I had a glorified layover in Rome yesterday, and it was incredible.
I was afraid of Rome – everyone I talked to said it’s awful in the summer, and the pickpockets are terrible, and it’s generally an unbearable place in July. (”Everyone there is crazy right now,” according to a Roman I met in Prague.)
But aside from the heat, which was real, none of the other warnings were borne out. I walked through the city all day long because I just couldn’t stop gawking at the scale of the architecture.
I tried to capture what it’s like to round the corner onto the Piazza Venezia and to be confronted with the Museo Sacrario delle Bandiere, but pictures can’t do it justice.
The Foro Romano,
the Pantheon,
even the passeggiata on the Via del Corso (even because I arrived late and missed all the best cruising/preening),
and the summer river fest I stumbled into while checking out the Trastevere neighborhood were all so intoxicating that I didn’t care that I had sweated through everything and gained new blisters from the cobblestones.
Ciao, bella.