It wasn't the volcano that almost trapped me at the airport

Musings from Florence: Part 4

In praise of Mussolini, people always say, "he made the trains run on time." It always seemed an odd thing to praise a dictator for, but after a week in Italy, I can see how it would be a trait that caught people's attention. Nothing is quite on time in Italy, but it doesn't really matter. The culture has a relaxed--a "tomorrow" way--of looking at the world.

It's a wonderful attitude, until you face it in the airport at 5 in the morning.

On the outward journey, the woman who checked me in messed up my final destination. My bag was going to go to the right place, but not me. When we realized the error, she pressed a few buttons, then shrugged.

"They will straighten it out in Frankfurt."

Uh? "Can't you..." I started but she was already waving the next person up.

Fortunately, the tomorrow-mood is infectious. "OK," I said and walked away. I'd deal with it in Germany. The Germans are nothing if not efficient. However, the tomorrow mood lifted by the time we landed in Frankfurt. Iceland was erupting, security lines were longer and more rigorous than I'd seen in years and I couldn't find a cup of coffee to save my soul.

So I went to the USAirways desk and asked about my final destination. They looked at my records, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Italians," and said that they could get me to Chicago, but they couldn't print a boarding pass.

"You will have to get it in Philadelphia."

"But can't you--"

"No, we can't."

Knowing better than to argue with anyone before my first cup of coffee, I simply nodded and went to my departure gate. Eight hours later, we land in Philadelphia. Custom lines are short, security lines are long AND I cannot go through security to get on my next flight without a boarding pass. So I got to the USAirways gate outside customs. After explaining the problem, the woman called up my records. Her supervisor leaned over her shoulder, shook his head and sighed, "Italians."

"We can't print a boarding pass," the woman said, "because you're on a codeshare fight with United, but the gate agent should be able to get you on the plane."

"But...security won't let me through without a boarding pass."

"We've developed a procedure for this," she said, and went to a cabinet, pulled out a stack of pre-printed forms and gave me a special pass to get through security. Clearly, I'm not the first with this problem.

At the United gate, the agent looked up my records and sighed.

"The Italians will never die of stress," I offered.

"Unless someone kills them for causing it," she muttered and handed over my boarding pass.

Vacation photos

Musings from Florence: Part 3

A picture really is worth a thousand words. The first photo below is the Duomo (cathedral). It was named for the dome that caps the church and makes the cathedral a landmark that can be seen throughout much of the old city. The old saying: All roads lead to the Duomo is mostly true in Florence.

 This statue is in San Croce, and with a little digging I could figure out whose tomb she's guarding, but  that's not why I took the photo. I just love the way the light is pouring over her.

Me and my traveling buddy, Renee, whose daughter is studying in Florence this semester. We're standing in front of Dante's house which--according to the guidebook--really wasn't his house. But he was likely born in one quite similar. Glad I didn't pay the 4 euro to go in.

 Random frescos dot the city. Wish we had street art like this.

A street in Siena. The medieval wall still runs around the city center, and so walkways simply run beneath it. The passageway above smelled of damp stone, mold and plaster and was quite dark. I also had to use the flash to take the picture.

Buon giorno

Musings from Florence: Part 1

OK, so it's been months since I've blogged...my only excuse is I've been busy. But as I sit here in a light, airy hotel room in Florence with a view of asymmetrical tile roofs and the dome of the Duomo and snack on Skittles, I feel a blog coming on.

And that the page pulls up in Italian only makes it better.

The trip out of Chicago was uneventful, although we heard on our arrival into Philly that ours was one of the last planes to get out before the weather forced delays. It was 50 degrees with snow forecast when I left O'Hare. Hot with expected temperatures in the 90s in Philly, and perfect sunny, 70+ weather here in Tuscany.

As always happens with international travel (unless you're booked into a business hotel) you can't get into your room until about 2 p.m.

We arrived at our intended hotel about 10 a.m. and after confirming everything, left our luggage to explore Florence, have lunch in the strong, spring sunshine and eye the fine leather goods in numerous shop windows.

