Italy trip. Part THREE
Italy trip. Part THREE
My getting around to writing has been a major hurdle. Of course I could quit my job and live on the streets and have much more time on my hands, but I'd rather not….
So my first taste of Roma is TRAFFIC, much, much evening traffic with horns blasting and maneuvering into moving spaces that we couldn't possibly fit into, but do. Just 'regular' city traffic is a bit overwhelming to me, being from a small (30k) town with a closed road system. We can only go about 40 miles before reaching "the end" and then having to turn around. We have nowhere to go and we go there pretty slow. So I am tired, not having slept for 24 hours and my nerves are already strumming discordantly. The (perceived) killer traffic did not ease the situation. Finally we get off the express and down into the city. Our driver points out random, huge bits of architecture that also serves as art along with statues that also pose as art. Everything in Italy is ART, from the most humble shutter to the grandest arch. In Rome, I was finding I had to try and filter out the frenzy of it all. Traffic, noise, people, traffic, vespas and motorcycles driving up onto sidewalks to get around the jumbled train of cars that we were part of and then, Oh! here is The Colosseum…more jilting traffic and then Oh! some other massive, ancient work of art. Silent and solid white marble, like an anchor, were a visual calm for the passing moment then back to the buzzing of hive-like busyness in the dark that was my introduction to Rome.
Finally, a winding alleyway, well I guess it is a street, but oh, so narrow, we arrive at our hotel: Albergo dei Borgognoni. Please, do not ask me to pronounce it. "gn" as in LasaGNa. I know, it doesn't help. So we arrive at our hotel. The lobby has a lovely, huge floor to ceiling 'terrarium' with live plants that it turned out our room's terrace (yes! Terrace!) overlooked, along with a big chunk of Roman sky. Actually: TERRACE is unofficially the theme of our entire trip. We wanted views and we wanted those views to have a terrace if at all possible. This was the defining reason we picked this hotel, being able to get a terrace.
Our room (delightfully) looked just like the picture on the website: The double-doors that opened onto the tiled terrace with the round table and chairs. There were planters with lattice and vines and pansies and geraniums that defined our square of outside property for the next couple of days. A surprising part of having this 'outdoors' experience from our hotel room was the Roman seagulls (terns?) that we could not see but could hear "chuckling" early in the morning and late into the night. I heard the same unique laughter of these birds on our one last night in Rome we had before catching our flights home.
So we meet our room and most importantly, our bathroom. Need I mention? Marble. All bathrooms in Italian hotels are marble-intensive. We are hungry and want to walk. We go downstairs and ask for a good place to eat and are given a map and simple instructions. We got lost for the next three hours.
Besides the terrace, we also chose this hotel because of its close proximity to the Spanish Steps, Trevi fountain, Triton fountain, etc, etc. We exited the narrow street of our hotel and turned left and then right and then straight and then left again and five minutes after leaving, could not find our hotel again. In our defense, (hehe) literally the 'street' our hotel was located on had TWO different names bookending the name of the 'street' our hotel was on which was Via Bufalo. It was only Bufalo in the middle (I think for the span of the doorway of the Borgognoni) then it was two different names on either end. We even asked a (local) police officer, "Dove via Bufalo?" and he did not know. This was ironically comforting at the time, since we were not only lost, but feeling quite stupid. I know that eventually Beckee will read this, so I am obligated to mention that I became obnoxiously uncomfortable that night about being lost, hungry and tired in a strange city with a strange language. My usual ability to assimilate and go with the flow was just plain broken that night for all the reasons mentioned above. Also, in my defense :o) I was perfectly happy to get lost again, the next night after sundown and even was able to do a little bit of rational navigating with a map by that time. Becs and I both blamed 'exhaustion' for our inability to figure out something as simple as which way to hold 'the map.' We also blamed exhaustion for in our inability to figure out, once we got back to our hotel room whether or not the major (tourista-intensive) fountain we wandered onto was the Trevi? Or the Titon? If this was a class, we both would have had a D-. Neither of us did our homework. We were blank slates (with blank stares at times) sucking up all this Roman, this uh, Roman….stuff….
