On the Atlantic flight, my seatmate is actually Italian, Pisan. He works for a chain of fitness centers that are just expanding in Italy, and I rudely suggest that I thought European women didn’t exercise. The chain is like 24 Hour Fitness, or Curves, he explains. Yes, I’ve heard of them. Do I belong? I laugh: no, no, I am not fit!
In a freak occurrence, the sandals I wore all over Disney World without trouble give me blisters just walking around the airports, en route. So my first Roman purchase is acid green flip-flops, at Termini train station.
Sleep deprivation and jet lag always hit me hard. When a taxi driver at the train station explains my ride will cost 20 euros, I demand my bags back, muttering that I will take the Metro. After fifteen minutes of dizzily studying the bus situation, I humbly return to the street and accept a 20 euro ride gratefully. I can handle a subway on no sleep, but buses are too much for me.
For dinner, just around the corner from my hotel, I eat spaghetti with pepper, on a bed of fried cheese. Weird, but not bad. I sit in a perfect gooseneck cobblestone alleyway, around the corner from my movie-set hotel. When you live in a place that almost never appears in the media, it’s surprising how Europe looks like movies of Europe, or New York City looks just like “Law & Order.” It’s easy to forget they build sets to look like Rome or New York, and not the other way around.
An old man at another table reads in Italian. A quartet of retired Americans and Brits chat. Another couple gets on a motorcycle and rides away. Tomorrow morning, this cafe will have disappeared like a speakeasy, the outdoor tables and plants and signs sucked back inside until the evening. I surreptitiously look up how to say, “The check” in Italian.