When we came back, we were told the hotel had overbooked and would we do them the favor of allowing them to put us up in a sister hotel for the night, then we could come back in the morning and have the best room in the house.

Now this bait-and-switch has happened to me before. Several years ago, I booked a beautiful hotel in Dublin for my mother and I, but we got the overbooked song-and-dance and was sent to a sister hotel a few blocks away. The sister hotel wasn't bad, but it wasn't nearly as nice. It also was over a pub, which might have been a plus if I'd been traveling with my college buddies, but Mom wasn't so thrilled.

I know this happens legitimately sometimes. And sometimes it's a scam.

My gut told me the incident in Florence was a scam.

So as the desk manager sat there all apologetic and giving us directions to the other hotel, Renee and I looked at each other, then him and said, "Cancel our reservation. We'll go someplace else."

And a room was suddenly available.

Too bad, so sad. Your loss.

We left, with the hotel manager begging us not to put anything about the rare overbooking mishap on the Internet. And that depends on how soon the reservation charge is reversed in full. ;-)

So I am writing this from the wonderful Hotel Orto de' Medici. It's beautiful, and once upon the time the garden was the workshop of Bertoldo, who taught Michelangelo all he knew.

Not sure if that is true or not, but I'm embracing it because today  after much coffee we're going to see the David, both the fake one in "Piazza of the Fake David" as the college students call it, and the real one.

Also, you should know, I lost my friend and her daughter yesterday when I stopped to study the doors of Ghiberti. (I do that a lot, by the way. Wander off when something catches my eye without thinking to tell whomever I'm traveling with. In elementary school the habit drove my teachers to distraction. Whenever they took the class to a museum, one of the high school chaperones was always assigned to me personally. And they still lost me. Typically, one of the museum staffers would find me in a restricted area, sitting in front of some obscure sculpture or painting. They loved my interest and questions. So...I'd then get a personal tour and in-depth lecture on whatever and when they returned me to the group an hour later, the teachers would threaten to leave me behind next time.)

I eventually found Renee and Liza again.

Michelangelo dubbed the doors "The Gate of Paradise." The photo doesn't do it justice. Ciao, ciao.

Confessions of an eavesdropper

Teen girl to friend: "I didn't, but I really wanted to."


Frustrated mother of children climbing down the riverbank: "Get back here! Now!"
Easy-going Dad: "Relax. "It's Sunday. It's not like they're going to drown today."


Exhausted woman: "That's because you don't have kids."
Annoyed sister or friend: "You're right. I still have some sense."


I love to eavesdrop. I try to be discreet when I do it (especially when I jot down what I've just overheard) but I can't help myself. People are interesting, and I can't resist the opportunity to take what they say out of context and build a story around it.


For example, does the father above really think his kids can't drown because it's Sunday or is he just tired of trying to control two exuberant youngsters. Either way, conflict, possible disaster, and the potential for heroism exists in that 30-second exchange.


One of my favorite passages in my book ANAM CARA is a conversation between my hero and heroine regarding her worries for her daughter. Part of it came from an overheard conversation. Here it is:

Bran tugged her hand until she relented, sort of.

Still frowning, Liza positioned herself slightly to the front and side of him. He shifted to put himself directly behind her, smiling when she stiffened at the idea of having him at her back. Too close, her body language shouted at him.

“Ye worry too much. ’Twill only gives ye more frown lines.”

“You do not worry enough,” she said, even as she smoothed a finger over her brow.

“When has worry changed the outcome of anything?”

“’Tis prevented much mischief.”

“A little mischief is fun.”

“Says a man with no daughters.”

“There is naught to mull over, Liza. At worst they share a kiss, and yer Tess has a sweet flirtation to remember when the years grow heavy and bitter.”

“I do not want her to have a sweet flirtation.”

Once again, she’d caught him off guard. “Why?”

“Because she will expect too much then. I do not want her to be disappointed.”

“As ye were?” Her look could have mutilated a less hardened man. “Disappointment comes with living. Ye can no more prevent it than ye could bruised knees.”

“You are not a parent.”

“Aye, I have perspective.”

