Plucky Survivors See Europe Day 19: Rome

I got up on the early side again today, hoping to be able to get some things done and beat the heat warnings that are flagging all over Italy.  I didn’t help much.  It was 88 degrees by 9am so I knew from the outset that the day would be limited.

I wanted to depend on the Metro as much as possible so I caught a train to the Colosseum and snapped a few pictures.

From there I took a walk and saw a few more sights, including a drag queen in a fancy dress twirling around in the middle of the street.  Oops, no.  Not a drag queen, just a young girl in a tiara and ball gown.  Look at the picture.  I think you’ll understand how I could make that mistake.

Then it was on to the Vespa Museum, currently celebrating 80 years of iconic Italian motoring.  The Vespa, Italian for “wasp,” was created by Corradino D’Ascanio, an engineer at the aviation company Piaggio.  He didn’t like regular motorcycles because you had to straddle them, so he designed the step through Vespa that allows you to sit with some semblance of decorum.

The museum is small, in the basement of a shop that rents them, and features a handful of the scooters and displays honoring their place in pop culture and in movies like “Roman Holiday.”

I continued walking and snapped a few more pictures of Roman architecture and ruins.

Seeing these once incredible structures gave me pause.  How did the Roman Empire go from basically ruling the planet to ruin?  It was a gradual process of course, through centuries of economic decline, depopulation, and political shifts – there was no cataclysmic event.  In its heyday and probably deep into its decline, people probably looked at things like the Colosseum or Circus Maximus and thought “this will be here forever.”  Makes you think, doesn’t it?

But I had more to see.  I stopped by Campo di Fiore, and outdoor market mainly devoted to fresh produce, meats, and fish, but with a little bit of everything – olive oil, preserves, and bottles of Italian wines and spirits took up a lot of the stalls.  I was hoping they’d have some prepared food to sample, but this was not that kind of market.

By then the temperature was well into the 90s so I sat and had a cool drink and a pastry with jam and custard.  It was fine – nothing to write home about.

On a mission, I made my way to Testaccio Market, aka my idea of what heaven would look like if it exists.

On the way, I encountered a pyramid.  Weird.  I looked it up later and it was for some religious dude.  Good for him.

Mercato Testaccio is an authentic Italian market, with food stands, produce and meat vendors, clothing vendors, and even places selling necessities like household products and toilet paper.  While there were some obvious tourists, most of the people in there were neighborhood folk, grandmothers wheeling around little carts and arguing with the butcher loudly in Italian.

My first stop for food was at Mordi & Vai, a stall started by butcher Sergio Esposito.  He passed away a few years ago at 79, but the stall continues and is one of the most popular there judging by the line.  I got the thinly sliced boiled beef with tomatoes and onions on perfect ciabatta bread.  I want these all the time now.

But I wasn’t through.  I also sampled what was, in effect, a porchetta slider from Esattalo.  It was done with a tangy sauce on crunchy bread and I polished that off quickly. 

The one thing they are lacking here are items on the sweet side, but I find one vendor with what looked like the most incredible chocolate/chocolate cookies on earth.  Unfortunately, they were made with Nutella, so I couldn’t have them or I’d, you know, die.  Instead, I went for a slice of their apple cake.  It was disappointing and not just because I really wanted those chocolate cookies.

It was as I was walking to the nearest Metro station that I started to feel less than terrific.  As of this writing it is 98 degrees and heading to 100.   Despite staying in the shade as much as possible and drinking insane amounts of water and juice, I got a little bleary on the roughly mile long walk to the Metro.  I made it back to the air-conditioned room and felt a lot better.

As long as we’re talking about weird physical maladies….  Back in Savannah, which is insects-that-bite-you heaven, I never get feasted upon.  Like, never.  Here I have been bitten several times but only on my left hand.  Nowhere else, just five bug bites on my left hand.  Weird.

And to continue the part where I’m no longer 25, I’ve developed a bit of pain above my right ankle, which is a little puffy.  You may or may not know that I have severe neuropathy and basically can’t feel my feet or lower legs, so to feel pain is concerning.  It feels vaguely muscular instead of structural, so I went down to the restaurant to get some ice to put on it.

The manager came over, very concerned, telling me sit down and relax.  I assured her it wasn’t bad – I just strained something.  She said, “At least you weren’t wearing high heels.”  To which I replied, “Only on the weekends.”  She laughed as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard and now I’m her best friend.

The rest of the day was chilling and working, but eventually I needed to go out for dinner.

More research took me to Trattoria Vecchia Roma, a popular spot with tourists and locals according to everything I read.  Popular may have been underselling it.  I arrived just as they opened at 7pm and there was a line down the block.  I managed to get a table outside and settled in for a small salad and a plate of fettucine al sugo di spuntature, salsicce e pecorino – also known as fettucine with pork chops and sausage.  The sausage and the fettucine were delicious.  The pork part of the pork chops was as well, but it came on the bone.  Bones in pasta.  Took me a minute to get over that.

On my way back to the hotel, walking very slowly because the leg was complaining loudly, I stopped at Pasticceria and got a crème tart with strawberries, which I’m eating as I ice my leg and it’s so good that I’m taking it as a sign that my various maladies will improve quickly.

Tomorrow is the Rome Pride parade.  I wasn’t able to find a viewing party, but the parade passes about half a block from my hotel.  I was hoping I’d be able to see it from the terrace, but the building juts out a little too far and I can’t quite see the street it’ll be on.  Oh, well.  At least I won’t have to go far to see it.