Roma and then Home-a

Rome is just it. It's so damned old, and stately, and elegant, and noisy, and exciting, and filled with the kinds of shops that still exist in Europe, book stores, map stores, card shops, tobacco shops. Gelaterias on every block. Cafes, which means bars, and bars, which means sandwiches and coffee. Piazzas filled with people, not just shoppers like in Taormina, but people of all ages out to enjoy the music and motion of this great city.

A fifty piece military marching band in The Pantheon Piazza, crisp, in perfect pitch, the conductor directing the band with a long sword.

 A four piece band of two guitars, upright bass and accordion in Piazza Navonna, flying through "All of Me" and "Volare" in double-time, instrument cases filling up with euros, dollars, rubles.

Sicily is fabulous but I couldn't live there. I could live in Roma. Every corner leads to another corner, a new piazza with five streets radiating out from the center, a 500 year old statue in the middle, sea gulls perched on Jupiter's nose.

Fried Artichokes a la Giudea in the old ghetto, carbonara near the Pantheon, coffee in Piazza San Eustachio, the best in Rome because the water comes from the last surviving underground acqueduct. You spend your afternoon gaping at gargoyles, your evening staring down gelatos.

Getting into town is a nightmare, yup. A plane, a train, a tram, then dragging rolling suitcases over a mile of cobblestones. They pad the tab at dinner, yup, with a gallic nose and a straight face. They upgrade us for no reason to an apartment in the annex instead of a hotel room in the main building, which is so huge it makes us uncomfortable, but, yup, the giant key won't open the door and the desk is two blocks way, and it's raining.

But look outside this window: the Pantheon. Julius Caesar was murdered right out back. Marcus Agrippa built the pantheon to honor all the Roman gods, in the time of Augustus, and Hadrian rebuilt it in the first century AD. Of course, they borrowed all their Gods from the Greeks, until they got Jesus and 300 years after they murdered him realized a home-grown God was handier than a Greek one.

The Duck is feeling better but we're both still pooped. Some day we're coming back to Rome for a couple weeks, instead of always flying in or out in transit to or from somewhere else. 

By the way, did you ever see the top of an erupting volcano from an airplane?