Yes, I stole (and modified) the last two lines from a conversation overhead on a train while feeding my traveling addiction. The real-life conversation was between a woman who wouldn't leave her child (who looked to be about 2) with a babysitter and her sister or friend, who replied, "You're right. I still have some sense."

What struck a note with me was the arrogance of each perspective, i.e. you can't possibly understand because you haven't had this experience vs. I understand because I haven't been blinded by this experience.

I assume eavesdropping is a writer's habit, and I'm not the only one who listens to other conversations. So my question is: what is the best conversation you've overhead, and did you use it in a story?

The tale of the trapped tourist

In April 2007, I traveled to Guildford, Surrey, England, for a client meeting. I arrived several hours before everyone else, so I did what I always do after a long plane/train ride--take a walk.

Guildford is a lovely, little town of upscale shops, insane traffic patterns that confused the Tom-Tom and fun, if dodgy-looking pubs that served great food. The spring flowers were in bloom and the scent of lilacs was everywhere. The town smelled as wonderful as it look. And in the midst of this spring riot sat the picturesque remains of Guildford Castle.

The castle started out as the typical Norman motte and bailey structure. Residents made improvements over the next two centuries and it became one of the country's most luxurious castles during the reign of Henry III. The keep served as a local prison, then a merchant's home before it fell into ruin. The city borough bought it in the 19th century and turned the keep and grounds into a city park.

The grounds were open, so I detoured through it and loitered, not paying attention to the time or noticing when the custodian locked the gates and went home for the evening.

Fortunately, I was not alone on the wrong side of the locks. Four other people--two with bikes--were in the same trap. We walked from gate to gate. All were locked with padlocks the size of my head. For a moment, images of bedding down with strangers and ghosts in a damp corner of the roofless keep flitted through my mind. I started to dial 999, but then we decided to try to escape on our own before becoming a segment on the evening news.

We walked the wall and found one ruined section that we could climb over and down to the road below. So we did, lowering each other and the bikes down one by one under the silent eye of a CCTV camera.

Somewhere there exists grainy, black/white security footage of me scaling the castle wall to freedom--proof that I've done what few have: escape Guildford's keep. LOL!

Roma: A Day in the Country

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.

SPQR – Senatus Populusque Romanus. The Senate and People of Rome. Public buildings throughout the ancient city were inscribed with these words to remind Patricians and Plebeians alike of the good works brought to them by the government, never mind the insane emperors.

Nowadays, the municipal government uses SPQR, and you find the ancient seal on bridges as well as drain covers, trash cans and street cleaners.

Just 16 miles southeast of Roma, where the Tiber once poured itself into the sea, lie the remains of Roma’s first colony, Ostia. Abandoned in the 6th century for fear of barbarians and pirates, the town fell into ruin, which remain. Visitors are free to wander and wonder through the old city, which was once home to 50,000 men and women, merchants and children, slaves and sailors.

At the gates, a sign says “Senatus Populusque Colonae Ostiea …”

Ah, Roma spreads its wings.

Ostia was established, first as a garrison, to guard the mouth of the Tiber and grew to be the port of entry for the North African grain that kept the city in bread. Today, I follow the Romans to Ostia.

It is early as I hurry toward the Circus Maximus, site of the ancient chariot races (remember Ben Hur?). The races held here were the NASCAR of the day. My personal theory is the charioteers’ descendants are the ones now racing Vespas like Dante’s damned through the city.

I slog past the circus while rain follows me like a pet through this city. I nimbly avoid being splashed by puddle-jumping Smart Cars as I search for the metro stop to take me to the sea. Unlike Paris, this is a city that I do not instinctively know. I have gotten lost several times and once ended up at Hadrian's Tomb (my favorite emperor, by the way) when I thought I was walking toward the Circus.

Finally, I stop an elderly man and say, "excusi sir, dove le metro stazione?" Yes. Words from three languages. Surprisingly, he understands me, and gives me equally garbled directions that I, oddly, understand as well. I walk on, dodging Vespas on the sidewalk. I find the station, pay my 1,500 lira (about 50 cents) and get a ticket.

