the light was good, and we happened to be right there, so I cut it a break.


The column is all that remains of the Odeon of Domitian. The subtle monochrome fresco was painted on the rear façade of the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne to celebrate the wedding of Angelo Massimo in 1532. We knew none of this at the time — it was just a mysterious, shadowy corner in Rome.


Nostra Signora del Sacro Cuore, in the Piazza Navona


Above the doors of Il Gesù, the mother church of Jesuits.


adfamiliares deserves mad props on this one — I spent an hour on Google Maps and Wikipedia, trying to figure out where this was. Ten seconds after seeing it K. said, "Hmm...this is a wild guess, but is that the Crypta Balbi?" It's actually a temple across the street from the Crypta Balbi, but she wins regardless.


Cat on a column in the Largo Argentina.


This poster was on the wall of the panini place where we ate lunch (Aumm Aumm, which is presumably Italian for "Om nom nom"). It's so adorably dorky. They have a website.


The Forum of Augustus, with the Temple of Mars Ultor on the left. Something was happening in the forum — a film shoot? A fancy dinner? You can see stand lamps and a table and chairs.


The House of the Knights of Rhodes, just to the north of the previous photo, built in the Middle Ages in Trajan's Forum.


Italian patriotism, courtesy of Il Vittoriano.


Taken through the window of the Leonardo Express. This was long thought to be the Temple of Minerva Medica, but was probably actually a nymphaeum. Curiously, it's not mentioned in any ancient sources, despite being quite large and architecturally interesting. This was the first ancient site we saw upon arriving in Rome, and the last photo I took in Italy — it's right alongside the train tracks to and from the airport.

This should really have been my final Italy post, but I didn't want to end on a downer, so I'll be following it with pretty pictures of Florence and San Vitale in Ravenna. This full set is here.