Day 113 Leaving Italy

Back in Rome, we got a room at a cool hotel overlooking the expensive designer boutiques by the Spanish steps. The names read like a Vogue magazine: Yves St. Laurent, Prada, Georgio Armani, and so on. The prices read like misprints: jacket $3600, pants $1200, belt $390, and so on.

Our last night in Rome, we did our favorite things. Drinking water out of the fountain at the Spanish steps, eating gelato at Trevi fountain, and just admiring the ancient city flooded with modernity. The gelato we had was notable. We both had honey flavor, which was spectacularly tasty, and I also had armangnac flavor which was nothing short of phenomenally delicious. (Armangnac is a like cognac, but from a different region). It was a great end to our gelato quest. The only problem is that the bar has been raised so high, I am sure our future will be full of disappointing gelato consumption.

We had an early flight and had to pack the night before. One whole suitcase was not enough to hold everything we bought. It was my first ominous clue as to how much I spent. We ended up having three bags to check and three to carry on the plane. Oh wow, we bought a lot of stuff. For me, leaving wasn’t a big deal since I will be returning for a more extended exploration. For Eric, he was torn as most people are at the end of a vacation; longing to get home to the comforts of his own bed and reluctant to part with the thrill of the new and different.

And then we went back to Portland.

Day 112 Pisa Italy

It felt a little sad leaving Venice. The dramatic beauty of the canals, architecture, and charming winding streets exert a pull on the uncharted, romantic depths of the brain. Turning our backs on the city and entering the train station was not something we longed for, and we lingered on the steps outside, watching the parade of people and boats along the Grand Canal, and feeding the pigeons the last crumbly bits of our lunch.

The train to Pisa was uneventful except for one stop where a young woman, dressed shabbily and toting a sign in Italian, stopped by our seats, pointing at her very large “pregnant” belly. I would not have minded parting with some small change if she actually looked pregnant. She aggressively pointed at her sign and then Eric and then me, yet her skinny little face looked not the least bit preggers. When she puddled spit on her lips, threatening to spew it on me, I waved her away, saying, “Vai! Vai!” Thankfully, she gave up to harass someone else.

Pisa is a small town with little other than the tower and basilica so we only stayed one night. I was happy to see prices, except at the tower, were less than anywhere we had been. The tower was expensive at $45 and worth every penny. We didn’t really get an appreciation for how much it was leaning until we climbed the narrow spiral stairs to the top. The nearly window less stairs are deceiving to the senses because without a point of reference, you cannot tell which way they are leaning, so you end up falling against the walls as you ascend. To add to the fun, the steps are so worn by millions of tourist footsteps, they have 3 inch curved indents, making it hazardous to not watch your step. I had envisioned lovely marble floors on each level and was thus surprised to discover the center of the tower is an unadorned shaft. It is only a bell tower. A near fatally leaning, heavily touristed, rightfully famous, bell tower. That was cool, now back to Rome.

Day 110 The Labyrinth of Venice

We again faced the question of what to do on Christmas day. Well, some of the day. After eating and then shopping at the strangely large number of open shops, we head over to feed the pidgeons at Piazza San Marco, Eric's absolute favorite activity. For only one euro you get a packet of enough dried corn for about 3-5 minutes of bird feeding frenzy, depending on your distribution technique. The birds are accustomed to people and have no qualms about landing on your head, shoulders, or outstreched arms. When there is a bird sitting on your shoulder, looking you in the eye from four inches away, and Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, doesn't run through your mind, you are either too young or crazy. It didn't bother me to have them land on me, but staring at a sharp little black beak that close to my face bothered me.

Eric loved being buried in birds. He wanted to stay there all day, feeding money to the birds. We ending up stopping there everday and spent more than I want to remember. Oh well, that is the cost of fun.

In the evening, I thought of something fun to do. There are about 3,000 streets and alleyways in Venice, many too small to map, and hundreds of little bridges. What better to explore the city by running at full speed through the narrow, underlit stone streets, taking turns at random, with the intention of getting lost? We ran at a breakneck pace down incredibly narrow alleyways, twisted and turned, and crossed countless bridges, hit deadends at canals and doorways, ran back, jumped off or over anything possible, and ran some more. It was a fun way to get a massive dose of the beautiful nightime city of Venice. We got lost and took the first vaporetto we saw, and ended up right back at the Rialto bridge. Running with Eric through the city was one of my favorite experiences in Italy.