My getting around to writing has been a major hurdle. Of course I could quit my job and live on the streets and have much more time on my hands, but I'd rather not….
So my first taste of Roma is TRAFFIC, much, much evening traffic with horns blasting and maneuvering into moving spaces that we couldn't possibly fit into, but do. Just 'regular' city traffic is a bit overwhelming to me, being from a small (30k) town with a closed road system. We can only go about 40 miles before reaching "the end" and then having to turn around. We have nowhere to go and we go there pretty slow. So I am tired, not having slept for 24 hours and my nerves are already strumming discordantly. The (perceived) killer traffic did not ease the situation. Finally we get off the express and down into the city. Our driver points out random, huge bits of architecture that also serves as art along with statues that also pose as art. Everything in Italy is ART, from the most humble shutter to the grandest arch. In Rome, I was finding I had to try and filter out the frenzy of it all. Traffic, noise, people, traffic, vespas and motorcycles driving up onto sidewalks to get around the jumbled train of cars that we were part of and then, Oh! here is The Colosseum…more jilting traffic and then Oh! some other massive, ancient work of art. Silent and solid white marble, like an anchor, were a visual calm for the passing moment then back to the buzzing of hive-like busyness in the dark that was my introduction to Rome.
Finally, a winding alleyway, well I guess it is a street, but oh, so narrow, we arrive at our hotel: Albergo dei Borgognoni. Please, do not ask me to pronounce it. "gn" as in LasaGNa. I know, it doesn't help. So we arrive at our hotel. The lobby has a lovely, huge floor to ceiling 'terrarium' with live plants that it turned out our room's terrace (yes! Terrace!) overlooked, along with a big chunk of Roman sky. Actually: TERRACE is unofficially the theme of our entire trip. We wanted views and we wanted those views to have a terrace if at all possible. This was the defining reason we picked this hotel, being able to get a terrace.
Our room (delightfully) looked just like the picture on the website: The double-doors that opened onto the tiled terrace with the round table and chairs. There were planters with lattice and vines and pansies and geraniums that defined our square of outside property for the next couple of days. A surprising part of having this 'outdoors' experience from our hotel room was the Roman seagulls (terns?) that we could not see but could hear "chuckling" early in the morning and late into the night. I heard the same unique laughter of these birds on our one last night in Rome we had before catching our flights home.
So we meet our room and most importantly, our bathroom. Need I mention? Marble. All bathrooms in Italian hotels are marble-intensive. We are hungry and want to walk. We go downstairs and ask for a good place to eat and are given a map and simple instructions. We got lost for the next three hours.
Besides the terrace, we also chose this hotel because of its close proximity to the Spanish Steps, Trevi fountain, Triton fountain, etc, etc. We exited the narrow street of our hotel and turned left and then right and then straight and then left again and five minutes after leaving, could not find our hotel again. In our defense, (hehe) literally the 'street' our hotel was located on had TWO different names bookending the name of the 'street' our hotel was on which was Via Bufalo. It was only Bufalo in the middle (I think for the span of the doorway of the Borgognoni) then it was two different names on either end. We even asked a (local) police officer, "Dove via Bufalo?" and he did not know. This was ironically comforting at the time, since we were not only lost, but feeling quite stupid. I know that eventually Beckee will read this, so I am obligated to mention that I became obnoxiously uncomfortable that night about being lost, hungry and tired in a strange city with a strange language. My usual ability to assimilate and go with the flow was just plain broken that night for all the reasons mentioned above. Also, in my defense :o) I was perfectly happy to get lost again, the next night after sundown and even was able to do a little bit of rational navigating with a map by that time. Becs and I both blamed 'exhaustion' for our inability to figure out something as simple as which way to hold 'the map.' We also blamed exhaustion for in our inability to figure out, once we got back to our hotel room whether or not the major (tourista-intensive) fountain we wandered onto was the Trevi? Or the Titon? If this was a class, we both would have had a D-. Neither of us did our homework. We were blank slates (with blank stares at times) sucking up all this Roman, this uh, Roman….stuff….
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