The train cars are brightly colored canvases for the graffiti artists. Mine comes screaming into the station with "Dukes Of Hazzard!" emblazoned across its side. OK, so the graffiti artists lack taste.

With my nose pressed against the glass, I watch Roma disappear into the suburbs, which means under the city (sub urbis) in Latin.  Originally, the poor and disenfranchised, not the privileged, lived outside the city walls. It is a practice that persists here. As the last ugly high rise disappears, the countryside begins to take on that European-look that I've only found elsewhere in the Virginia foothills. The land is brilliantly green as it spread out in soft rolls like a baby's blanket.

Ostia, on the other hand, is not a pretty stopping place, but I head out from the station, using the pedestrian bridge over the two-lane road, and follow my instincts to the outskirts of the town. There, a small arrow points me to the archaeological site and ruins of Ostia Antica.

Yes, by this time you'd think I'd be sick to death of ruins, ruins and more ruins. Really, what possible interest could I find in tumbled crypts, waterless baths and roofless villas? Ah, but if you take a deep breath and look around without focusing on anything, you can see what once was: the people hurrying to the theatre, the merchants arguing prices outside the baths, the bored soldiers who just want to go back to the city, the bread, the circuses and whores.


I spend hours poking among the ruins, returning to Roma just in time for supper. Yes, I realize belatedly that I should have been an archaeologist. To look at shards and see a pot is optimism at its best.

Roma: Day VII

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.

I have lost a day.

It is Nov. 23. I’m positive of the date, but the tour guide swears that today is the 24th. Kate says she’s right. She has a calendar on her watch. She shows me. Proof.

As we ride the bus toward the Catacombs, I mentally try to figure out when and where I lost 24 hours of my life, but can’t. I guess this is a sign of a good vacation.

Or alien abduction.

But onto the catacombs...with the conversion of Constantine, Roma became Christian, and the Church has been laying claim to the city and the surrounding countryside ever since.


It is odd to see young priests, nuns and monks walk through the city in habits and sensible shoes. In most parts of the world, the Church faces a dearth of servants. It's challenging to men and women willing to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and live a life of prayer.

Of course, traditionally, the church has had trouble getting men and women who keep those vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Obedience to whom? God? The Church? The crown?  Obedience has been the subject of many legal arguments, excommunications and a few pitched battles.

Chastity didn’t become a requirement until the 11th century, before that it had merely been considered a good idea.

And poverty? The Church owns a sizable portion of Italy; it holds the largest and best art collection in the world, and there is enough gold adorning the ceilings of the churches in Roma to feed Africa for a century or more.

The struggle between the ideal and the reality is an old one, and I sympathize with all who struggle between the two.

We are barreling down a portion of the Via Appia on our way to the catacombs with a tour group. The bus driver ignores all traffic rules – “we’re in Roma,” he cheerfully explains, “we can do anything” – to get to the underground chambers before closing time. We make it, barely, and are part of the last tour group of the day.

The catacombs remind me of an underground tower of Babel. A half-dozen guides, speaking in as many languages, lead groups of 10, 20 or more through the narrow passages where the walls are too close and the ceiling too low.

The ancient Romans cremated their dead, unlike the Etruscans, who buried their relatives and assumed they carried on the good life in the hereafter, minus sickness, pain or death. Roman law decreed that neither cremation nor burial were allowed within the city walls (Julius Caesar was one exception and the conspirators briefly lived to regret that decision). So, outside each old city is the necropolis, a cemetery of sorts with niches instead of graves, statuary instead of tombstones and detailed inscriptions instead of R.I.P.

The Christians, though, wanted to separate themselves from the Pagans and buried their dead. And thousands of tourists come each year just to take a peek at these early graves.

And on a cold, damp evening we follow the crowd and descend into colder, damper, miserably narrow tunnels and empty niches. The bodies are gone and the inscriptions have been moved.

Keeping with the theme for the day, we venture to St. Peter’s next. We listen to vespers in Latin as we stand in the piazza and marvel at Michelangelo’s perfect union of form and function in his design of the basilica.

Kate waxes poetic about Michelangelo’s architectural gifts, talking about form and function, balance and aesthetics, until I remind her that he considered himself first and foremost a sculptor.

