Wrong Way

A piece of the Palatino.

Travel should be like a good relationship: you shouldn’t stay so long or go back so often that you both start to hate each other, but neither should the experience be, ehm, well, a brief encounter. I know this from (travel) experience — I did Rome wrong. The difference is that, given the option I wouldn’t take it back, only give it a better chance.

I spent what I believe was five days in Rome as part of spring break from my semester in Spain, and traveling with my big brother meant that there were no hostels or skipping of meals to save on funds (you see, Nate’s the stable one). We arrived well after dark at the Roman airport, and immediately sought out a taxi to bring us to our hotel, all of which Nate had researched and booked. Somehow we settled on the man at the end of the line of vying taxi drivers, a man who then immediately proceeded to usher us down an increasingly worrisome network of streets and away from the lights of the airport.

A private garden in Rome.

“Um… ¿a dónde vamos?” I asked the Italian in flawless Spanish, looking around nervously, and feeling that I, despite being the younger sibling, would wind up being responsible for getting both myself and my brother kidnapped in some back alley within our first twenty minutes of arriving in Rome. The driver replied with smiling, gesticulating and no-more-comforting enthusiasm that we were almost to his car.

Fortunately, our underdog of a taxi driver (whose tiny, navy blue vehicle had absolutely nothing to indicate it as a taxi) did take us safely to our hotel, showing us around the shadow of the darkened Coliseum and on up the surprisingly unlit streets. The hotel was luxurious, almost  inappropriately close to the Bocca della Verita, the flat fountain shaped like a wise and unsettling face that I understand was famous for its appearance in movies and guidebooks. My favorite part of our accommodations was undoubtedly the rooftop, which I had all to myself one morning, reclining on padded deck furniture and looking down over the chaotic traffic circle below (and the Roman driving style is entirely uninhibited by things like police and defined lanes), all warmly lit by golden-yellow sun, just warm enough after a winter in Spain.

Unspecified ruins we passed and couldn't find in the guidebook.

Nate mapped out our itinerary from a guidebook he’d purchased before leaving, while I looked only at the pictures. We toured the Spanish Steps, the Coliseum, the Palatino — one of my favorites — aqueducts, ruins, cobbled streets, high, narrow pine trees, streets lined with designers shops, piazzas, the Pantheon, and private gardens. To be honest, this was not my best researched trip, and I more or less stumbled upon the Trevi Fountain with an expression of “Oh! Hey, when did they put that in Rome?” but whirlwind as it was, I can still say that I’ve been and seen. The shame is that much of Rome was probably lost on me in my tourist haze, and I enjoyed it in a kind of ignorance that I’m sure was something like sitting through a classical symphony performance and then complimenting the violinist by saying she could be in Katy Perry’s band or eating a gourmet meal and telling the chef he could work at Applebee’s. But I went and I saw and I took lots of pictures.

We ate our lunches in remarkably untourist-y places that we must’ve stumbled onto by pure dumb luck, surprised to find actual Italians within, and though we ordered all wrong, without the multiple courses and wine selections, we had pasta in Rome. If, on our sightseeing missions, we happened to pass a gelato shop, we would have that as well, and I would also, to what I’m sure was the chagrin of all Italians, have cappuccino at any hour of the day that I pleased. No, I didn’t do Rome as well as it deserved, but maybe I’ll have another chance someday.