Text 37398, 82 rader
Skriven 2010-05-05 08:24:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 100
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The crowd thickened just before 11, but we were in the
first wave and pulled away from the masses, choosing
instead to do a fast trip through ahead of the first wave
and then a slower one after it to revisit what we liked.
This method worked like a charm, the effect being a lot
of the time of having our own private showing.

There's a painting gallery upstairs, hung in a variation of
the irritating European collection style, where paintings
are packed floor to ceiling, and you're at the mercy of the
tastes of curators long dead and gone. Sometimes, it's a
good thing - I'm convinced, for example, that the Botticelli
Madonna, hung just above my proper field of vision, though
famous, isn't real. I sped us through the gallery, as I am
not a great fan of this period - perhaps I'm being unfair to
it, but I'm constantly reminded of saccharine devotional
paintings in faceless churches all through Europe.

Speaking further of facsimiles, did you know that all the
pieces in the sculpture garden are repros?

We spent just a little less than our allotted time span and
took the bus back southward were we lunched at the pleasant
half-touristy half-native Romoli Bar, just north of Piazza
Navona, where I had bucatini all'amatriciana in what must
have been an authentic version, though it tasted a lot like
what I make. Lilli had a Big Beer with bruschetta E3.50, as
advertised on a signboard out in front.

After we enjoyed our meal, an attractive brunette next to us
started making conversation. I have this note Antonio's Wife
Jacqueline DeJohn, but in fact Jacqueline is not Antonio's
wife but rather wrote a novel by that name published by
Harper Collins. She now lives in Rome but has to feed
herself between magna opera so guides tours of the Vatican.
She hustled us for a while, and we promised to use her
company if we decided to do the museums (we ended up not
doing that.)

As we were right in the heart of things, the 110 tourist bus
kept whizzing by. Lilli had read that our CIS ticket would
get us on there, but when she showed it to the driver, I saw
his face fall and then Lilli's face fall. But life was
still good: we hopped an 87 bus from the same stop, which
did much the same route, though not open-toppedly.

Speaking of which. There are three fountains at Piazza
Navona. The side two have Bernini elements overlaid over
older work; the central one, of the four great rivers (Nile,
Danube, and I forget), is mostly by Bernini himself. When I
went there in the mid-'90s, with my sister Agnes, we tried
to get into Sant'Agnese, and it was closed. After talking
the central fountain up to Lilli, lo and behold, it was under
renovation. Such is my life. Still, she got a couple good
shots of the Nile side in.

One of the wonderful things about Lilli is her willingness to
participate in uncertain and random outings, by train, bus,
or foot. This day we took full advantage of our unlimited
tickets and hopped various buses to or past the tourist
sites. Colosseo, Foro, Circo Massimo, that kind of thing.
Disdaining crowds, we didn't bother to get off at the big
ones, just poking our noses out briefly to wonder; instead,
we got our fill of walking amid the ruins at the continuing
excavation of the Portico Ottavia, not far from the Piazza
Venezia and its astonishing Typewriter.

One touristy thing that we gave a near miss to was the
Bocca della Verita - there was a huge line to get to this
attraction, a rather ugly face with an open mouth;
apparently you thrust your hand in and say something along
the lines of "I love you," or "of course I paid you back,"
and if you're lying, your hand is supposed to be chomped
off, or something like that. If it really worked, I'm sure
there would be lots of gore and blood about as well as
millennia's worth of bones and such; or perhaps the
attendants come by and clean up the mess every evening after
the tourists have left clutching their oozing stumps.

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