Tomorrow: Ostia Antica

Roma: Day V

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.


Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Byron hung out in Rome. Shelly. Keats. Gibbons. Many writers came for the Grand Tour and forgot to leave. More than a few died here and are buried in the Protestant Cemetery, a belated papal nod to the Reformation.

On the northern edge of the city, beside the Spanish Steps, is a little tea shop called Babbington’s, where the fine tradition of English cooking continues. The eggs are runny, the coffee weak and the side of bacon a whole hog. The undercooked serving would feed me for a week.

But I am most interested in the coffee this morning. Last night, something shell-fishy was in the supper, and for a few moments, I thought I was going to have to test out the Roman healthcare system (I'm allergic to shell-fish, particularly shrimp).

But after doubling up on my Claritin, my allergic reaction isn’t too bad this morning. I can breathe easily again, even if my lips are still swollen to Angelina Jolie proportions (as Kate tells me with an evil laugh). My eyes only open halfway, and I can’t bear to look in a mirror. So my friend, who hangs with New York actors, screenwriters and directors when she’s not writing branding proposals, entertains me with tales of celebrity heroine addiction covered up by great make-up artists, suggesting, of course, that I should have done the same this morning.

I nod, do coffee shots and pick out the crispy bits of bacon.

Babbington’s is the only real disappointment in our choice of restaurants.

For the most part, the food in Roma is fresh and good, if a bit too reliant on pasta and sweet tomato sauce. We are not eating in the finest restaurants available, though, and the street vendors produce snack food nowhere near the quality of the Parisian sidewalk carts. However, wherever we go, the house wines are phenomenal. The whites are dry and unsweet. The reds are robust, nonacidic and you can almost taste the dirt in which the grapes were grown. I am in love.

After eating enough bacon to satisfy me for the rest of my life, we walk around the pink house where Keats died, peek in the windows of Byron’s Roman home and head toward gardens where English tourists have wandered among fake ruins for a century or two.

At the top of the Spanish Steps, we buy miniature watercolors from a deaf artist. I know a little sign language from my days of teaching a deaf student in my karate class, so I understand his final warning to us as we strolled toward the Villa Medici.

"Beware the gypsy children," he gestures.

Tomorrow:  What day is it?

Roma: Day IV

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. Rain. 


No, not the gentle, amble-about-in-the-drizzle rain, but a New Mexican-style, gully-washer that breaks the umbrella. Three times I try to go the Forum, and each time it rains as if Noah has just completed the ark.

Today, I am going to the Forum, come hell or high water. Literally.

The morning is beautiful, sunny and almost warm. Kate goes to the Vatican – after being soaked twice earlier she vows to be indoors and no where near me when I defy the gods.

OK, I say, and take off walking. On the way, the blue skies disappear. Rain begins to fall gently, then harder. I hail a cab. By the time the driver drops me off at the temple of Venus, the rain pounds the ground so hard drops spring up and soak my shoes, my ankles, my knees.

I walk on. Soon wet to the waist.

I pass the gladiators who mug for photos in front of the Colosseum. They are sheltering in ancient alcoves, smoking. I trudge up the Via Sacre as the artists scramble past, their works stuck under their coats. I ignore the tourists huddled under the arch of Titus.

And then, at the ruins of the Basilica of Constantine, the rain slacks off. By the time I reach the Temple of Romulus, the clouds are thinner and the rain is light and pleasant, like Paris in the spring. At the Temple of the Vestals, I look around and finally notice that the place is deserted. The gypsy children are not out picking pockets. The tourists are gone. The souvenir hawkers with the replica colosseums that would make a great soap dish for my bathroom have closed shop and gone home.

I am as alone as one can be in the Forum.

I smile. The gods are with me after all.

Lost in thought I wander through history lessons. The temple of Saturn. Its builders used granite columns to keep the god bound so he would not cause discord. A temple built when young, beautiful Faustina of the talented tongue, died too soon. The Senate didn’t want her unique gift lost to the world, so they deified her (and I’ll leave her eternal pursuits to your imagination).

