Rome, Italy, November 28th: I hate that bus but I do love the rest of the city

Thrud had an art history symposium or something of the sort related to her job that meant she had to go to Rome in the early morning; I followed in the afternoon. It's about a two-hour train from Florence to Rome, a fast ear-popping ride through the infinite tunnels necessary to navigate those famous Tuscan hills. Things flatten out a bit when you get into Latium.

The problem with taking the train into Rome is that although the train is the most civilized, cheapest, and friendliest way of traveling in Europe, in Rome it does mean you have to interact with Termini. Termini is the train station, on the very far east of town, and it's continuously crowded and very filthy, and there are no real signs, and no real explanations, and sometimes the ticket machines will for no reason refuse to take credit cards. It is also thronged with hucksters, con men, pickpockets, sneak thieves, and unlicensed cabs. It is, technically, a walkable distance from the parts of the city a tourist is most likely to be interested in-- it can't be more than a mile and a half from the Vittore Emmanuele monument, which is de facto Center City and right next to the Forum-- but you do not want to walk that mile-plus carrying whatever bags you have, because the streets are hilly and the cobbles are ankle-wrenching and the hucksters are persistent. (The pavement is peculiarly bad around Termini.) So the choices are cab, if you can afford it (and if you can you should) and the bus. The good news is that you will almost certainly not have to pay for the bus, because it will be too crowded for you to fight your way to the ticket slot, and because the system wherein you buy a ticket from... somewhere or other... and then use it in the buses is sufficiently complex that no one expects tourists to be able to navigate it, particularly since it is only labeled in Italian. The bad news about the bus is everything else. It will be hot, crowded, more crowded than that, so crowded that you will not need to hold on when it goes around curves because the people around you will hold you up. You will not get a seat. And it is full of-- well, for a while I thought of it as the Pervert Bus, after something from a Japanese video game, because there are a lot of those, and there is nothing to be done about it because no one has any elbow room; also, keep your possessions in your line of sight and if possible any zippers or closures on your bags in your grip at all times. But if you take it often enough you will be robbed anyhow.

I lost a small wallet with credit card and driver's license on my way out of Rome this time; I had sensibly split up card and cash, one in pocket and one in bag, so that hopefully only one could be swiped at any given point, and had also left my passport in Florence for safekeeping, but it is still extremely distressing to have something stolen. Somebody managed to open my bag, and I do not feel as bad about this as I would if they'd gotten into the pocket-- Thrud described to me a terrible time once when she could feel the guy taking her phone as the bus doors opened but had no space to do anything about it, and no one could grab him when she yelled, as he had already dived out. I do, however, feel pretty bad about it. It is violating and inconvenient and depersonalizing and makes you hate people, and you do need to report it to the cops ASAP because your bank, for instance, may well check with them, but all the cops can do is shrug expressively and tell you better luck next time.

It is also a bus on which people are prone to become ill, because it is so hot and crowded and makes such hairpin turns. It does at least two hundred and seventy degrees of arc around Trajan's Column, which might be nice if you could see out the windows. Fortunately we didn't have any of that wretchedness this time, because if somebody is ill the entire bus is shortly thereafter.

At any rate, on the way into town I got out at Largo Argentina, and there I was in Rome.

I don't know how to explain the precise difference between Rome and Florence, though it is a very definite quality and one you can feel instantly. It is not quite analogous to the U.S. difference between New York City and Boston, although that's a start, for Rome is larger, louder, noisier, more metropolitan, and Florence is smaller, quieter, more scholarly. It is a difference in period, since in Rome you have two options, the Christian and the pagan, the churches and the Baroque history or the Republic and the Empire, whereas Florence is entirely still in about 1520, thank you, and will be as long as she lives. But you might think that because Rome is larger and more disreputable, more full of thieves and scammers, that she might be less friendly, and that is the exact opposite of the case. Rome is Roma, which is Amor backwards, the City of Venus as she always has been, and Rome is an exuberantly loving city, an expansive, assertive, extrovert of an old bawd. Florence is a city that rewards you the more the more you learn about specific place, the powers and properties and moments of history, the trivia of all those painters and rulers. In Florence you will eventually begin to feel as though the Medici are real and close acquaintances. Florence is very friendly; Florence does want to be loved; but she will not reach out and make you love her. Rome will. Rome does not give a damn whether you know anything of her last three thousand years or not. All roads lead to her, so you're there, so it's a party. One never quite feels out-of-doors in Rome, because the streets, while wide, and the palazzos, while wider, are consistently full of people behaving as though they were in their own living rooms. Which they are. In 1999 when I first went to Rome I was amused and a little shocked because, at Eastertide and good weather, Rome was the first time I'd ever seen anyone make love outside, which they will do just sitting on the piazza benches next to you. This would never, ever happen in Florence. Florence has interior courtyards for that sort of thing, so that only the people who live in the same building see you; and that, I believe, is the difference.

