Tuesday in Roma 20111018

Tuesday 20111018. I walked to the Trevi fountain this morning, which was all the good news I needed today.
My waking was muddled. I'm still upended by the time change, and drinking cappuccinos and espressos at will without caffeine content concern, waking for hours to stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night and fret. Last night I had dreams of Venetian fabrics, not that I know what those are. They were textured silks, brocades and velvets, with gold and silver nubby threads woven through. They were hanging and draped over dark polished wood furniture in a maze of dripping deep colours, in a room where the light bounced low and golden off rows of tall narrow crackled burnished Venetian mirrors, and sparkled off the massive glass pendant breakfast room chandelier. I really tried to stay there as long as possible, and my first thought in wakefulness was ohfuckohfuckohfuck the stupid ankle. Testing my senses, my feet and legs were warm and supple. Everything seemed to be moving, and there appeared to be more range of motion in my ankle. Up and over the side of the bed, et voila, liftoff to the can. For the first time in two days I could stand on both feet.
No mean maitre d' at breakfast hissing me off (or so I imagined), just the pretty tall kind and thin young thing that told me to spend the rest of my vacation at a spa yesterday, instead of going home. I suspect that "spa-time" is an easy and accessible solution in her life. I sat down in one of their cushioned taupe velvet armchairs, and had a slow breakfast, internally giddy and grateful that my worst fretting was left in a dark after midnight space.
They put out a spectacular buffet for breakfast; bright yellow-orange softly scrambled eggs, sausages, cold cuts, cereals, cheeses, fruit salad in a big glass globe, teeny little crystal sugar encrusted pastries, braised mushrooms and tomatoes, and thick Italian bacon (one piece is enough). I will miss this breakfast buffet! My first day I ordered a cafe latte, which is "just" strong coffee with warm milk. I now know i want the cappuccino for breakfast; dark and smoky without bitterness, capped by a sugar encrusted foam that I can scoop up as dessert when I'm finished.
And then i just sit and watch people. Travelling alone, you notice quickly that pods of people turn to each other, and a person standing or sitting beside them is context only. Jus' a piece of the furniture ma'am. I am never bored in my observations of the people that are around me. I like to think I'm not cruel or judgemental, just quietly catching the conversations and guessing a the subtext, noting what I like about what they're wearing or how they conduct themselves, and figuring out the story. At home I read the obits every day for life stories, to get some gratitude, perspective and have a cry. Here I look at people.
I've had some major bad thoughts since I've arrived, hours and hours of them actually. The inner dialogue has been hideous, and compounded by my guilt that all this should be fun and la-di-da. I have spectacular and courageous friends, who I could never envision shrinking in such a fabulous place, who would pshaw off my self doubt before flinging themselves in the Trevi fountain for fun dressed in their expensive designer frock emerging to applause and kisses from an Italian mamma's boy or girl lover. But S wrote me something that put everything a bit more right. I'm on a luxury silent retreat, with only myself for company, and without all the diversions of home. Damn right my head's a bad place. Just needed a reminder I guess (and yes, I know what I have to do).
So. I went for a walk. Carefully. In morning rush hour traffic, with hurtling workers busy busy busy and trippy (literally) tourists. Past gypsy beggars with babies limp in their arms, or seated on the narrowest part of the sidewalk that the only manner past was almost over them or timing a risk into oncoming traffic. I stepped out of the fray once and went into a fashion house fabric store, and gasped at the prices. Down a narrow ruelle, and I turned a corner to a humid whoosh that was the Trevi fountain. Hooray, mission statement first objective "fountain" achieved!
These are a lot of words and minutiae to describe inches, and probably most interesting to me. I'm sorry. You can stop reading now. But I'm just going to carry on. Never mind me.
It's a spectacular fountain, but it's a fountain. I'm not particularly enamoured of standing around a fountain for a couple of hours watching it. I did my alone traveller stealth thing, backed up to a fence, put my hands on my hips, arched my back and opened my chest for a full breath of ionized air and just watched for awhile. Lots of recreating the backward coin toss for photo ops, hands out-stretched back to Neptune, crooked little smiles. The world was at the fountain, bubbling along right beside it.
I'm a bad tourist. I'm not a great shopper or haggler. Ok, i did go back to the fabric store and bought my commemorative piece of exquisite italian fabric, paying more for 2.5metres of fabric than...never mind. That was it, my one retail shopping experience this trip. Really, I just want to sit outside, warmly covered, and drink coffee, sneak in some knitting, and breath. Not terribly exciting, and what I've mostly done for the past two days, except for parking on an ice pack, is sleeping and checking return airfares.
I was at two outdoor venues today; a cafe on the palazzo at the end of the street, and enjoying a late lunch buffet on the hotel's terrace. I'm really sorry I only discovered that lunch on my last day here. Like breakfast, it was marvellous and varied. In Canada we're stingy with the bufalo mozzarella. First thing I saw on plates being ferried to tables were one big white shiny wobbly globe of glistening cheese per patron, and that included the chichi thin little things. We would take one of those cheeses and make sixteen servings at home. Now that's luxe!
There were seafood salads, small dice cooked cold vegetable salads, curries (there was an India conference going on at the hotel), breaded and fried eggplant, deep-fried and battered cauliflower, an egg and zucchini frittata, buttered and parsleyed rice, couscous, a red sauced pasta that really illustrated once and for all "al dente", desserts small and perfect like pistachio crusted chocolate chip ricotta cannolis and demitasse dark chocolate and coffee mousses. The air was cool, the sun was warm. I was wrapped in an afghan/paisley pashmina, wearing my privacy visors (big and black sunglasses), and i didn't feel like a complete peasant. The clientele were mostly ministry employees from the government building across the street, tailored dark suits, cologned and tanned. Except for the big Russian guy behind me, guffawing about grappa with the waiters, hoarking coughing and blowing his nose, loudly, younger pale wispy little woman in tow.
Then I went back to my room for deep sleep, without Venetian textiles unfortunately, and woke up to knit read and write.
My time in Rome is effectively over. I didn't get to go on my Pristine Cistine tour this morning at 7am. I didn't see the colosseum or the pantheon, or experience any of that eternity stuff. I really didn't do much of anything, at least not what i expected i would be doing. I was back and forth with air Canada to cancel reschedule and reschedule again my departure. I was ripped off, my head was fucked up and so was my foot. I did enjoy a fabulous hotel and will now fantasize about a life in a splendid hotel whenever the dust bunnies start blowing too large through my house and I just want to hole up somewhere. I did not throw a coin into the fountain this morning because I thought it was a lame and forlorn thing to do. Apparently this means my return to Rome isn't guaranteed. Imagine me shrugging, both hands and eyebrows gesticulating a "whatever". It doesn't end there. I know that you never know what something is good for until you have a couple of miles between you and it. I wait to see what that is.