…of course, pretty much anyplace would be from the window seat of a Trenitalia train. It’s been a relaxing change of pace to sit and watch the Tuscan scenery roll past–especially after a frenzied trip from our hotel across town to Termini train station this morning.

The friendly folks at the front desk called us a taxi, and one arrived pretty quickly. Unfortunately it was for someone else, so we waited some more, checking the time with increasing urgency. Just as we were about to give up all hope, two cabs arrived simultaneously. We started rolling our bags toward the closest, but the drivers waved us off. This being Italy, an angry negotiation was required before we could go–first between the drivers about whose fare we were, and then with the front desk about why they had called multiple taxis. Finally, after all that, we were allowed to load into one of the cabs with just 15 minutes to get to the train station.

Long story short, we made it with minutes to spare and settled into our window seats next to a couple who turned out to be from the Bay Area–the Coastside in fact, where they had spent some time in El Granada, just a couple miles from our house. They got off in Florence, and their seats were quickly taken by a mother and daughter from the East Bay. It seems like everyone traveling in Italy this year is from San Francisco!

Snapshots from Rome
OK, so our literal snapshots are in the gallery from our previous post, but here are a few random memories of the past four days–mostly about meals:

• Our best dinner in Rome was at a tiny place called Da Sergio, just a couple blocks off Campo de’ Fiori, but worlds away from the menu touristica joints on the square. From the brusque service, to the checkered tablecloths, to the tasty house wine from a barrel, to the delicious homemade cacio e pepe and carbonara, this place was the real deal and seemed to attract as many locals as tourists.

• At lunch on Friday, our table was next to that of an elderly woman who appeared to be the Cliff Clavin of the restaurant. She was clearly a regular, as the staff obviously knew her a bit too well, judging by how they kept her wine glass full and rolled their eyes at everything she said–which was plenty. We enjoyed talking with her, even though (or perhaps because) she didn’t know any English and we were limited to phrasebook Italian. By the end of the meal she was asking me to translate to a young Russian couple, at whom she wanted to direct her opinion that all godless communists were doomed to hell.

• It was hard to reconcile the huge throngs of tourists with the obviously depressed Italian economy. Our tour guide for the Forum and Colosseum, Heidi (despite the German name she was a native of Rome), complained several times about how crowded everyplace was even before peak tourist season, and we certainly encountered crowds all over town. But we also heard that the Colosseum has had to drastically curtail its archeology programs, and that the Borghese Gallery can’t afford to run the air conditioning that protects some of the world’s greatest works of art. Someone is making a lot of money off all the visitors, but very little of it seems to be helping improve the infrastructure or enhance the sites that everyone comes to see.

We had a fantastic time in Rome, but we are also ready for a change of scenery in Venice. I’m sure the crowds will be at least as big, and the Venetian infrastructure is in an even more dire situation, but I am optimistic there will still be places off the beaten path (and there are few paths in Europe more beaten than the stretch of Venice between Rialto and San Marco) where we can lose ourselves for a while in some lonely and lovely corner of La Serenissima.