We arrived at Fiumicino airport at about 3:35 pm, on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. After a brief panic when we found ourselves at the domestic baggage claim and had to walk outside to the next terminal and talk our way back into the Schengen claim area, we retrieved our two bags. I changed some money at the airport bank (wincing at the 6% service charge, but we needed the funds immediately for the security deposit on the apartment), bought a phone card, called the apartment agent (with a good introduction to Italian recorded phone messages when I first dialed the initial 0 which was no longer needed and then found out that the California rental agency had gotten one digit wrong on the number) to announce our arrival, and we all got into a taxi.
We had originally planned to take the train from the airport to Trastevere station and then a cab from there, but the agent convinced us that it would cost almost as much and take twice as long. I think it would have cost about two-thirds, but in any case the taxi gave us a pleasant ride; A was a bit concerned at riding at 150 kph without a seatbelt, but the driver was smooth and very good at getting past slower (read: regular) drivers.
We drove past EUR, Mussolini's cold futurist complex, with the dome of San Paolo alle Tre Fontane oddly fitting in; past the reconstructed San Paolo fuori le Mura, with its exterior mosaics; through the Aurelian walls at the Pyramid of Cestius; past the round and rectangular Republican temples on the bank of the Tiber; and across the Ponte G. Mazzini, down the other bank of the Tiber and back around through the Porta Settimiana dividing Trastevere from Gianicolo. These were things I had only read about, or seen tiny pictures of in our Eyewitness book, but I had a sense of where we were most of the time.
The agent, Massimiliano, was waiting for us outside the apartment door, but we had to wait while he reached the owner on a mobile. The street, narrow and cobbled, with cars parked on one side and no sidewalks, was strung with red and yellow ribbons. "Roma won the championship," he explained, referring to soccer, "so these are everywhere." "The last time I was here was in 1982," I said, smiling. "Ah, we won the World Cup then."
The owner, a friendly older woman, showed up, let us in, and showed us around. To get in, we had to unlock the front door, then the lobby door, and climb a wide flight of stairs to the first floor. Oddly enough, we had to unlock the doors on the way out as well. I hoped there wouldn't be a fire. About two days before we left, I discovered the switch on the wall out of reach of the doors that did the unlocking without a key.
The apartment turned out to be quite large. It overlooked the street we had been standing in minutes before, and was laid out in a linear fashion. We entered into a living room, with a glass-and-white-wood screen at the left end hiding a kitchenette. There was a small dining table, a few chairs, and a comfortable sofa. To the right was a hallway leading to a small bedroom with two single beds whose pillows hung over them to make couches; then a bathroom; then a second bedroom with a double bed, an armoire, two dressers, and an ensuite bathroom.
We paid Massimiliano the L.500.000 deposit, got his correct number and that of the owner, and they left. N did some quick unpacking. The kids wanted to loll around the apartment and draw in their notebooks, but after the usual "We didn't come to Rome to sit around" speech, they agreed to go out for a short walk. Z wanted to see the Pantheon; my guidebooks said it closed at 5:30 (it was 6 by this time) but I said we might be able to see something almost as interesting. We crossed the Ponte Mazzini, on which I discovered that I had left the small Rough Guide book behind. I went back to get it.
The map in that book wasn't that much help, since a lot of the streets weren't labelled on it, and our full-sized folding map was hard to read. A was quite anxious about the traffic, cars coming down the narrow streets or reversing out of tight spots, scooters even in the "zone pedonale"; "Is Naples going to be even worse?" asked Z, and I assured her it was.
We walked through Campo dei Fiori; since it was late in the afternoon, no trace remained of the market stalls. Then up to Piazza Navona. The buildings and especially Bernini's fountain had been cleaned since 82; the grime that had surprised me was gone. There were more buskers, in the international style: guitarists with amplifiers, magicians with boomboxes, human statues.
We walked to the east, Z sulking and complaining about the heat and her hunger. It wasn't terrifically hot, probably around 30 degrees Celsius, with a slight breeze, and mostly sunny. But apart from a couple of slices of sourdough bread and cheese, which I'd brought from home and she'd eaten in the lounge at Frankfurt airport, she'd had nothing else to eat that day.
We emerged into Piazza della Rotonda and saw that the Pantheon was open. "What's that building?" I asked Z. "I don't care," she pouted. We went inside; the sun was oblique, but enough light came through the oculus, the round hole in the dome. Eventually Z recognized the place, but she still wasn't as enthusiastic as she might have been. I took out the Rough Guide and looked at restaurants in the area. It was seven; we settled on a pizzeria called La Focaccia , near Piazza Navona.
On the way out, though, I spotted the cafe La Tazza d'Oro, and went in to order a quarter kilo of coffee ground for the moka pot I knew would be in the apartment. The person doing the grinding not only spoke to me in English but twigged to the fact that I was of Indian origin, since he was as well.
It should have been straightforward to get to Piazza Navona from there, but we managed to get lost, going too far north, and then turning too far south and coming within a block of the Pantheon again. When we regained the Piazza, the kids were near wrecks. The name of the street we were looking for (Via della Pace) appeared on two arms of an intersection, at ninety degrees to each other. Eventually N found the place, which didn't have a sign out front or on top. It was right by the small church of Santa Maria della Pace, with a terrific miniature portico by Pietro da Cortona, to which no one else paid the slightest attention.
N and the kids ordered a pizza with smoked swordfish, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil; I ordered something called a "saltimbocca Napoletano", which turned out to be a round of freshly-baked flatbread split and stuffed with prosciutto, mozzarella di bufala, cherry tomatoes, and arugula. It was all quite good, though the house red wine was almost as hot as my food.
We took the kids back into Piazza Navona to order tartufi from a famous cafe. We got them to go and sat on a bench in the square, but it wasn't until we had finished that N pointed out that we had gone to an impostor. The famous cafe was Tre Scalini, but we had gone to a place called Tre Tartufi right across the street. That pretty much summed up the day. The gelato wasn't bad, though.
The kids were leery of letting us navigate on the way home, but they really didn't have much choice. As it turned out, they were right. We went out the wrong end of Piazza Navona, and when we reached the river, we seemed to be a little over from where we should. But I could see Castel Sant'Angelo to the left, which made no sense. After a bit of looking at the map, I realized that we had gone north instead of south and had hit the river on the other side of the bend that defines the western end of the centro storico.
Fortunately, it was a pleasant walk around the bend and along the Tiber. We walked under the Castel, catching a glimpse of St. Peter's, and then along a street set below and back from the busy riverside highway. It had cooled down somewhat, and the street was straight so that we could see the cars and scooters coming some distance off.
It was ten by the time the kids got to bed. I was still feeling a bit restless and decided to take a walk into Trastevere. This was a matter of quickly walking down to the Porta Settimana. There are over a hundred thousand students at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", and it seemed as if every one of them was in the habit of cruising Trastevere on a Saturday night. I felt as I had in 82 when walking the streets around Rue St. Denis in Paris; alone in the middle of a party. Had I been twenty years younger again, I probably would have felt the same, and I probably would have cared more about it.
I noted a few useful addresses of trattorie, a bakery, a laundromat. Then I retraced my steps, past even more arriving cars trying to find a parking lot. It turned out the apartment was just above a pub. It seemed quite quiet when I turned in, but it got noisier (though never as bad as a more trendy bar would have; it seemed to cater to gays and lesbians, and encouraged conversation, but conversation could keep us awake just as well as dancing). I drifted in and out of sleep. The bar wound down. Then the streets seemed filled with scooters for a while. About five am the birds started up in chorus. At five-thirty I got up.