Roman Holiday Realized

I'm a old movie lover - plain and simple. On many occasions if you sneak into my home on a rainy Saturday afternoon, you'll find me watching Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Bogey and Bacall. But it isn't often that you get to experience one up close.

As previously mentioned, one of my favorite movies has always been Roman Holiday – Audrey Hepburn at her most charming, Gregory Peck completely gorgeous. The sights, the dialogue, the romance. Ah! I wonder how many people have been to Rome specifically because they saw that movie -- searching for a little lost Hollywood, circa-1950s bliss. To a soul in need of a little bliss those streets and sights could be the salve that saves you.

But here’s the huge difference when you get there…. Rome is in color. Fantastic color, spelled colour because it deserves an extra consonant. It’s startling to walk the streets by the Trevi Fountain or Spanish Steps where the Hepburn/Peck romance blossomed and have it be that vivid.

I was only in Rome for a couple of days, which is a complete crime, but I put a lot of mileage on my sneakers while I was there. I had heard that Rome was dirty, loud and crowded. I found none of this. The city is ancient but wears its years beautifully. If it was pristine you would feel like you were at Universal or Disney instead of Rome. It needs to be worn – for God’s sake you’re walking on streets that are thousands of years old. The major sites were crowded and the area around the Trevi Fountain is especially small but go a half block from any of it and you can be on your own with one or two fellow Romans.

A word about the Romans, or is it Romani? Oh I can’t remember the conjugations anymore – sorry Mr. Lehr. Three years of Latin and all I remember is “Brittania est insula.” Yes, truly England is still an island. NO breaking news there.

Anyway, back to the inhabitants of Rome. The women are willowy and chic and completely put together either at 7:00 a.m. going out or at 4:00 a.m. coming home. It’s annoying unless you embrace it. You do your hair when you go out. You make sure you at least have lipstick on. If you could find a big hat or long silk scarf you’d wear it. But to quote Marisa Tomei, “Like you blend?” The fact is we’ll always be Americans because there’s one thing that sets Italian women apart from American ones regardless of the clothes and attitude. They are part cat. They have to be in order to show that agility walking on 4-inch heels on cobblestones. I, who was not raised to walk on my tiptoes, who had a hard enough time not turning my ankle in sneakers, did not EVEN venture into the big time with heels on those streets. However I do know some drag queens in Provincetown who could give them a run for their money. Ciao bella!

The Roman men, basically Italian men in general, were a surprise. They are just as elegant and stylish as we are led to believe but the majority are tiny. Jeez, I don’t know where someone came up with the notion that Italian men are tall and I have no idea where men’s Vogue finds these guys. Just isn’t the case in reality, kids. They are stylin, but they are piccolo. Guys with smaller waist sizes than me - which is startling since I wear a size 2. Also, they were not nearly as aggressive as I had been led to believe. This is actually a relief if traveling alone… after you get over the initial self doubt of “hey aren’t they supposed to be flirting with me?” Then you realize, well I didn’t really want them to in the first place. The most forward one asked for a kiss before delivering me to my hotel in his cab. The 10 EU pay-off seemed to work just as well and he drove off smiling.

It was my first cab driver who advised seeing the sights of Rome by night, and he was right. It’s beautiful during the day but it’s from another planet at night – even when you’re jet lagged and really just want to find a bed and pillow, it’s impossible to pull yourself from it. The night I was there, there was the White Nights festival featuring Italy’s biggest pop stars for free. Everyone was out and the news helicopters covering the event flew until 4:00 a.m. It was magical.

Even given that beauty the perfect moment had already been had by the time I saw the coliseum lit up. When I was planning my trip I had found a list of hotels with great views. Walking past the Parthenon on that first night I ran into the Hotel Minerva and headed to the rooftop bar/restaurant I had read about. This was my first view of Rome from within and up high, not to mention at sunset. It was completely breathtaking. There was one more couple up there with me… Americans from New York, go figure! So the waiter brought a lovely glass of golden wine and assorted snackies and I settled in to look around in awe (how the hell Roman women stay so willowy when every drink comes with crunchy things I’ll never know. Yes ladies, they do eat them as well. Rotten cat women!).



It was perfect. Completely silent – no sounds of traffic, airplanes, or even people talking – like a belljar had been put over the roof. The only thing moving was the fingers of the shadows as they grew longer against the paving stones of the patio. When the sun hit them right they glowed golden and orange. Then the silence was split in two. No loud tourists or the honking of the horn did it, as would be the case in New York. It was the bells of the surrounding churches - ten churches in all -when they went off on the hour. It shook your chest it was so loud – filling the ears with an ancient calling to vespers. Minutes went by surrounded by that cacophony of sound and then it stopped as quickly as it began.

When I could hear again I looked over at the couple across the patio from me and asked out loud, “So you think they do that for the tourists?”
The truth was it didn’t matter. Go ahead and give me a movie moment. I’ll take it any day of the week. When I look at my pictures of that moment I can close my eyes and in the deep recesses of my memory I can still hear the last ringing of those bells. Multo Bene!

