On the afternoon of Thursday, May 11th 2000 I set out for Rome. My motivation for going was not to see the beauty of the Eternal City, but rather a friend. Since, however, seeing each one enabled seeing the other, this is an account of my personal Roman experience.
The flight out was delayed by nearly an hour by what worryingly seemed to be a problem with one of the plane's wheels. I duly messaged my friend (we'll call her X, on account of her high profile) to warn her of the delay, and settled back to my copy of the Mini Rough Guide to Italian, hoping to teach myself how to count to twenty. Finally the passengers boarded, and the only event of note during the two and a quarter hour journey was the pilot announcing turbulence. This happened just a few seconds after the plane lurched two feet to the right, while everything on board stayed still. Thankfully none of the coffee that was coincidentally being served at the time went in my lap, but it was a close thing.
On arriving at Fiumicino Aeroporto with all wheels still attached to the plane, I proceeded through immigration with alarming ease (the official scarcely glanced at my passport) collected my bag, and made my way through the sparkling airport buildings to the train station. I panicked briefly when the automatic ticket machine refused to offer me Tiburtina FS, where I was to meet X, as a destination. Once I realised that "Rome Metropolitan Area" was a suitable alternative, I bought my ticket and boarded the conveniently waiting train. I marvelled at how clean and nice the train was, and how I could faintly hear an Italian radio station playing over the tannoy. I worried slightly when the ticket collector looked at me a bit strangely, the last thing I needed was for him to start talking to me in Italian about how I had purchased the wrong kind of ticket and would be kicked off at some remote location. Instead he wrote something illegible on the ticket and proceeded down the train. It was then that I remembered the radio I had in my bag. The tannoy radio was in fact my radio which had somehow switched on during the flight. This explained the strange look from the ticket guy. I fetched the radio and embarrassingly turned it up very loudly, attracting the attention of other passengers on the train who I prayed would not start talking to me, before turning the knob in the right direction to silence the offending device.
When I arrived in Tiburtina I was very pleased and relieved to see the smiling, welcoming face of X waiting in the foyer. We rode the bus home, I met her flatmate, we ate some of X's excellent cooking, then for some reason we stayed up until 6am drinking wine, chatting, and watching Italian MTV. When the sun came out and the birds started singing, we conceded that it might be a good idea to go to bed.
The following day was a bit of a slow starter. We awoke very aware the of fact that the glorious sunshine was on its way out, and elected to do nothing more strenuous than sit in the park. We went to Villa Borghese, a vast, lush green area sprawled in the Northeast of the city. To get there I had to purchase a ticket for the very reasonable price of L24.000 (�7.50), which would last me all week and cover all my public transport needs.
The park was a welcome and refreshing antidote to a hard day's travelling, despite the fact that it was here I had my first encounter with a rose seller. The rose sellers all seem to have been to the same school. You politely say, "non grazie" but they persist, and persist, and start telling you how many children they have to feed and asking you why you don't think they should be able to work. It's hard not to be unreasonably rude to the third or fourth one you encounter during a day.
We sat in the park, then wandered around it. At one point we passed a little caf�, unfortunately closed, with tables outside in the park that would have been very nice to stop in. Eventually we went out of the park and down the street to Piazza del Popolo. This is a large square, with a tall monument in the centre and fountains around the outside, and is very pleasant for sitting in. It occurred to me that nobody seems to do any work in Rome. Most of the buildings are historical, not functional, and the people all seem to spend their time in places like Piazza del Popolo drinking coffee and hanging out. After a spell of sitting we made our way back home.
We elected to eat in that night, and then go out somewhere. Plans to go clubbing rapidly got whittled down to "let's just go to a bar somewhere" as all the best clubs were some way away in the centre of town. We selected a bar called Titanic which from the outside looked like it might be a bit dodgy but which turned out to be rather nice. It was very small, quite possibly the smallest drinking establishment I have ever been in, but far from being a threatening local pub it was very friendly. Italians have a very different drink ethic to the British. They don't go out just to get drunk, so the whole atmosphere is more social and civilised. The bar staff were especially friendly, and very understanding of my poor efforts at ordering drinks in Italian!