Grinding Gears in Roma

I've been in Rome for about 48 hours, and I feel like I'm just beginning to make the mental transition out of Morocco. In an ideal world, after finishing up a month in Morocco, I'd probably spend a month at home in a dark room, just mentally processing the experience, reflecting on what I saw and did and learned and the people I met. Instead, I hopped on a plane and within hours plunged straight into a destination the polar opposite of Morocco, laden with years of daydream-fueled expectations. With all of those swirling, unresolved emotions and recollections from Morocco. It's a mildly toxic shot and chaser combination, I think, and I think it's been making my perceptions a bit distorted and blurry for the past couple of days.

Truly, it's hard to imagine what could be a more jarring contrast than leaving Morocco for Rome. As I wrote previously, Morocco has been experiencing a tourism drought, so for the past month I have had its best sites almost all to myself. Where there were other tourists, there were hardly any Americans. I'm easy to identify as a tourist in Morocco, and a bit of a curiosity as a woman traveling independently, too. Since the locals aren't fatigued with too many visitors, they were often interested in reaching out to me and finding out what the heck I was doing there. These conversations repeatedly turned into friendly but searching discussions about big concepts--country, family, religion--and our assessments of the similarities and differences between our two cultures. Those conversations transformed my month there from a vacation into one of the best learning experiences of my life, helping me understand not just Morocco and Moroccans but my own country and myself better, or at least differently. Even the harassment on the street was food for thought, though demeaning and irritating. And on a mundane level, traveling in Morocco was a breeze because logistics couldn't have been easier: the guesthouses and trains and cultural sites were largely empty, so everything was cheap and available at the last minute.

Rome is the polar opposite of almost all of those things, and it is also encumbered with impossibly high expectations on the part of its visitors. Or at least this visitor. Beyond all the usual reasons why so many people want to go to Italy (the archeological remains, the religious significance, the food, the art, etc etc etc), my mother's family is from Italy and ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of traveling here. But for one reason or another, it has never worked out until now.

So between my Morocco hangover and the outlandish expectations, I arrived in Rome, in the words of a great Dandy Warhols song, "with more baggage than JFK. . . and I'm talking about the airport."

I deliberately scheduled my arrival for early evening so that I could get settled in my hotel, get a nice meal, and head out early the following morning to start seeing the sites. Iberia Airlines had different plans for me. They delayed my flight from Casa to Madrid just long enough to keep my hopes for a connection alive, but not enough time to successfully complete it. When I set foot in MAD, the monitors showed that my flight was on last call. . . and that estimated travel time to the gate was 22 minutes, involving a long train ride and miles of corridors. I didn't stand a chance.

The next Iberia flight for Rome was due to depart at 7:30 pm and arrive around 10 pm. The metro from Rome's airport stops running at 11:30 pm, so I thought this was cutting it close with baggage claim and customs, but it would probably work. Then they delayed THAT flight, and we ended up arriving after midnight. It took an hour to get my bag and figure out a ride into the city: I ended up taking a gypsy cab that was loaded every bit as full as a Moroccan grand taxi, and in true Moroccan form, I made friends with some of the other passengers.

When I finally reached my hotel, I was ready to kiss the ground like the pope. Sadly, I was probably the only hungry tourist in Rome because all the restaurants were closed and I hadn't eaten since late afternoon. But I made it here in one piece.

I spent my first day in Rome just wandering, getting a feel for the city's feel and layout, looking at the exteriors of some of the great buildings, like the Coliseum and the Pantheon and getting lost in little back alleys and corners of streets. Everywhere I went, there were mobs of tourists packed together, elbowing and jockeying to take the same pictures of the same subjects with the same SLR camera models, making the same observations about the site and the weather.

The real disappointment of the day was dinner yesterday, though. I found a place not far from the Pantheon that I THOUGHT had locals in it. Turns out, the waiters had a couple of friends who just used a table for a smoke. I ordered the pasta with red sauce and a Caprese salad, deliberately choosing simple things to see how elegantly a real Roman restaurant would handle these staples. I have to say, despite costing the equivalent of $37 (no wine or dessert, either), the meal was less impressive than a typical Tuesday night dinner at my house when I don't have any special groceries in the house. I have absolutely no objection to paying $37 for a meal, but I expect to be served food better than I'd make at home. Instead, their red sauce was nowhere near as good as my own. !!!

Things didn't get a lot better during the day today. My hotel is near Vatican City, so I decided to go visit St. Peter's Basilica. The square in front of the Basilica is acres of open space, and it was practically shoulder to shoulder with tourists. The security line to enter to complex stretched for hundreds and hundreds of meters, with no shade. When I first walked up and gaped at the crowd and the line, I actually thought "Nothing is worth standing in that line" and I turned and walked off. After a few minutes, I realized that anywhere else would be just as bad, and I might as well just suck it up and go. Three hours later, I made it to the cupola above the dome. It wasn't life-altering, and it was shoulder to shoulder with people trying to elbow their way to the choicest spots for photographs, but it was okay.

One thing I really did enjoy was seeing Michelangelo's Pieta in the Basilica. A few years back, I read The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone, which is a novel about the life of Michelangelo, and the book describes in painstaking detail what Michelangelo's life was like while he was working on the Pieta. It was the coolest thing I saw today, hands down. Part of that, though, is that the crowds slowed everything down so much that by the time I left the Basilica, there really wasn't enough time to try to see something else. This is sad to say, but as much as I loved seeing the Pieta and the rest of the basilica, I'm not totally convinced it was worth standing in line for three hours in the baking sun and forfeiting an entire day in Rome.

On the bright side, though, I finally found a good dinner. I leveled with the desk clerk at my hotel and explained that I needed advice on where to go for GOOD Italian food. He sent me to a place that was totally solid. I had a lovely antipasto and a good plate of ravioli with spinach and cheese. The best part is that I think I can recreate everything I was served. So be sure to invite yourself to my house next time you're in DC! ;)

Anyway, with blood sugar lifted from the pasta, I'm feeling more upbeat about being here. Hopefully I just needed a day or two to clear enough headspace to be able to focus on Rome, figure out how to navigate it successfully, and enjoy my time here.

For now, though, I need to call it a night. Ciao!