I just checked out of the hotel in Rome and will take the wedding bus to Nemi in a couple of hours. John and Paula rented a bus to take all us Americans to the countryside for the wedding. We’re all staying in a hotel there for 2 days. 

Divine Intervention in Rome:  When I checked out of the hotel today I told the woman at the desk that there was one more charge from the bar that wasn’t on my bill. I was staying in room 502, but with jet lag and all I had given the bartender room number 501. It wasn’t until the next morning at breakfast, when I told the waiter I was in room 501, and Reuben reminded me that I was in room 502, that I realized my mistake. The desk clerk said that the woman in room 501 had paid the bill and left already, that she had checked the bill and okayed it. I had probably seen her the desk clerk told me. She was the nun. “The happy nun?” I replied. “Yes, she was the only nun here!” I had seen her the other morning at breakfast and had been so impressed with her joie de vivre. I had even tried to take a photo of her. I have seen so many nuns that do not exude her kind of happy energy that I tried to capture it, unsuccessfully. She was wearing Birkenstock sandals and a habit and had a lot of style. So I said “Grazie Dio” to the desk clerk, who couldn’t stop laughing.    And so it came to pass that the church paid for John and my night caps at the hotel bar on Wednesday night. Only in Rome.

I arrived in Rome on Tuesday night. I flew from LAX to Chicago to Frankfurt to Rome so that I could fly business class with my miles. It’s always more fun to fly business. I knew I was in Germany when I went to the airport bathroom and saw the beautifully designed toilets. I swear the Germans bring a new level of design to home furnishings. Also memorable at the airport were the camel smoking “Zones” aka booths.

When I checked into the hotel there was a birthday card awaiting my arrival from my friend Barbara. I swear she is the most thoughtful person in the world. It was a wonderfully festive start to my birthday vacation in Rome. The hotel room in Rome was very small with a single bed. The bathroom was much nicer than, and almost as big as, the room. It’s fun to see the cultural differences in bathrooms. Most noteworthy (from an American point of view) was that there was no stall for the shower, just a drain. You have to be careful not to aim the shower head too far out of the shower area or the floor of the whole bathroom gets wet. And there was no bidet. What’s wrong with this picture?? I always love washing my feet in bidets and they took that joy away from me. But they did have the toilet wrapped in the paper sash, which just doesn’t that much anymore, and I so love the ceremony of ripping it off. 

Wednesday I walked up to the Vatican area to meet Elizabeth. Meanwhile the Hansons & Capraris went to the Vatican museum. By the time I got to Elizabeth I had developed some blisters on my feet. We went to the pharmacy (farm-a-Chi-a) to get some Band-Aids which all looked really wimpy. I asked Eliz to ask the woman in Italian if they had any moleskin. The woman behind the counter had no idea what she was talking about. MO-LAY-SKEEN the man behind the counter told her. OH!  MO-LAY-SKEEN!! the woman cried. DOCTOR SHOOOL! No, they didn’t carry it. But I learned a valuable lesson. Always try to figure out how to pronounce something if you want to find it.

Elizabeth and I went to the store where Eric and Raffaella are registered for the wedding gifts. I wanted to see how they did it in Italy. First of all the store had a showroom across the way. We took a foot bridge over the digging of ruins all around the store. In the showroom, for each registered couple there is a table with a setting of their dishes, silverware and any other items they want, so you see it all at once. You don’t have to go hunting all over a store to see what they have selected. It was all there on table number 64 for us to see. I selected a glass footed dolci platter (like a cake plate) with a dome top and 6 forks and told them we wished them a dolci vida life that they could eat up with a fork. Then we went back across the street to the warehouse type store to pay for it. 

 

The guy at the registry store had said that it would be as fast for me to walk back to the hotel as to take a bus. I started walking back to the hotel and called Paula to check in. She said that she wasn’t sure what the evening plans were yet, that Reuben had left thru a different door at the Vatican museum and Karla was still trying to find him. I walked and walked and found myself by the Circus Maximus with tons of traffic on the street and no cross walks. The crosswalks are problematic here at best - cars and trucks and motorcycles seem to have the right of way here and are very aggressive. The green “walk” sign means very little as I have found out. I have almost been run over a number of times trying to cross when it’s green. I needed to get across the street to get back to the hotel without taking tons more time. So I found a man crossing the street and quickly shadowed him and made it alive to the other side. I found the street that looked the fasted route back to the hotel and started walking. About halfway up the hill I saw a man ahead of me who looked like Reuben. I called out. He didn’t hear me. I called out again and walked faster, called out again and walked faster and finally he heard me and turned around. It WAS Reuben. I had him call Paula so she could let Karla know where he was.  He said we’d be home in a few minutes. I said more like 10 minutes. We walked by a church with a bunch of military guys in trucks. We were told there was no outlet. So, we ended up walking  around and down the hill and back up and finally got home in another 30 to 40 minutes. And now they all think that Reuben and I are having a Roman affair.