Today we took it easy – we only walked about four hours. We walked across a bridge toward our Internet café and into the Jewish Ghetto. The buildings were ancient and remarkably, in great condition and still serving as homes. Ancient Roman ruins dotted the area.

I ate a falafel and Shelly had a chicken schnitzel that looked like it could be the sole of a shoe. A nice shoe, but a sole nonetheless. Let’s just say that she was still hungry after she ate it.

After nearly an hour on the Internet (this time round, he didn’t need to photocopy our passports for terrorist reasons), we walked back toward our neighborhood and ended up at an inside/outside restaurant. Shelly wanted a salad and an iced tea, and I wanted dessert. Only problem was that they were out of most of their desserts. And their iced teas were flavored and sugared. She had to pull the “five easy pieces” version of ordering iced tea, so hot water, a black tea bag, and a separate glass of ice. She pulled it off with a combination of bad Italian, English, and Spanish. A real specialty. She also ordered a pizza margarita which I promised to help eat. As we were waiting, the restaurant received order upon order of goods for the evening: huge plastic bags of meat, plastic cups (for water for those ordering espressos at the bar), sacks of who knows what, etc.

Men in suits stopped by the bar, stood, ordered, drank water out of plastic cups, got their espressos, dumped in sugar packets, downed the espresso, licked their spoons, paid their bills at the cashier, and continued on down the street.

As for our food, Shelly’s salad came with tuna, and the pizza looked incredible. I did help out and got about halfway through it before Shelly started in.

That night we each got a gelato (yoghurt for Shelly, and a three-parter for me: yoghurt, caramel, and hazelnut chocolate), hung out in the square, and watched two Cirque de Soleil rejects entertain the crowd before it started to thunder, lightening, and rain. Back at the apartment, we packed and cleaned up.

A simple cheese pizza, but very good

I know Shelly’s going to miss our apartment and the loads of laundry she did. Unlike the locals, we hung our laundry out to dry inside the apartment.

Arrivederci little Trastevere apartment.

I love the water fountains located all over Rome. It’s really hot here, I drink a lot of water, and bottled water costs a lot of Euros. But for the Rome leg of our trip, all you need is a water bottle and the luck to run into one of these free water stations, and you’re set until you need more.

These water holes are almost as ubiquitous as churches (actually, I’ll need to get those numbers to compare). Find one and you’ll swear that no water tastes better.

Water fountain near the Jewish Ghetto

Free water

The metro took us to Piazza del Popolo. Shelly’s list included a bunch of restaurants my mom gave us. Naturally, we couldn’t find any of them. And the deli she told us about was back by the Vatican. No way. We settled on a place that had a bunch of salads on the menu – right across the street from a window of doll heads. Perfect.

Doll heads in a window. No caption needed.

After our late, salad lunch, we took off toward the Spanish steps, popped into a couple of shoe stores and headed home. Or at least, that’s what Shelly told me. We crossed a bridge where she proudly spoke of her Girl Scout skills.

The only problem was that she took us in the wrong direction, back toward the Vatican. Yes, we crossed a bridge, but the wrong bridge. We walked for what seemed like days. Hours at the very least. Around busy streets and not so busy streets. By an Italian film crew. Shelly asked, but they didn’t speak English. By rows of Vespas and Smart Cars. I finally had to summon up my Brownie skills, point out the Vatican wall, and lead us to civilization. By now, we were pretty much laughing uncontrollably at nothing, but I hadn’t seen a mirage, so we knew we were safe. We hoped a bus back to our neighborhood, ate pizza from down the street, and called it a night. Well, first we couldn’t pass up the Gypsy fortune teller with three parakeets (one bad boy was called Antonio). She had the parakeets “pick” out a fortune in English or Italian. According to the parakeets, I will live until I’m 98. Shelly, until she’s 95. Maybe both of us will be fortune tellers.

Fortune-telling parakeets. Antonio is in the front.

We also stopped in at the Santa Maria church. A bit dark inside at night, made even darker with spooky organ music played by Vincent Price according to Shelly.

By the time we made it back to our apartment, we were grateful that we could still feel our toes.

Thursday, September 11

Thursday was Vatican day.  We had to get up early to be at the Vatican for our 9:30 tour. Only problem was I woke up at 2am and didn’t go back to sleep until after 5am.

Had our yogurt, fruit, and hard bagel thing for breakfast. I even made myself a decaf espresso on the stove.  And tomorrow, I might make myself more than a thimble-full.

Caught a bus on the other side of the Tiber River, followed a nun off the bus, and into Vatican City. Taking a tour was the only way we could avoid the two-plus hour wait to get into the Vatican. And the line extended way around the outside of the wall up to the Swiss guards. No thanks. We walked right in. Who knew that we wouldn’t exit until after 1pm.

Our tour guide was a British art student. She walked us through the galleries, around the hordes of people, told us tidbits about Nero’s bathtub and the Jesus tapestry that followed you as you walked past it. I gotta tell you, although the art was plentiful – sculptures, tapestries, paintings, carvings – none of it was happy art. The scenes were all depressing, mostly male, bloody, ominous, all the stuff that reminds you of the darkness of religion. Show me some happy religious art and maybe we can talk.

