Photo credit: Carol Madigan

The 10:26 Frecciarossa to Rome 

   All roads lead to Rome, and all roads in Rome lead to the Colosseo. There’s little sense in going to Rome and not putting this, the Forum and Circus Maximus on your itinerary. The problem is every American in Bermuda shorts and legs like golf tees has got it on theirs, and, well, you might as well be in Vegas for all  the old world charm and sense of history you’re going to experience at these sites.

“The way Carol scoffed at my praising the apartment as a “destination,” ( “Don’t get any ideas, Reid, we’re not hanging out here all day and night.”) I knew the day of reckoning with the ruins of the glory that was Rome would soon be upon us – like the Ides themselves.”

   But none of this could detract from the grand ride from Venice into the Eternal City. Pastoral Tuscan and Umbrian countryside sped by us at speeds approaching 160 mph. The club car provided ham and cheese paninis and half- bottles of chardonnay for our lunch, and Carol and I both enjoyed single row window seats for the rolling verdant hills that passed by. And then the apartment Carol found for our planned six days here was a spacious two-bedroom, two-bath palazzo with a balcony overlooking a walled, razor-wire protected courtyard we had mistakenly guessed was a prison, but turned out to be the embassy of Great Britain. Either way, Carol felt safe on an otherwise quiet and deserted street.

   The way Carol scoffed at my praising the apartment as a “destination,” ( “Don’t get any ideas, Reid, we’re not hanging out here all day and night.”) I knew the day of reckoning with the ruins of the glory that was Rome would soon be upon us – like the Ides themselves. Following the requisite tram ride to discover how the vox populi saw their city, we were off to the Colosseum. It happily did not take Carol long to feel like a Christian being fed to the lions there. The place was overrun with camera-clicking fiends, and when Carol noticed a nesting pair wandering aimlessly about the Circus Maximus wearing Google virtual reality glasses, she’d seen enough. We repaired to a café across the way that led to its last half-bottle of Frescati, a plate of amazing roasted steak fries, and a chance intrusion upon our conversation that put us on to a day-trip to the little eponymous wine town of the very wine we were drinking. A bus directly across from the café dropped us a couple of blocks from our apartment, which we were both happy to see, along with a couple of chilled bottles Frescati we picked up at the grocery on the walk home. And which became our “destination” for the evening. I whipped up a dish of grilled chicken and vegetables in a lemon and butter sauce, and we enjoyed it with the Luther movie on Netflix.

   It turned out the hard-wired sightseeing was done. Trevi Fountain, and the like can all be done with me being sat. And as luck (mine) would have it, on the day we wandered over to the Pantheon, tours had closed for the day! The only known hurdle that I could see was that we were scheduled to be with actual people during our stay. The prospects for me are generally comparable to sightseeing, but with living entities. Imagine if the portraits in the Louvre, say, also came to life and were all chatty. In this, however, I would be happily proven wrong, and the two meals together with Carol’s niece and her chef husband would prove to be the social events of the year for this somewhat obtuse interlocutor. 

How’s that word choice work as an icebreaker?