Italy: Day 2 - An Emotional Awakening in Rome

Lean my head to the left. Lean it to the right. Maybe resting against the side of the plane would work? Nope, make no doubt about, trying to sleep on the airplane was a complete no go. I was pretty thick-headed just waiting for time to pass and for the sun finally to pop above the horizon and light the world below.

When it finally happened, I looked down on the Tyrrhenian Sea and then land ahoy! What happened next was the first of many unexpected yet personal surprises over the next two weeks. As I looked down on Italy's mainland I had conflicting positive emotions. On one hand, I felt the giddiness that a little kid feels on Christmas morning. The dreariness of a sleepless night was suddenly and totally gone. I was so excited. It was really happening. I was returning to Italy. At the same time, I had a lump in my throat. Even though four decades has passed since I lived in Italy, it was an emotional awakening of sorts. I was about to land and set foot in a country that I dearly loved, and didn't realize how much I dearly missed.

Because we traveled only with backpacks, there was no need to wait at baggage claim with most everyone else on board. Exiting the Rome airport was as quick as walking through the security station, getting our passports stamped, stopping at the ATM to get a couple hundred euros and crossing the street to the train station. We purchased tickets for the 40-minute ride to our first planned stop of Trastevere, (pronounced tras-TAY'-vehr-ay, which we both butchered time and time again), a picturesque, popular neighborhood of Rome dating back centuries.

I was a little nervous that we might overshoot our stop but we had no issues. Once the doors opened, it was absolutely refreshing to get out and enjoy short-sleeve weather and soak up the sunshine. Shoot, we still had snow on the ground back in Montana. It was even better to soak in Rome's culture and history. We walked about 20 minutes toward the Tiber River, found some steps down to a riverside pathway and walked and talked as we enjoyed the beauty of it all. Our first stop was Ponte Fabricio, the oldest bridge in Rome, dating back to 62 BC. 

As we ascended to the street above, we enjoyed our first Italian treat at a small roadside business. "Facciamo una granita limone e una granita fragola, per favore." (Let's do a lemon granita and a strawberry granita, please.) It was my first chance to speak Italian in decades and I must've somewhat made sense because that's what they gave me. And while mine was lemony and cold and refreshing, it was not what I remembered. It was more like a store-bought slush with larger ice granules. I would continue my quest. But hey, we were in Italy and I loved it. 

We continued our self-guided walking tour through Trastevere with a visit to the Basilica di Santa Maria, one of the oldest churches in Rome and one built to Mary, mother of Jesus. Its basic floor plan and structure date back to the third century. It also gave us a nice bird's eye view of the city. 

We climbed a little higher in elevation to the Church of San Pietro in Montorio, the supposed site of the Apostle Peter's crucifixion. Decorated by art throughout, the current church was built on the site of an earlier 9th century church. 

In its courtyard is a commemorative shrine to Peter. Roman Emperor Nero ordered Peter's execution. According to the church, the apostle felt unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus Christ so he requested to be crucified upside down. 

I took a photo of an image by a Spanish artist, Jose di Ribera, with his take of what Peter's crucifixion could have looked like.

Check-in time at our Airbnb was between 3 and 4 p.m. so to beat the clock, Lori used an app to summon a taxi that picked us up in Trastevere. As we weaved our way through town, we passed a heavily fortified compound with barbed wire along the top of it.

Sitting in the front seat next to the driver I said," What is that? A prison?"

"No, that's the Russian Embassy," he responded.

"Same difference," I said.

He chuckled. That little back and forth gave me the confidence that I could indeed somewhat remember this language, and have an understandable conversation in Italian. He pulled up and dropped us off in front of our rented dwelling for the night, Antico Convento (Ancient Convent). Advertised as a "stone's throw away from St. Peter's Dome and the Vatican, the apartment is part of an 18th century monastery." Yep, it's where the nuns used to live back in the day.

Anyway, we were greeted by Roberto, our gracious host and the apartment's owner. He gave us an incredibly thorough tour of the place with a detailed explanation of the building's history and the architect who designed it. (And by "thorough," I mean it was like 30 minutes worth.) Still, it was pretty amazing. I mean, the space utilization was impressive and the rock work as really cool but the design was a little over-the-top. Or should I just say a little sketchy, because there were several places once you climbed the steps where you could actually step through and either fall to the floor below or have your leg or other body part fall through until the rest of your body hit the floor. One of those potential holes was right next to my side of the bed so I placed my backpack over it so that wouldn't happen to me, especially if I got up while it was still dark outside. I would be terrified if I had a toddler to watch in that place.

