Roma

Buona sera from Rome. As I sit at my computer in the lobby of my hotel in Rome at 12:30 am, the sounds from the street are distinct. The night sounds here are different from those in New York. I can hear the sound of cups clinking at the cafe across the street, where a long table of people are still sitting and enjoying their last sips of espresso and smoking cigarettes. There is traffic whizzing by, but it is mostly motorcycles, and the car noises are distinctly those of a manual transmission. And of course, when voices drift in through the open door, they are speaking in a loud but mellifluous language that is foreign to me.

I thought that once I got to Rome I would be so overwhelmed I would want to post here every day. Well, I am overwhelmed, and maybe that's why this is my first post in three days. What my fifteen-year old daughter said about St. Peter's Basilica today applies to my feelings about Rome in general: it's 'ginormous.' Some things are just too big and too important to use either gigantic or enormous alone.

It's not just the physical size of the structures we have seen so far, like the Colosseum or the Vatican Museums or the collection at the Galleria Borghese, that make Rome seem so much bigger than ordinary life. It is also the quantity and the quality of the art and architecture that was created here. Yesterday we saw Bernini's incredible sculpture of Apollo and Daphne at the Borghese; today we sat at a cafe in the Piazza Navona eating gelato with Bernini's fountain, 'Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi,' just a few steps away. We may have craned our necks and been unable to close our mouths along with the throngs at the Sistine Chapel today, but yesterday we traipsed around the Campidoglio which Michelangelo designed as if we were walking around Central Park.

In New York you can see great artists in the top museums, but here these artists are in the city itself. They are the city itself. And it is a hit parade for fans of art and of history: Caravaggio and Raphael, Julius Ceaser and Julius II; Constantine and Canova, among many, many others. And that is just the 'ginormity' of what we are seeing with our eyes. Then there's the food.

But there are only a few cars going by now and the cafe has shut down for the night. So I will have to save the food, and Rome's seduction of my other four senses, for the next post. So for tonight, 'Vado a Dormire!'