Day 107 Pasta and the Pantheon

The concrete 142 foot (43m) half dome roof of the Pantheon looks as if it was build yesterday despite being almost 2,000 years old. It is about 23 feet (7m) thick at the base and only two feet thick at the 30 foot (9m) hole in the top. The hole at the top, the oculus, serves as an oversized clock as the circle of sun traces its way across the marble floor. Engineers still don’t know exactly how they did it in one single concrete pour. That is some impressive concrete! Our modern concrete has no chance of lasting that long. So much for our superior high technology.

Much of the outside of the Pantheon was stripped for materials over the centuries and so its humble exterior belies the splendor that has remained untouched within. Definitely a must see. It is free too.

Maybe I should not be surprised that the pasta in Italy is so good. It is like gelato, I can’t get enough. Far and away the best pasta I have had was in a small family run basement restaurant. It was a little on the upscale side but I felt like splurging. I inquired about the house specialty and was told something in Italian I could not understand and was then directed to look at a big black cylinder in the back of the dimly lit stone restaurant. Sure! Why not? Eric ordered lamb chops and we feasted on spindly bread sticks, soda and wine until the food arrived.

The waiter wheeled over the cart with the ominous black cylinder perched upon it. It was a giant wheel of cheese! How can you go wrong with that?! He dumped a bowl of incredibly hot pasta noodles and sauce into the hollowed out center of the cheese and furiously stirred, scraping cheese from the walls of the cylinder. He then scooped the steaming mass of noodles, sauce, and cheese out and into my bowl. Oh my! It was strewn with pancetta bits! (Its like bacon) It was without a doubt the best pasta I have ever had. I could not get enough and had to force myself to eat slower. Oh my god, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. Mmmmmmmmmm.

We topped it off with caffe lattes and panna cotta drenched in a dark chocolate sauce. Wow! The trip was going much much better now.

Day 106 Oh Heavenly Gelato!

Let me start by saying that gelato is not ice cream.

Not even close.

Good gelato is a divine semi-frozen concoction that delights the senses, stimulates the brain, improves the mood, satisfies hunger, cures leprosy, holds down inflation, and makes you not care that you should have should have changed the oil in your car 8,000 miles ago.

Now, this does not apply to any gelato; in fact Rome is overflowing with gelaterias that insidiously pass off pathetic imitations to oblivious tourists. My favorite is pistachio from Old Bridge Gelateria just across from the Vatican, shown above. Skip the Sistine Chapel, just suck on a fantastic semi-frozen bit of pistachio flavored heaven instead. The lines are shorter and it won’t hurt your neck so much.

We visited the Coliseum and Roman forum today. Seeing the massive ruins of both and imagining what they were like when they were new and covered in beautifully endless marble and elegant statues is difficult for the mind to grasp. To think that they did these incredible structures with only simple tools and back breaking labor is too much. I can only imagine what it would have been like for a peasant from the country side to wander into Rome and see these God-scaled buildings. It would have been the equivalent of watching a spaceship land.

We are still exhausted and walking is more effort than it should be. We came back to the hostel early to sleep.

Day 101 An Inauspicious Start to Italy

Things were not starting off as I had hoped and we had not even left Portland yet. I was tired after flying from Brasil and getting sick with sinus congestion and a cough. Eric had just got off a flight that was rerouted due to weather and he had spent many sleepless airport hours trying to get back to Portland so we could fly to Italy. Neither of us slept on the plane to Newark. His biological clock told him to be awake and I was too sick and uncomfortable to sleep. One interesting side note; I almost walked into Lyle Lovett at the Newark airport. He looked better in person than I expected but it still doesn’t explain the Julia Roberts thing.