Largo de Torre Argentina is a bus hub, an old temple complex smack in the middle of downtown which was excavated thoroughly a few decades back, so that it is well below street level. They threw a three-foot wall around it to stop people falling in when they had found out everything archaeological that could be found, and made it into a cat sanctuary. Cats, you see, are citizens of Rome and no cat born in the City may be removed from the City boundaries (this is a law), so there are quite a few strays and it was getting to be something of a problem. Now the City catches strays and neuters them and drops them off at Largo Argentina, where they are fed to make them stay, and do. If you live in the City permanently, you are permitted to adopt one. The rest of us can combine staring at old temples with staring at the cats. Most are very wild, but some are friendly and self-assured and will mug you for spare tidbits. I petted three or four this trip, mostly the large black odd-eyed ruffians who seem to be a family strain. Thrud and I were also delighted to see a surmise borne out: Rome has such a density of churches that it sometimes seems as though there is at least one on every block, and sure enough there was walking along at one point a cat who was all black except for a perfectly white and perfectly rectangular patch just under the chin. We aren't sure if his church is down in the cat sanctuary, but that he was a priest is obvious.

Some of the best street pizza in Rome can also be found just off Largo Argentina. Street pizza, pizza al taglio, is a Roman specialty findable only in a few other cities in Italy, and all over Rome. It is pizza made in brick ovens in giant rectangular pans on focaccia crust, hacked into smaller squares and sold by weight. It comes in flavors that don't exist anywhere else. One of the most classic Roman pizzas is potato, without tomato sauce, thinly sliced or shredded potatoes soaked for hours in olive oil and then baked on top of the focaccia to a not-quite-crispy snap. Sometimes this has rosemary, sometimes cheese. It is one of the best pizzas in the world, hearty without being overly heavy, because the potato is in such small pieces, salty chewy savory and less greasy than you would imagine. Other options: pancetta and fresh mozzarella di bufalo; cream of pumpkin, prosciutto, and smoked provolone; sardine and zucchini flower; radicchio and mortadella with tomato sauce; pesto and arugula. It's madly cheap, too, usually somewhere between one euro and two-fifty per hundred grams. The place off Largo Argentina has the regrettable name Pizza Florida but is some of the most impressive casual food I've ever had. You don't get tables, so you can take it over to sit on the rim of the temple wall and share your crusts with the cats. (One spends a great deal of time in Rome sitting on various outdoor things while eating. I also recommend the steps which lead up to the Giordano Bruno monument in Campo dei Fiori.)

However, when I first got there, after dropping my things at the hotel, I did not go for pizza. I had more important things to do.

I went to the Pantheon.

Rome, Italy, November 28th: I hate that bus but I do love the rest of the city

Thrud had an art history symposium or something of the sort related to her job that meant she had to go to Rome in the early morning; I followed in the afternoon. It's about a two-hour train from Florence to Rome, a fast ear-popping ride through the infinite tunnels necessary to navigate those famous Tuscan hills. Things flatten out a bit when you get into Latium.

The problem with taking the train into Rome is that although the train is the most civilized, cheapest, and friendliest way of traveling in Europe, in Rome it does mean you have to interact with Termini. Termini is the train station, on the very far east of town, and it's continuously crowded and very filthy, and there are no real signs, and no real explanations, and sometimes the ticket machines will for no reason refuse to take credit cards. It is also thronged with hucksters, con men, pickpockets, sneak thieves, and unlicensed cabs. It is, technically, a walkable distance from the parts of the city a tourist is most likely to be interested in-- it can't be more than a mile and a half from the Vittore Emmanuele monument, which is de facto Center City and right next to the Forum-- but you do not want to walk that mile-plus carrying whatever bags you have, because the streets are hilly and the cobbles are ankle-wrenching and the hucksters are persistent. (The pavement is peculiarly bad around Termini.) So the choices are cab, if you can afford it (and if you can you should) and the bus. The good news is that you will almost certainly not have to pay for the bus, because it will be too crowded for you to fight your way to the ticket slot, and because the system wherein you buy a ticket from... somewhere or other... and then use it in the buses is sufficiently complex that no one expects tourists to be able to navigate it, particularly since it is only labeled in Italian. The bad news about the bus is everything else. It will be hot, crowded, more crowded than that, so crowded that you will not need to hold on when it goes around curves because the people around you will hold you up. You will not get a seat. And it is full of-- well, for a while I thought of it as the Pervert Bus, after something from a Japanese video game, because there are a lot of those, and there is nothing to be done about it because no one has any elbow room; also, keep your possessions in your line of sight and if possible any zippers or closures on your bags in your grip at all times. But if you take it often enough you will be robbed anyhow.

I lost a small wallet with credit card and driver's license on my way out of Rome this time; I had sensibly split up card and cash, one in pocket and one in bag, so that hopefully only one could be swiped at any given point, and had also left my passport in Florence for safekeeping, but it is still extremely distressing to have something stolen. Somebody managed to open my bag, and I do not feel as bad about this as I would if they'd gotten into the pocket-- Thrud described to me a terrible time once when she could feel the guy taking her phone as the bus doors opened but had no space to do anything about it, and no one could grab him when she yelled, as he had already dived out. I do, however, feel pretty bad about it. It is violating and inconvenient and depersonalizing and makes you hate people, and you do need to report it to the cops ASAP because your bank, for instance, may well check with them, but all the cops can do is shrug expressively and tell you better luck next time.

