La Dolce Italia

There are few things better than seeing an old friend after a long time and reaffirming why you were such good friends.  It is always as if you have never been apart but in our case we hadn’t seen much of each other over the last 30 years. Elly was at boarding school with me from 12 to 18, we went to Turkey on a boating holiday together at 16 with her parents and then we backpacked in frog boxer shorts around China and Thailand when we were 21.  After our A levels we went to Spain with 3 other school friends and a group of attractive and eligible boys who were keen to be more than friends but we were shy and devoted more of our time to reading Racine and writing country love ballads.  Our school had got us all into university with glowing results but hadn’t prepared us at all for any love interest or romance.  In our 3^rd year of university we shared a damp basement apartment on the outskirts of Florence both supposedly studying but Elly ended up with a modelling contract and I drove around a lot visiting Italy in my faithful gold brown Ford Fiesta looking at frescoes and churches and eating a lot of pasta (I put on 2 stone in that time).  She fell in love with Marco, a handsome eye doctor, who pursued her until she agreed to marry him after finishing her degree and she has lived in Florence ever since.  And she loves it there.  33 years later here we are both in our fabulous fifties enjoying a few glasses of chianti and many stories of our shared past.  She has been having a very hard time.  Tragically Marco died 4 years ago leaving her and three wonderful kids plus she also recently lost her best friend.  So tough and so unfair.  I wish I had been a better friend to her then but with very little contact I had had no idea what she had been going through.  Over the chianti she told me but I can see that it has shown her that life is precious and every moment to be appreciated.  When we left this morning we promised to stay in contact. 

Elly’s favourite city in the world is Rome and that was where we were headed in our WOW machine today.   We had a whistlestop 4 hrs to spend there so we chose the Coliseum, the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps like millions before us and thousands that day.  We found a decent looking city campsite and caught the metro and bus into the city centre.  We ate a delicious pizza slice by the metro ticket counter.  Only in Italy can you be guaranteed that even in the most unlikely places you are served with the same care and good quality of food as if being served in a fancy restaurant.  The pizza man was so smiley and patient with endless tourists demanding incomprehensible variation, clearly taking so much pride in his delivery of every slice even when Taran requested mayonnaise on his Margherita.

Selfie-taking tourists everywhere (just like Siem Reap), sellers selling selfie sticks and cheap kid-attracting toys everywhere, large barging groups with shouting umbrella holding guides, guides trying to sell triple the price tours, it goes without saying the occasional pair of canoodling lovers and we also passed a wedding.  But with all this going on – I loved it.  Just like in Angkor Wat, you can transport yourself back to that time and wander around wondering what it must have been like to be present at one of those bloody spectacles.  Probably a bit like the Champions league final but with different fashions, fierce animals and more blood and death.   We were bowled over to be able to touch the stone basin where the gladiators washed blood from their hands in sand after each event.  Also, to touch stones that were last moved there over 2000 years ago.  To see the archeologists meticulously still slowly scraping at bricks to see what may lie beneath.  I looked at their version of selfies – rows of replicated stone and marble heads – and wondered what these people were like and why they enjoyed seeing people being ripped apart for entertainment. 

Next on our triumvirate tour was the Trevi Fountain, which was so crowded there was no way we were going to be able to splash around in it.  Taran did manage to throw a coin in above the phone screens held high and we were curious as to who picked up all this money at the end of the day.  Maybe it would be some lucky street cleaner.   The fountain looked magnificent in its starring role, basking in glory on its watery stage.

We played with a cheaply made ‘kid-attracting’ flying bird that Taran bought from a street seller all the way up the Spanish steps.  The sellers always make them look so much more impressive, fun and durable than they turn out to be so by the top step the bird was looking poorly *. Groundhog day – we have been here before – bargain, buy, break.  We still h it however in the WOW machine as a momento of Our Dolce Giorno in Roma.

* Taran just informed me that his bird is not broken and still flies high.