Roberto spoke English but it was my first real opportunity to speak Italian. It went alright. I mean, I picked up quite a bit of it but it's almost like I had to wait for my brain to translate what he said into English, then have my brain say, "Okay, got it," and then I'd have to remember the vocabulary, conjugate the verb and respond. Still, he was super friendly and informative. 

Roberto, my first new friend back in Italy

It wasn't long after Roberto departed and Lori and I started to unpack some of our belongings when I got a text from Ron. He and April arrived and were right out front. It was so great to see them! Ron and I were in Italy together, again! And on April 12, 2023, it was exactly 40 years to the day since we first met as young missionaries on April 12, 1983. But it was so much better this time since we had our wives with us. We had seen Ron and April briefly four years earlier before COVID but before that it had been since 1984 when he moved out of our BYU apartment where we were roommates to get married. Ron and April are like those friends where you can be apart for quite some time, even years, and yet when you're get back together, it's just like you hadn't been apart. Just great, fun-loving solid people, good friends and, as we would find out, the perfect travel companions.

After chatting it up, talking about their day in Paris before flying to Rome, deciding which couple would sleep in the bed up top and the other on the sofa bed, we looked ahead to, drum roll please...dinner! Yes please! We messaged Roberto to ask for suggestions of nearby restaurants and he said he'd forward some. But we were in Italy. We weren't going to wait around for a text when we could be out on the streets soaking it all in.

The thing is, where some things change over time, other things just plain don't. And it Italy, nothing had changed in relation to the daily when-to-eat schedule. Except for service-oriented businesses in the heart of tourism zones, the nation still shuts down on weekdays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., just like 40 years ago, which meant restaurants don't open until 7:30 or 8 or even 8:30 p.m. Yes indeed, we certainly weren't in America anymore. 

So, sometimes using Google to see "restaurants near me" or just walking from one block to the next, we looked for and found different places to eat, glanced at their posted menus and looked for more. Eventually, enough time passed and we found a menu to our liking so we walked into Papa Rex Ristorante. Of course, it wasn't nearly as old as the nearby Vatican but it had been around 32 years so that longevity worked for us. We sorted through the 17 pages of items: hors-d'ourves, seafood hor-d'ourves, first course-pasta, first course-fish, second plate-meat, second plate-fish, pizza, desert and then pages of wines and other liquors. (And we saw menus of this length everywhere we went.) Yeah, this most definitely wasn't America either. We bucked the four-course trend. Lori ordered a pizza, prosciutto crudo di montagna (mountain ham), as an "appetizer" for all of us. I ordered cannelloni off first course as my main course. Ron and I ordered aqua frizzante (fizzy water) while Lori and April went with aqua naturale. 

Now THAT's the type of "appetizer" to kick off an Italian meal

Cannelloni? Yes, please! 

It was so much fun to eat, share old mission stories, eat, laugh, share more stories and eat. Man, it was so great being back in Italy. After dinner we had one thing on our collective minds - gelato! And that we did. Now, there's a definite difference between gelato and ice cream. Ice cream has more cream than milk whereas gelato has more milk than cream. Ice cream also includes egg yokes while gelato usually doesn't. The bottom line is gelato is creamier and tastier. The servings are also relatively small, leaving the desire for more. We found a gelateria. I knew what I wanted - lemon! You see, a good lemon gelato makes the face pucker. I ordered half lemon and half strawberry. It was smooth. It was creamy. It made me pucker! It was Italian gelato!   

By now, it was starting to get dark and it was late. With the Vatican so close, we wandered over to St. Peter's Square. Covering 109 acres, Vatican City is the smallest nation in the world. It was so neat to visit such an iconic and historic location, and to do so without the mass of humanity that's usually there. Off and on drizzly rain earlier in the evening had something to do with that but the showers held off as we walked and talked. Lori pulled out a couple of pennies she brought with her and tossed them into a fountain. Construction began on St. Peter's Basilica in 1506 AD. 

We made our way to the far end of the Vatican to Castel Sant'Angelo. Commissioned by Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family, construction finished in 139 AD. Popes later converted it to a military fortress that even featured a covered, fortified corridor connecting it to St. Peter's Basilica, a 10-minute 820-yard walk. The castle later became a residence, prison and is now a museum.

One of the most amazing things about this first day in Italy was the expected heavy dose of jet lag never really hit me. True, we hit the ground running that morning but I thought it would kick in some time. But it really didn't. Forza!