It’s All Greek to Me: Rome in Three Days

I winced slightly as the bottle fell from my hand, clattering noisily across the slick, dark cobblestone steps. The sound rang out in long reports across the wet spread of St. Peter’s Square, an oval plaza big enough to hold several hundred thousand people. Less than a dozen citizens strolled around its center, damp foreheads frosted in the light from a towering Christmas fir in the center of the square. A police car hunkered menacingly across the oval from us four, its two headlights blazing twin golden arches across the plaza cobbles. As the beer bottle clattered to the stony floor of the square, I jerk my head up to meet that hot yellow stare; the unnerving impression of an almond-eyed predator watching us from a cave, made more dramatic by the fact that the Vatican is towering, dark and windswept, just meters behind the police car’s bumper.

Two ringing peals later, I had my hand on the neck of the beer, and had spun it behind my heel, out of sight. We are, in a time-honored Spanish tradition, botellón-ing the Vatican. A bag to the left has tidily swallowed the empties. I am sure this sort of public drinking must be illegal in America -- and regardless, it feels tremendously dangerous to wield your bottle-opener in the Vatican. We toast to the Pope’s good health, by nodding the tapered glass necks towards the hotly glowing windows of the pontiff’s balcony, and shiver in the frigid river wind that whips across Rome from the east.


*

We followed the winter winds around the Eternal City for three days: seven hills, four men, and thousands of years of history, caked on everything the eye could reach. The palm-sized, square slate cobbles run in crazed, angular capillaries between main thoroughfares, broad avenues choked by top-heavy Vespae, hammerhead SmartCars, and the bleating blitz of the Italian police force. The men are all a head shorter than our crew, and seem to favor their hair flipped backwards, and brushed to a glossy finish. Dark, knee-length wool coats are buttoned over suit-and-tie, or the strong, simple lines of a scarf. The gleam of buckled loafers ambles lazily in and out of their shadows; the Italian is not a rushed man, life will come at the same pace it always has. The women have zipped their legs into long leather contraptions, so that from knee to toe they are pure cappuccino calf-skin. In my red skiing shell, I look mostly like a stranded Swede.

Our warpath down the avenida was planned using the free, cartoonish map from the hostel. It includes helpful hints on how to respond to Rome’s monuments: toss a coin at the Trevi fountain (two if you seek love); look for the sun motif in the Pantheon (it’s under the crosses); climb to the top of the Coliseum to take in the arresting power of the arena (“are you now entertained!?”). Many were the times when I wished that the map would include other useful information (how do you say, “cheap,” in Italian?), but did not mind so much that I went off in search of the Italian answer. Nobody (but nobody!) in our group speaks any Italian, though we make a good show of gesticulating, and pronouncing our Spanish like the name of a pasta.

Later Tuesday, on the summit of Palatine Hill, wandering among the ruins of the Roman Emperor’s most magnificent palace, we ran into another set of Stanford-in-Madrid students. After quoting (and misquoting) our tourguides on the debauched origins of Rome, we slipped away to take in the rest. From the cap of the hill, which is crowned with the skeletons of the tallest arches of Rome, we could see across to the mournfully teetering half of the Colosseum. At the foot of the hill between the two giants of architecture, a double-wide road (Via Sagra) traces the spine of what was once the world’s greatest market. A thin cord separates the Via tourist’s footsteps from the graveyards of ancient Roman business; on the desolate field to either side hip-high marble columns have fallen everywhere, the intricate capstones nearly faded with time and neglect. A few walls still stand, reluctantly, gaptoothed and senile-looking, their brick covered with mossy verdigris. Grass springs up fitfully, as though it knows it shouldn’t reclaim the Forum; what was once the financial heart of a world is being slowly reclaimed, absorbed into a mossy hill.


*

The new, larger group has decided not to drink at the Sistine Chapel again, in favor of more traditional scenery. A dinner at Caffé Carbonara is one of the NYTimes’ favorites -- under the front awning, the restaurant frames its copy of the article that awarded it “best pasta in Rome.” It was certainly fresh: my spaghetti carbonara almost bit back, it was so new. A few glasses of red Tuscan wine convinced us we might like some gelato to close out the night’s eating, so we moved on to the NYTimes “number one” gelato location, a thin bar called San Nicolo’s that boasted unusually delicious flavors like Honey, Lemongrass, and Forest. We find a bar in Campo de Fiore, and say some long, well-liquored goodbyes. Though we hug goodbye, and mean it, our faces are full of a stronger, shared emotion: home is calling. And though these friends are heading off to the States, the rest of us are making one last red-eyed tour of Europe. Scarves are left hanging over bed-rails that night; we hear Berlin may bring our first snow of the season.