This small door leads to the cloaca maximus, the sewer of Roma. It’s large enough for an elephant to move through it, which happened thanks to the games in the Colosseum, and these ruts in the stones were caused by thousands of chariots over a thousand of years racing from the curia to the Palatine and beyond.

There is also something about rain and ruins that settle the soul. My my mind slows and quiets, and I understand what the Sibylline whispers.

In Greek mythology, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, springs fully formed from the head of Zeus. I always thought that was odd, even for the Greeks, but now I understand it. Insight comes not in increments, but in bounds, fully formed. Suddenly, we see what was before us all along.

I feel blessed. An Epiphany, like love and the perfect cup of coffee, is something for which you have to be awake.

The rain starts anew and I wander off, over the Capitol, past Circus Maximus to the Tiber and walk along the water as I head back to the hotel to dry off and get warm.

Tomorrow: In the steps of the English

Roma: Day III

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.

I feel like Meg Ryan in “French Kiss”, minus the charming thief for a companion.

Today, I walk around and just say, “beautiful, beautiful.” At some point I switch to “bella, bella” but still walk, amazed, across roads laid even and straight, at a time when my ancestors ran wild and painted themselves blue before battle.

This city, even in the rainy season that makes an umbrella indispensable, is a wonder to behold. Unlike Paris, it doesn't smell of urine and car fumes. True... the Vespas buzz like an approaching plague no matter where you are, but the streets are reasonably clean and the centuries of grime give the buildings character.

Much of Roma is new, only two or three hundred years old, although some sections of town stretch back to a Renaissance building spree. Most of its classical and medieval characteristics are gone, except for the street plan, and thus character and charm are unevenly distributed. Next to a Bernini monstrosity, you’ll find a 2000-year-old temple, light and delicate despite gouged marble and fallen arches. In thick, windowless churches you find works of art that make you weep. Steps that go nowhere rise from a hillside and traffic snarls under and around the Arch of Janus as if training for the NASCAR circuit.

Rome is made for walking, so I walk. Just walk. To the Fontana di Trevi, the Piazza Novana, the Pantheon. I wander, really, from relic to relic. I pay no attention to the people around me, except to be ware of the gypsy children, of course, who are purported to be able to pick your pocket with both hands tied behind their backs.

I lunch in a museum café, and finding no spare seats, accept an offer to share a table with an elderly gentleman. We talk, sort of. His English is as bad as my Italian, but we’d both studied Latin and remembered just as little. He tells me the U.S. still does not have a president and asks if this was my first trip to Roma. Then he motions for me to follow him onto the terrace.

I do, and he shows me a skyline view of the city.

“There,” he points, “St. Peter’s. There, Hadrian’s Tomb. See dome? Pantheon. This,” he points again, “Marcellus theater, the forum and the Palatine.” He lapses into Italian and I do not understand the rest, but nod as if I do and look where he points.

Then I take his photo as a thank you and leave him to smoke.

I wander some more, lost in thought and look up in time to see a face that is eerily familiar. The boy is about 15, with dark curly hair and light gray eyes. His face hints at later angularity and beauty. It bugs me for a few blocks – where have I seen him before? – then I realize he looks just like the portrait of a Florentine youth that hangs in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Odd, but logical, how faces repeat themselves.

Then I glance up and stop. There, on the horizon just as the road dips into a vale, is the Colosseum. Breathtaking in its brokenness.

I walk toward it, studying its arches, the numbers over its gates, the the holes where marble was attached to the brick. A young man walks past and smiles. Reflexively, I smile back and continue walking. Then I hear, “Buon giorno.”

I turn. It’s the young man who just walked by. He smiles again. “Hi,” I answer and turn back to the Colosseum “It’s beautiful,” he says, introducing himself and falling into step beside me, “like you.”

OK, I love this, even though it is a line (and Manual looks like a gypsy child now grown). American men never ever seem to just stop and say hi or introduce themselves to me. Other nationalities do. I’ve never gone to New York City without meeting a half-dozen Europeans. Last year, in San Francisco, I ended up on a pub-crawl with a group of Irish ex-pats, and the first guy I met in Charlotte was from England. In the airport while waiting to board the flight to Rome, I ended up chatting with Luigi, a French-Canadian on his way to Bali to spend the winter as a scuba diving instructor.