There are No Straight Roads to Amalfi – The Real Reason Why God Created Barf Bags

Now, having had problems keeping my stomach under me on the straight byways of the New Jersey Turnpike during traffic jams, I had a feeling that making the journey from Naples to Amalfi was going to be the Mount Everest of Car-Sickness travels. For that reason I had considered very strongly driving it myself (it’s hard to be sick when you’re behind the wheel). After all, I had driven across half of Australia passing road-trains (tractor-trailers with 3-5 trailers attached), and through the narrow hedgerows of England - both on the other side of the road. I had driven a 26’ moving truck with a manual transmission from Washington D.C. to Charlotte, N.C. – while sitting on 3 pillows. Come on, how bad could it be?

A good idea, until I saw the reaction my mom and her friend Anna had. They turned pale as ghosts and started peppering me with questions starting with, Are you insane? Do you know how the Italians drive? Do you know how small those roads are? Do you know there are no guard rails (turns out there are)? Question after question convinced me that while I might be an excellent driver, akin to Rain Man, was I really ready to drive on roads that were formerly donkey trails (relatively recently in Italian historical terms) up against German tour buses on the other side? Uh ok, maybe not.

So Katharina arranged for a car to pick me up at the train station in Naples. We flew down the highway dodging through traffic and past Mt. Vesuvius. My driver was a good tour guide who regularly pointed out the sights. I thought – hey if the roads are like this all the way, I’ll be fine. Then we hit the mountains on the way to the coastline. You can’t just go straight up and over - so we started to climb. Corkscrew turn after corkscrew turn for 1.5 HOURS. My stomach made the first 10 of these with no problemo and then completely gave up on the 11th... of 200 (at least) such turns. This is not good.

I tried to figure out what sins I had committed that had damned me to this hellish, Dante-esque road. I did this while desperately holding on with white-knuckled hands to the door handles on each side of the car to minimize the swing, I tried yoga breathing. I tried staring at the horizon but that kept moving (works better on a boat, Dad). I tried praying. I tried to think of a song to get my mind off things, but the only one I could come up with was “Help!” courtesy of the Beatles… which didn’t. I was dying. The last thing I wanted was to be that poor American woman who couldn’t handle the roads of Italy – so I held on for dear life reciting my pseudo-Buddist chant of “Doooon’t get siiiiick. Don’t get siiiiiick.”

Looking in the rear view mirror, the driver noticed the particular shade of green that I was turning. He slowed down. He tried talking to me. He tried pointing out more sites. Nope, sorry, that isn’t going to work. I thought, “Can’t you see I’m concentrating on not getting sick in your car buddy? Just get us off this horrid road. Make it stop. Make it stop.” But I said nothing – just smiled wanly. He was being kind.

After one particularly bad section, I swallowed my pride and told him to pull over immediately. I had to feel solid ground beneath me. Before the car was even stopped I was out of it. He seemed really nervous as I stood leaning on a wall trying to breathe and not heave. I thought he was worried that I might jump just to end this misery, but I later found out he was nervous because of the location of where we pulled over. In my crisis I had made him pull into a cemetery… which in Italy is extraordinarily bad karma for a journey. Frankly, it seemed fairly appropriate to me. Go directly to coffin, do not pass go.

So I climbed back in the car again, and made it for another 15 minutes and had him pull over again. No dead bodies, except for my own zombie form, on this particular stretch. I was embarrassed and apologized that it was taking us so long to get to Amalfi.

He said, “Senorina, please don’t worry. When I was a small boy my family had to pull over every 100 meters and let me out. You’ve done much better than that. You didn’t have milk this morning, did you?”

I said, “No, at least I did one thing right.”

And just like that, I had an epiphany. When I was a kid and having this problem the only thing that worked was for me to be in the FRONT seat, not the back. What an idiot I was. I told him I was riding shotgun for the rest of the trip and like a snap of the fingers, the nausea was gone. I could actually enjoy the beauty around me and it is SPECTACULARLY BEAUTIFUL on that coast. I could have a conversation and just be human – all the way into Amalfi.

When I arrived, I called Katharina and told her that I had just gotten in. I told her how hard the drive was, and that my mom would never have made it regardless of how many “Cheez-It” crackers she ate (our family cure all).

Katharina listened to all of my drama and replied casually, “Oh, I always take sea-sick pills for that trip here.”

Ok, so I’m a moron. So my advice if you go to the Amalfi coast is to stock up on the Dramamine and enjoy the view. Or drive it yourself... You can guess what I'll do next time. If I'm going to die I'd like to be the one at the wheel causing it.

A Florence by Any Name or Region

I grew up, for most of my adolescent and teenage years, in a small town called Florence, NJ. Known for breeding incredible football, basketball and baseball athletes – at least at the high school level. However, it wasn’t exactly a center of excitement off the athletic field. There’s a Main Street, a couple of taverns, Rocco’s pizza, a small Wawa, a brand new boat ramp to the Delaware River, a pretty park by the river, and I’m told a new high school now. It’s small town New Jersey – suburban and happy to stay within its borders. Borders that were always a little too suffocating for me.

