Massimo was the best : he put us through our paces, really he did. We got started immediately after he found me a converter for the electrical wattage so that I could charge my ever-important Canon camera battery. Thanks Massimo for that. It ensured that I could continue to take lots and lots of interesting/artsy I hope pictures of all that I saw briefly as we passed by it or it passed quickly by us.
The trip was a whirlwind of activity : we were rarely sedentary and almost always in movement of some kind or other as we tried to nicely cram into our consciousnesses as much as humanly possible each and every day.
And now here on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 I don't want to forget any of it so I am busy writing as much as I can remember while it is all still relatively fresh and available in my head and thoughts and memory. It was grand, all of it : especially the most important part which was being able to spend a week with my daughter in one of the most beautiful and stimulating places in the world and with unseasonably warm, sunny, bright, baby-blue clear skies days .... wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.
Massimo was determined to walk as quickly as he could through ancient Rome. Ours was a 3-hour walking tour with him and walk quickly and briskly we did. But it really did work and give us a feel for the scope and the enormity and the spread of years and different periods that all took place in Rome as it grew and changed and evolved. Thank you Massimo. You helped bring quite a bit of this to life for us both in just three hours.
We both took pictures, too. My daughter would often gaze behind her looking for me and admonishing me to catch up as Massimo was leaving us in a trail of Roman dust. I didn't mind : we were his only two customers at this point and he would just have to stop occasionally and wait even if he did not want to. I had pictures to take and I wanted some of my own souvenirs of what I saw and not just another glossy, beautiful post card! There, I've said it : I love post cards, really I do. But I want to preserve some of my own memories and be able to go back and look at them later when I actually have a bit more time to focus on things that I quickly found interesting and intriguing.
Massimo kept telling us that he was giving us a tour that most people do not see on their own. I believe this. He's done it so many times now and been there in ancient Rome now since 1973 that he can give tours with his eyes closed. I bet he does as he sleeps, too. Anyway he walked us down quiet passages and less-traveled areas and explained all the time. He knew the short-cuts, he knew how to make time count and we thank him for this as we did get to see some incredible views of the city with him as well as see the spot that was a big hole in the ground where Michelangelo was supposed to have lived while in Rome.
He showed us the old Rome and the layers of it's history and then took us to a tourist center to see the map and model of how it would have looked when new. That was insightful. Of course we saw the obelisk and the Spanish Steps and the French and the Spanish Embassies as well as the incredible fountains and the Coliseum of course.
We saw more than I can recall and so I am happy to have some of my pictures which I will include later here.
If you are on a tight time-line I do recommend that you hire Massimo to take you around. He knows his stuff and shared it willingly with us.
Funny, while in Rome we drank some Falanghina white and a somewhat sparkling Sardinian white : both were delightful. Massimo said that Frascati was the white wine of Rome and yet I never did see it on a wine list. Oh wel, we didn't drink any Frascati and we did not drink any Orvieto white either even though we went later to the town of Orvieto in Umbria. That will all just have to wait till the new year when we are together again here in northern Virginia. I will bring some home and we will talk about the places that we were and share our stories with the rest of our family over these glasses of wine and a meal.
So, enjoy this text for the time-being. Later today I will start to download some of my pictures and continue to do so until I am finished. All of this is a labor of love and a work in progress. Cheers, TONY
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