The Pines of Rome

I'm not going to lie to you. Being in Rome in August is no picnic. The city is at once empty and crowded: empty of locals yet crowded with tourists. It's unbearably hot and humid. Your favorite restaurants are closed, you can forget about going shopping anywhere but international chain stores. Public transport is even worse than usual. Did I mention it's ridiculously hot? And miserably humid? So yeah, I'm not going to sit here and tell you August is the ideal time to be in Rome, and all those people in Sardegna or on the Amalfi Coast don't know what they're missing. But if you do it right, you can make it a pretty awesome month nevertheless.

I remember that morning like it was yesterday: a bright mid-summer dawn, just weeks after moving into my dream Trastevere apartment. In a haze of grogginess and not enough sleep, I hear a booming, nasal voice. It's Sunday and seems impossibly early for whatever is happening, especially as it's happening right outside my bedroom window. 

Yesterday, in a small town just outside Naples, a slightly-past middle-aged man was parking his car. Take this situation out of Italy and you're left with an uneventful couple of minutes that will be forgotten before the emergency  brake is on. But in Italy, nothing is ever simple. And rarely is it boring. Frustrating, yes, gnash-your-teeth-and-tear-your-hair-out maddening, oh, hell yeah. But boring, no.

Since moving to Rome over eight years ago, I have come to realize that it is the simple things in this splendid city that fascinate and charm me the most. Of course I adore the Pantheon and Castel Sant’Angelo, but those monuments are not what thrill my soul, nor what make me think, “How could I ever leave Rome?” It's the minute details, the curiosities, the simple pleasures, which are often overlooked (even though, I must admit, in Rome even the simple things are extraordinary.)

For the past few weeks, my laptop has been in the shop. As a result, I've had to do something I haven't done in ages: writeon paper. And not just grocery lists, but actual blog posts and articles (including this one), written out longhand to be typed up later. At first it seemed impossible. Without a keyboard in front of me, I almost couldn't remember how to write, but now that I've gotten used to it, I'm not sure I want to go back.

I meant to post yesterday, something informative and well-researchedabout the origins of Saint Valentine's Day, but the day got away from me, so that post will have to wait until next year. I did, however, write a Valentine's day post for the blog of the wonderful Beehive Hotel. Linda, the owner and a friend of mine, asked me to write a post about my experiences getting married in Italy, and you can find it here.