DAY ONE
Tell someone that in mere moments you are going to drag him to an unspecified extra-national location, restrict his movement by stuffing him into a cramped chair for many hours, introduce sleep deprivation, then enforce miles-long marches that generate painful blisters and other unholy symptoms, and it sounds like a page out of one of Dick Cheney’s torture memos. Present him with a guidebook to Rome beforehand, however, and it becomes a romantic adventure of a lifetime.
I don’t know what possessed me to try to surprise Rob with a week’s vacation for his birthday. Skulking around and making clandestine arrangements give me hives, and Rob is the sort of person who doesn’t like to go on a trip without researching it into tatters before stepping onto the plane. Still, I thought some time away would do us good, and his recent birthday presented motive and opportunity. What ensued was like something out of a mystery novel, if mystery novels usually involved wacky surprises instead of bloody murder. I arranged for a week’s worth of non-Rob coverage at work, arranged with his lovely mother to watch Goblin and provide a staging point for our drive to Dulles, and suggested his sister, who needed a birthday present idea, purchase a particularly picturesque guidebook. Then I packed three bags (including Goblin’s), hid them in the car the night before, and prayed that the dreaded swan flu wouldn’t interfere too much with my nefarious planning.
It didn’t. Everyone played their parts perfectly (even Goblin and the swans), and after a nine-hour United Airlines flight, we breezed through Italian passport control, grabbed our suitcases, and located our fleabag bed and breakfast, where we collapsed into an unplanned seven-hour nap.
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DAY TWO
Day Two of our trip dawned at 6:30 pm when we fought ourselves awake from jetlag-induced slumber. Our bed and breakfast had assigned us a room for the first night but was going to upgrade us for the second, so we couldn’t unpack. Instead, we decided to walk down toward the Coliseum, which was advertised as being relatively close to our room. This was the truth (if you consider a mile relatively close), but navigating Rome is not the same as getting around in a more sensible city. We had our iPhones with GPS-assisted Google maps, but were thwarted by the largely unmarked streets, which bore long Italian names that changed after every intersection and, apparently, with even less provocation at random points in between. We eventually found the awe-inspiring Coliseum at dusk, peered into some other ruins around the Forum, and worked our way down toward the Via del Corso looking for food. We found it, in abbondanza, near the Trevi Fountain. We ate at one of those fabulous random restaurants in the area, our table sitting on the cobblestones of the narrow alley with taxis, mopeds, and strolling accordion players passing inches away. Amazingly delicious, although getting the check in any Roman restaurant, no matter how many people they have waiting to sit down, is an exercise in managing hope and despair.
The after-dinner gelato among the throngs come to bask in the lighted Trevi was just the thing. Rob got a flavor that translated as “English Soup.” I got vanilla, which I presume they considered so boring that it didn’t have a special name. Then the long walk back to our room by the train station. We passed a gay bar across from the Coliseum called Coming Out, which by that time on Saturday night overflowed into the street, forming, as Rob put it, an open-air husband market. We managed to find the intersection near there where Pope Joan allegedly delivered her baby before being murdered by the furious crowd. I’m not one to limit a woman’s choices, but it’s possible she would have had a less bloody end if she had stuck to the husband market.