The Sistine Chapel was pretty cool. Too many people whispering at the same time made the guards yell “Sssshhhh” every few minutes and that was annoying. Not as annoying though, as the prerecorded “No talking” in several different languages set at volume 11. And if you need evidence that Michelangelo didn’t like women or at the very least, couldn’t draw women, the few that are on the ceiling of the Sistine, could have competed in the Olympics for East Germany in the ’70s.

Just when we thought we were done, our guard prepped us on the basilica. I looked at Shelly and sheepishly asked what the basilica was, and she smiled and said she had no idea. See, we’re perfect for each other. We low fived and marched on to the basilica.

Oh, the Basilica. The church inside St. Peters Square. Wow. It was amazing inside. Like another world and nothing we’ve ever seen before. You can fit the Statue of Liberty inside the dome. Comfortably. Lots of crosses, buried popes, mosaics, etc. A saint you could rub the foot of for good luck. We passed. And of course, the pope in wax. The wax pope. Shelly loved him and even took some bad pictures of him.

And that was the end of the Vatican. A worthwhile visit, but so very long. It was now past lunch and we had no idea where to go.  We trekked to the metro and stopped in several Vatican souvenir stores, looking for the allusive tacky plate that had Shelly’s name on it. Alas, not a one called her name. Onward.

Wednesday, September 10

Tuesday night, arrival night was a blur. Met the owner of our apartment, gave him some euros, and in return got keys, the instructions for the washer (no dryer), the air conditioner, and the gas stove.  Fair trade.  Oh, and he told us to put out the trash every night, in plastic bags, on the street, right in front of the building.

Dinner at a corner restaurant, a few blocks away, hit the spot. Twenty-four euros got us a great funghi pizza, two insalata mistas, carbonated water, pane (gotta stop accepting the bread since they charge 2 euros for it, and we don’t need it), and a sauteed lemon chicken dish that had Shelly pretty much sucking the meat off the bones. That never happens at home.

We slept with earplugs because of the street and people noise and got about nine hours of sleep. Not bad.

Wednesday was one of those days where you set out to do a couple of things, but end up walking a million miles in the heat, lose track of the time, and end up back where you started about eight hours later.

Highlights:

• Got our Roma Pass (good prices for museums and transportation).
• Campo de’ Fiori – overpriced tourist market, outdone by the farmer’s markets at home. Nonetheless, we picked up too much cheese, olives, and a peach.
• Shelly bought two face cloths. A shower without cloths? Please.
• Got a hunk of wheat bread and a breadstick at Il Fornio. I swear this was the same place that gave me incorrect change 24 years ago.
• Had lunch sitting outside of the Colosseum, spent about an hour inside. An inspiring sight no matter how many times you see it.
• An abbreviated hike through the Roman Forum. Shelly had sunstroke written all over her pink face, so we got out of there pretty quickly.
• Ran into Trevi Fountain, which was overrun by literally hundreds of people.
• Had our first gelato – I had yoghurt and pistachio.
• Hung out inside the Pantheon. Very cool.
• Did a prerequisite stop at a stationery store, got a name of potential vendor.
• Checked email at an internet café.
• Got instructions for and got lost twice going to a Despar market two blocks from the internet café.
• Walked across the Ponte Garibaldi Bridge, carrying our supermarket goods.
• Had a mediocre dinner at Lagane e Ceci. Got the pane again, asked for tap water, got bottled, had an okay pasta, and Shelly had very tough mystery meat. Oh well.

Walked around a bit. Fell into bed. Exhausted. Just like it should be. Thursday is our Vatican tour, which means we’ll have to be on our best behavior.

The colosseum in all its glory.

Monday September, 8

“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” just so happened to be the best part of the British Airways flight from SFO to Heathrow. I’d wanted to see the movie, Shelly didn’t, so personal screens on the plane made this a reality. We got the edited version, no full frontal shots, but the setup still worked.

The rest of the trip – nine hours in all – was brutal as always. Stuck in the middle seat, forced to try and sleep sitting up, my arms tucked in between the arm rests, my restless legs (short they may be), fighting to get comfortable … the scenario played out repeatedly throughout the trip. The stocky ex-commando grey-haired guy next to me, looking at wifi schematics on his PC, was gruff and spraying bad breath. Shelly was in her own iPod world of podcasts and word-game books.

Trying to sleep, high on two benadryls, is a real mind game. Even my new Ambiance iPhone app, although pretty effective (I like “machine”), couldn’t compete with me worrying about my life, Frances and whether she would eat while we were gone, Mickey, Mickey, Mickey, a smattering of work, and you name it. Insomniacs know what I am talking about.

Arriving in Heathrow only made me crankier. Our carry-on bags that had just crossed over the U.S. and the Atlantic were deemed too big for the next leg of the trip. Fucking with the Americans – a pastime shared by too many countries.

Loved being back in England, even if they took our bags, and even if though it was for less than three hours. Had a quick lunch at Wagamama, failed to find free wifi anywhere in the airport, bought some chocolate, and Harrod’s tea, Number 14, for Shelly, and headed on our way.

On the three-hour flight to Roma, I played some iPhone mahjong, slept a bit, and cruised Italy for the first time since 1984. Dusk. We were picked up by a Mercedes driving, slick Italian guy, who smelled of cigarette smoke. He said nothing except when he argued with Shelly to close her window. She wouldn’t because of the smoke, so he argued again and turned up the air conditioning.

Our driver drove through impossibly narrow and winding cobblestone streets and deposited us in front of our Trastevere apartment, our home for the next five days.