Friday February 16th

 Wow, what a whirlwind of a vacation. Today Donna has to work, remember that she is a Feldenkrais practitioner and her work was our excuse for coming to Rome in the first place. Turns out there really was a job attached to the offer. By Wednesday, she was hoping it would go away; all she wanted was to continue the touring. So off she went and slowly I gathered myself and rolled out determined to find Trastevere again.

 I exited the palazzo vaguely thinking about a coffee and turned to the left, but as I made my way in that direction the bus pulled up to its stop. Thinking that I would just catch the next one I continued down the street but soon I was standing next to the bus, which was frozen by the traffic and lifted my hand to the driver who opened the bus door to allow me in. So off I went toward town. Somehow, every day seems to either begin or end with the Teatro Marcello. For those of you who don’t know, during high school I lived in a top floor apartment right across from the central synagogue in the Jewish Ghetto. The Rabbi lived two floors below us. To get to the bus stop to go to school, we had to walk through the Teatro Marcello every day. This is why that particular place in Rome is so important to me.

As the bus approached it I remembered the photos that we had taken before and remembered that the lighting wasn’t perfect when I captured the Teatro and the three columns in a single moment. So off I got, crossed the street and shot some photos of the theatre in the morning. Down the alleyway and soon I was passing the Fontana delle Tartarughe (the Turtle Fountain) again. I paused to contemplate it a little better and to see the expressions and the poses of the four boys on the fountain. Across Via Arenula and back to the Campo de' Fiori. I was finally in the neighborhood in the morning and I really wanted to see the Campo with all of the booths. Cool, this time it is there, I paused as I entered the piazza, Mahlon had mentioned visiting the wine bar because the guy with the big nose was still there. Well, I saw a place that said bar and had a lot of wine but the guy’s nose wasn’t so big. There was a Salsamenteria and I stuck my nose in but somehow even in Italy they don’t smell as good as the one on Columbus Street in San Francisco. The Forno next to the Carbonara was open! Actually there were two on either side of the little alley that goes off to the left of La Carbonara. I went straight across the length of the Campo to the one on the left and saw it was for pastry, back out to the one on the right and purchased my first piece of white pizza that didn’t taste like it was made last week. They still sold it by weight and it cost .95 Euro. Now I was happy and I wandered around the square eating the pizza and checking out what everyone was selling. These Italians are proud of the vegetables they are growing. Every box was labeled with what it was, that it was grown in Italy and how much it cost per Kilo. The artichokes were sold individually for one Euro or less; these were labeled as being ‘Romanas’ but one did have smaller artichokes for .50 Euros that came from somewhere else. The profusion of vegetables was amazing, they actually looked good enough to eat and thoughts of having a dinner with just veggies and bread went through my head, but not tonight. Tonight we are going to some special restaurant near the Vatican where Beatrice knows the owners. The vegetables seem very reasonably priced but the cheese on the other hand, wow. I saw some cheese that was labeled at 78 Euro a kilo and it seemed that all of it was at least 23 Euros a kilo. Same place had a little sausage labeled at 23 Euros each.

I wandered down Via dei Cappellari to take some pictures of the street and the arch that straddles it. I wanted to cross Ponte Sisto to get over to Trastevere so I was just wandering vaguely taking in the sites. Glancing at a window on Via Moserato I found myself in front of Hollywood Video. No not the American chain transplanted to Italy just as Blockbuster is but a little store that Renzo had told me would have L’Archidiavolo if it actually existed anywhere. He said it was near the Campo but I never would have found it if I had been looking for it. Obviously, after all of these years, and endless searching for it, I was meant to own a copy of this film. Turns out that Vittorio Gassman co-stars with Mickey Rooney and they had a copy. In my memory, this is a must see film. The devil is sent to earth to wreak havoc in Renaissance Italy. The reality was another thing. It did give me some chuckles but it was not as funny as I remembered.

Dinner at Emmanuele:

Mahlon called and so the narrative ends here.

There is a whole lot more to say... The following year we returned to Rome and went down to Positano and the Amalphi Coast so stay tuned for more.