Roman Holiday
We came to Rome bearing excess baggage and excess years: a maladroit mix if ever there was. In days of yore – strong of limb and body, vain of dress – we would strip closets and drawers bare and cram the mass into luggage with little care for weight or space.
Those times should have been instructive. But here we were, decades later, each pulling luggage-on-wheels of 30 to 40 pounds. It’s when one stops pulling to lift – up the three steep steps into the train car, up into the overhead luggage rack, and all the other ups and downs where two small wheels are useless – that muscles marinating over the years in the broths of evening give way.
The heavy lifting began in Rome when we took the air train from the airport into the city. With a few cheering me on in Italian (or cursing me because I was blocking the queue) I humped the first of these ball-busters up the train car’s steps, and gave my fans a two-handed wave.
Tourists, backpackers and airport-workers all crowded onto the train for the half-hour ride into Termini, Rome’s main rail centre. If you are here on business, chances are you’ll take a taxi into the city for about 30 Euros; others in no great hurry take the air train for nine.
The train ride can be instructive. Beyond the airport, fields of drying semolina and hay appear, farm buildings, too; this day under a cloudless sky and baking June sun. Abruptly the picture changes, like scenery in a low budget play. Now we get old warehouses, power stations. Most are wearing that uni-versal adornment of old buildings: graffiti.
The word graffiti is cousin to graffito, an archaeological term that describes the drawings or words found in caves and on excavated walls. Both graffiti and graffito come from the Italian, graffto, meaning scratching, as with a stylus. So can the leap be made that graffiti was born in Italy? Maybe.
We are staying at Hotel Rosetta in the old city, which is where Rome came to be. The hotel is not visible from the street; the taxi leaves us on the sidewalk in front of two massive wooden doors. A little edgy, we look for a sign. Ah, there it is: a small placard over one of two bell buttons. We ring and the door clicks open to a courtyard housing four mopeds. An attractive young woman hurries down a short flight of stairs to greet us. She is Francesca. Her family owns the hotel, and she is the manager.
By Edwin Teeling
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Courtesy of lifestyleandtravel.com/
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