I don’t know if European men are just more confident or if they know that sometimes “hi” just means “hi.” Whichever it is, it’s fun.

Meanwhile, back at the Colosseum, Manuel takes me on an impromptu tour of the Colosseum, talking all the while, then he says: “You are too beautiful to look so sad.”

“I’m not sad,” I say, “I’m enjoying the view.”

“Are you here with your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Ah, you left him at home.”

“Yes.”

“Ah, you are heartbroken,” he shakes his head and puts his hand on my waist. I pull my jacket close to make sure he doesn’t go for the purse beneath it.

“No. I’m here with a friend having fun,” I say.

This guy determined, though. “American men are so foolish. I live in America for a while,” he says, “and I learn that American men do not know what love is, they think sex is love. They confuse quantity with quality.”

“And you are talking to me because you want love?” I ask.

Busted, he grins, and it really is a nice grin. “I like talking to beautiful women. Now I should go.”

“Wait,” I say, and pretend to fumble for my camera as I check to make sure I still have all my money, passport, etc., and then take a photo with him just for kicks. With a European kiss goodbye, he heads up through the forum and I spend the rest of the afternoon smiling, having survived my encounter with a gypsy child.

Tomorrow: The forum, hell and high water

Roma: Day II

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.

Ah, the coffee in Rome (or Roma as the natives say. Roma has a beautiful ring to it, so I quickly adopt it into my vocabulary) is thick and strong without being bitter. Three cups and I’m wired. Four and I’m a restless wreck, racing around the city like a human Vespa.

Vespa, which means wasp (and they do sound like angry insects), is a brand name for those little scooters that zip through the warren of streets like toddlers without proper supervision. In Roma, there are no traffic rules. Scooters are on the sidewalks. They skip stop signs. Turn left on red, go the wrong way down one ways and routinely play chicken (and oddly win) with the little Smart cars and Peugeots that clog the roadways. Not even the lone Jeep Cherokee (deep green and dented) barreling down the street like a Sherman tank could scatter the swarm.

Hyped on caffeine, I do what I always do when I’m in a strange city where I do not speak the language. I go for a walk just to see what I can find.

I find the Capitoline.

Roma spreads itself out over seven hills, although one of them was destroyed by the Roman equivalent of a bulldozer (its army) during the reign of Diocletian to make room for some monumental building project. The Capitoline was the seat of power in ancient Roma, and it is the reason so many school children misspell the U.S. Capitol Hill as Capital Hill.

 

Gentle steps, designed by Michelangelo, lead to the top of the hill, where replicas of ancient statues of Castor and Pollux, twin gods worshiped by the Roman Republicans because they supposedly helped the army defeat bad king Tarquis, stand guard. Behind them are two museums that hold many of the surviving works of ancient Roma.

The Dying Gaul is among them.

So is the head of Constantine (the marble one, not the real one) and the Equine Statue of Marcus Aurelius, but those are stories for another day.

I climb the steps and my heart races. In heavily accented Frentalian, I buy a ticket and begin wandering through the marble corridors, making the acquaintance of headless gods, badly reconstructed athletes and disembodied heads of emperors, senators, and high-born Latin ladies.

Up the stairs. Straight ahead. Look right. There he is. The Gaul.

Now some people like paintings: oils, frescos, watercolors, the two-dimensional renderings of a world more colorful and static than reality. Others prefer architecture, the reach for a perfect balance of form and function, the conflict of man against nature stated in brick, wood and stone. But I am drawn to sculpture, marble brought one step shy of breath through chisel and hammer; our ideal form fashioned through violence by the hands of a man obsessed.

Phideas. Michelangelo. Rodan.

The Dying Gaul is the center of a room of warriors, and I wait until a tour group leaves before I approach. Able to get “this” close to the copy of the third century masterpiece, I study him intensely. The gash in his side. The tangle of hair that frames his face. The resigned look in his eyes as he gazes at the empty spot between his hip and hand. His hands are veined. His sword lies slightly behind him and he has fallen over his broken shield.