From early on I knew there would be no way that I would be a townie. I didn’t have three generations who lived there, none of my family had ever worked in the Roebling Steel Mill (the blue-collar litmus test for being a true townie), my brother went to Catholic school 30 miles away, my parents both worked in corporations and they did strange things like biking, hiking, driving all the way to Cape Cod for summer vacations and even going to Europe. All of this was different from my friend’s families. I dreamt from an early age of getting somewhere where I didn’t know everyone since I was in kindergarten.

My senior year something amazing happened. They opened the doors to Florence High School to its first real influx of international exchange students. I don’t know if they continue the program still, I hope they do, but this decision brought one of my closest friends into my life, Katharina.

Katharina was different. She didn’t care if she blended with the townies. She knew she never would. This was liberating for me. We did different things… actually left town. Did beach runs. Went to Princeton and New York City. Talked about what our lives were going to be like when we were out of that town. Sang and laughed and basically laid the foundation for a lifelong friendship. After graduation, I knew that she would go back to the big city, Frankfurt, Germany, eventually to attend law school. I knew I was heading to college where I could be anonymous amongst the 42,000 enrolled students at Rutgers University. We committed to being friends forever, but knowing how many of those promises fall by the wayside when growing up, I don’t think anyone thought we would actually do it.

There’s a great song by Sade called, Maureen, and every time I hear it, it reminds me of Katharina. “You were a souped-up car in that rent a go-cart town, and I miss you, Maureen.” And I did miss her when she was gone.

That was 20 years ago, we figured out while out to dinner two nights before her wedding in Amalfi, Italy. She was the reason why I planned the trip to Italy in the first place. Her marriage to Stephan, THE ONE (she told me early on), gave me the perfect reason.

Over the years we had stayed in touch, closer at times and more distant at others, but always finding our way back to each other. Meeting up again like we had talked yesterday about our careers, relationships, the updates from Florence, reminders of the songs we used to sing while driving to the Shore.

I visited her in Paris while she was in school there for a year. I visited her in Boston during her law internship. She arranged to be part of the exchange program at her law firm which led her to be in New York City for three months – the best three months I had had in years… boy did I miss her when she left then. And now through the advent of email, instant messaging, cell phones and salaries that allow us to travel easier – we continue our friendship closer than ever.

I told her when I got to Italy that I would have to take a detour on my way to Amalfi to stop in Florence. The real Florence – technically Firenze. She jokingly told me that it was going to look a little different than the one that I came from – the Rocco’s pizza would be different. She was the first person I called when I arrived to the ringing of the bells at the Duomo.

So I got off the train after winding my way through the hills of Tuscany and dragged my 1,000 lb luggage (notice it gets heavier as the trip continues) into the middle of Florence. I had seen pictures of Florence’s terra cotta roofs, the Duomo, the Campanile. I knew it would be different. Here was a Florence I could live in.

Now, most travel writers have chronicled the beauty of Florence for centuries. I will not be able to improve on their prose, but suffice it to say that Mark Twain was right when he wrote, “Lump the whole thing! Say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo!” I will add the footnote, “Especially Florence!” It is a beautiful city and under the perfect blue skies of Tuscany you can see where Michelangelo (a Florence native) found his inspiration for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Florence is a thoroughly walkable city and you can’t really get too lost if you use the Duomo as your homing beacon, which was also only a half block from my hotel. And given the picture perfect days that I had while there, I could not bring myself to duck inside out of the bright sunshine to view the priceless artistic treasures of the Uffizi, or any of the many museums. Even Michelangelo's David paled when compared to that blue sky. Why go inside when God was putting on an incredible display of light and beauty on the walls of the city’s churches and buildings? Crimson, terra cotta, gold – the warmest colors heightened to be almost too vibrant by the angles of the sun. Morning brought cooler light cutting through the mist from the Arno River – casting it in ethereal light. But dusk is magic time in Florence. Like God created the sun only to light Florence. The Ponte Vecchio glowed like a sunset against the blue waters of the Arno. The hills in the distance warmed to the sun’s embrace before letting it go for the day.

On my first night in Florence, I sat in an outdoor seating area of an English pub called J.J. Cathedral that is in the square anchored by the Duomo. It seems to be a gathering spot for ex-pats as well as locals. While there I met people from Ireland, other parts of Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Texas (the rowdiest of the bunch). The most fascinating conversation was one I had with three guys from Florence. I complimented them on the beauty of their city. The response was a wistful reply of, “It’s ok, but it’s too small. I think New York City is much better.” I nearly spit out my beer I was laughing so hard. How many times had I said that phrase about my Florence? They looked at me like I was nuts until I said, “If you want to see a small Florence, visit my hometown in New Jersey.” After explaining about my non-cosmopolitan roots, they understood my reaction better, but after trying to convince me that this Florence was still too small, we agreed to disagree and ordered another round.

Thinking back on that conversation later, I thought, maybe everyone’s hometown is still too small for them. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Otherwise the explorers would have stayed home and new worlds would have never been discovered. So a “Florence” in any location, is still where you come from and where you want to get the hell out of as soon as possible.