The Alitalia flight to Rome was uncomfortable despite the bountiful legroom and wide seats. I was achy and tired and coughing and uncomfortable no matter what. Eric was still too awake and excited to sleep. Luckily, the dinner on the plane was very good. We had pasta with cheese and bacon chunks, sautéed chicken with vegetables, cold green been and ham antipasto, lemon chiffon cake with sliced almonds, Tillamook cheese, crackers, coffee, and yummy wine from first class because they ran out of the cheap economy class wine by the time they got to me. It was a brief highpoint--things went downhill from there.

A stone faced immigration official stamped our passports and we were officially in Italy. Yeah! (or so I thought)

On the half hour train from the airport into central Rome, the need for sleep caught up with Eric. He turned from an excited, “ Wow, I’m in Italy” mile-a-minute talker into lifeless zombie in the first minute on the train. Still able to walk if guided, he stumbled along like a drunkard to the metro, his wheeled suitcase barely hanging from a boneless arm. The problem was that we were too early to check in to the hostel, by about four hours. Wanting to kill some time and to take advantage of the weak winter sun to wake us up a little, we plodded the eight blocks from the metro stop to the hostel, still arriving three and a half hours too early. We sat on the marble stairs for a while, we sat at the hard wooden bar tables for a while, we sat on the wooden benches a while. I was completely exhausted and feeling very very unwell. Eric was just plain delirious at that point. He kept talking about wanting to be in his own bed and feeling like he was going to vomit. It was the longest three and a half hours I have spent in a long time.

Finally, at two in the afternoon, we collapsed into our dorm beds, sleeping fitfully for about five hours, at which point I thought we would try to see something to help get our time clocks adjusted, so we jumped a bus to the Vatican, the closest point of interest. It was a shame we were still so tired because St. Peter’s Square, Bernini’s graceful and superhuman scaled piazza, is truly stunning at night. Almost entirely alone in the chilly night air, we marveled as best we could with our glazed senses. Things were going much better than they were early in the day and I was feeling optimistic. That should have been my first warning.

We headed back to sleep some more and start the next day fresh. I wish that was what happened, but no. I was aching all over and coughing. Eric couldn’t sleep at all because he was so over tired and feeling out of place in the hostel dorm. He was sick all night, pacing the room, threatening to vomit, and begging for his own bed. Miserable doesn’t begin to describe the experience. Only at about six in the morning did he fall asleep. I would have been thrilled sleep away the day with him except that this hostel locked everyone out of the rooms from 10-2 so they could clean. Oh joy. I was so tired then that I cannot now recall what we did during those four hours other than eat gelato. We were back in bed promptly at two o’clock, sleeping until seven-ish. We got something to eat, I don’t remember what, and went back to bed. Fortune smiled on us and we managed to sleep until morning.

This wasn’t how I had thought the first two days in Rome would be. I was disappointed because I wanted this to be so fun for Eric and until this point it was about as un-fun as it gets. If I have learned anything about travel so far, I have learned that you have to roll with whatever happens and keep going--things will get better. Or worse. I am shooting for better.

Day 97 Leaving Brasil

Heading back to the USA, I am sitting aisle side on a flight headed south from Brasilia to Sao Paulo. Sure it is the wrong direction I want to go, yet somehow it seems appropriate that I go the opposite direction for a couple hours and then turn around and go back. From Sao Paulo I go to Dallas and then Portland to get Eric and go to Italy. I will only be in Portland two days, brief enough that the time change of six hours from Brasil won’t screw me up before we head nine time zones to Italy.

Leaving Brasil is hard for me. Even though I have only seen one other identifiable gringo during my month and a half here, making me feel like I really stand out, and almost no one speaks English, I have felt very welcome to be in the country. People have been very considerate, and thankfully, tolerant of my pitiful Portuguese. And it is always hard for me to leave a place with good food.

Patricia’s family treated me as one of their own, looking out for me, and really going out of their way to make me feel at home. The cohesiveness of her family was remarkable to experience. Their weekly family gatherings were chaotic, lively, frequently loud, and fun.



Hardest of all, is of course leaving Patricia. It will be a long five months until I see her again. Thank God for Skype.

On the positive side of leaving Brasil, I haven’t seen Eric for ninety-seven days and I miss him very much. I can’t wait to explore Italy with him.