It is also a bus on which people are prone to become ill, because it is so hot and crowded and makes such hairpin turns. It does at least two hundred and seventy degrees of arc around Trajan's Column, which might be nice if you could see out the windows. Fortunately we didn't have any of that wretchedness this time, because if somebody is ill the entire bus is shortly thereafter.

At any rate, on the way into town I got out at Largo Argentina, and there I was in Rome.

I don't know how to explain the precise difference between Rome and Florence, though it is a very definite quality and one you can feel instantly. It is not quite analogous to the U.S. difference between New York City and Boston, although that's a start, for Rome is larger, louder, noisier, more metropolitan, and Florence is smaller, quieter, more scholarly. It is a difference in period, since in Rome you have two options, the Christian and the pagan, the churches and the Baroque history or the Republic and the Empire, whereas Florence is entirely still in about 1520, thank you, and will be as long as she lives. But you might think that because Rome is larger and more disreputable, more full of thieves and scammers, that she might be less friendly, and that is the exact opposite of the case. Rome is Roma, which is Amor backwards, the City of Venus as she always has been, and Rome is an exuberantly loving city, an expansive, assertive, extrovert of an old bawd. Florence is a city that rewards you the more the more you learn about specific place, the powers and properties and moments of history, the trivia of all those painters and rulers. In Florence you will eventually begin to feel as though the Medici are real and close acquaintances. Florence is very friendly; Florence does want to be loved; but she will not reach out and make you love her. Rome will. Rome does not give a damn whether you know anything of her last three thousand years or not. All roads lead to her, so you're there, so it's a party. One never quite feels out-of-doors in Rome, because the streets, while wide, and the palazzos, while wider, are consistently full of people behaving as though they were in their own living rooms. Which they are. In 1999 when I first went to Rome I was amused and a little shocked because, at Eastertide and good weather, Rome was the first time I'd ever seen anyone make love outside, which they will do just sitting on the piazza benches next to you. This would never, ever happen in Florence. Florence has interior courtyards for that sort of thing, so that only the people who live in the same building see you; and that, I believe, is the difference.

Largo de Torre Argentina is a bus hub, an old temple complex smack in the middle of downtown which was excavated thoroughly a few decades back, so that it is well below street level. They threw a three-foot wall around it to stop people falling in when they had found out everything archaeological that could be found, and made it into a cat sanctuary. Cats, you see, are citizens of Rome and no cat born in the City may be removed from the City boundaries (this is a law), so there are quite a few strays and it was getting to be something of a problem. Now the City catches strays and neuters them and drops them off at Largo Argentina, where they are fed to make them stay, and do. If you live in the City permanently, you are permitted to adopt one. The rest of us can combine staring at old temples with staring at the cats. Most are very wild, but some are friendly and self-assured and will mug you for spare tidbits. I petted three or four this trip, mostly the large black odd-eyed ruffians who seem to be a family strain. Thrud and I were also delighted to see a surmise borne out: Rome has such a density of churches that it sometimes seems as though there is at least one on every block, and sure enough there was walking along at one point a cat who was all black except for a perfectly white and perfectly rectangular patch just under the chin. We aren't sure if his church is down in the cat sanctuary, but that he was a priest is obvious.

Some of the best street pizza in Rome can also be found just off Largo Argentina. Street pizza, pizza al taglio, is a Roman specialty findable only in a few other cities in Italy, and all over Rome. It is pizza made in brick ovens in giant rectangular pans on focaccia crust, hacked into smaller squares and sold by weight. It comes in flavors that don't exist anywhere else. One of the most classic Roman pizzas is potato, without tomato sauce, thinly sliced or shredded potatoes soaked for hours in olive oil and then baked on top of the focaccia to a not-quite-crispy snap. Sometimes this has rosemary, sometimes cheese. It is one of the best pizzas in the world, hearty without being overly heavy, because the potato is in such small pieces, salty chewy savory and less greasy than you would imagine. Other options: pancetta and fresh mozzarella di bufalo; cream of pumpkin, prosciutto, and smoked provolone; sardine and zucchini flower; radicchio and mortadella with tomato sauce; pesto and arugula. It's madly cheap, too, usually somewhere between one euro and two-fifty per hundred grams. The place off Largo Argentina has the regrettable name Pizza Florida but is some of the most impressive casual food I've ever had. You don't get tables, so you can take it over to sit on the rim of the temple wall and share your crusts with the cats. (One spends a great deal of time in Rome sitting on various outdoor things while eating. I also recommend the steps which lead up to the Giordano Bruno monument in Campo dei Fiori.)

However, when I first got there, after dropping my things at the hotel, I did not go for pizza. I had more important things to do.

I went to the Pantheon.

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