And I learn something new.

This Gaul, resigned to death, is part of a larger piece, now broken up and partly lost. Originally, the bodies of his wife and child lay in the empty space between his hip and hand, and they are what his fading sight fixes upon.

To his right, not far from his hand, stood another pair of figures that survive in a museum closed to the public. This Gaul holds his wife, whom he has just slain, in his left hand, pulling her close to his body even has he plunges his own short sword into his heart, going in just to the front of the collar bone. They die rather than face life as slaves.

In Italian reference books that I can only half-read, I find a drawing of what art historians think the entire grouping looked like when it adorned the hill, and there, captured in cold marble is life, death, war, and love - the best and worst of the human repertoire.

Tomorrow:  Keena and the men of Roma

Roma: Day I

The other day while searching the bowels of my computer for a lost file, I came across a travelogue I'd written nearly 10 years when I went to Rome on vacation. At the time, I shared it with a few friends. And it seems appropriate to share it here now. Enjoy.

Caesar crossed the Rubicon in the twilight of the BC years and made this city his own. Caesar Augusta made it marble. Almost 1,000 years later, Alfred the Great of England took a break from slaying Vikings to venture to Rome and returned a changed man. The popes claimed it. Michelangelo adorned it. The barbarians laid waste to it (and what they didn’t destroy Bernini did) and Richard Coeur de Lion had his mother and unwanted bride follow him here as Queen Eleanor pestered him to “consummate the marriage already.”

Ah, Rome. The eternal city. A collection of ruins and monuments and history that changed the course of the Western World more than once.

My trip to this mecca of history and Roman Catholicism in the Jubilee year of A.D. 2000 begins like so many other overseas adventures: a long wait at the airport and an even longer plane ride. To be honest, November is not shaping up to be a banner month for me. Job woes. Soured relationships. The IRS writing to say I owe them more money. So, in true egomaniacal pessimism that the universe IS out to get me, I fully expected the plane to do a belly flop into the ocean within minutes of take off.

It was worse.

Much worse.

Not only are Kate (my friend who went with me on the trip) and I the youngest people on the plane, the entire cattle-class section is filled with sixty- and seventy-something retirees off to cruise the Mediterranean for a few weeks. The woman behind us is not only blessed with the most obnoxious Southern-sorority accent imaginable, but she is also loud and squeaky. Throughout the movie she keeps repeating what are supposed to be funny punchlines, except they aren’t funny, especially not the second time around.

If it is bad for me, pity the flight attendants. Example:

Squeaky: “Stewardess, do you always start serving dinner from the front to the back?”

Surprised and wary flight attendant: “On this flight, yes.”

Squeaky: “Why?”

Attendant: “We just do.”

Squeaky: “Then people like us in the back never get our choice of steak or chicken then do we? Now that doesn’t seem fair to me. What if I don’t like steak or are on a restricted diet?”

Attendant: “We usually have enough, and you can order special meals if you want. Are you on a restricted diet? Do you need us to prepare something special…”

Squeaky: “I’ll have the steak.”

Squeaky’s companion (her husband or perhaps a very large, very manly woman who keeps kicking the seat, hard, giving me whiplash and very strange bruises.): “I’ll have the steak, too. Oh, this is tiny. Can you give me another one of these little meals?”

And then, Squeaky: “Oh, Betty, you made it! I’m so glad you’re going to be with us on the boat.” She stands, climbs over her companion, using Kate’s head as a brace, trips over my seat and grabs a woman standing in the aisle, hugging her so tight I hear thin bones snap. “Are you excited or what? Did you know that…”

I realize then the plane has already crashed and we are bound for purgatory in a crowded tin can. In despair, I take the Tylenol PM Kate offers me, down them, beg for more, and promptly pass out.

Five hours later, or maybe six, I am stumbling like a drunkard through the Leonardo da Vinci airport, half-filled backpack hanging off my shoulders like any other fashionably low-key tourist. I produce my passport and wait in line behind a gaggle of soon-to-be boat people. One is very slowly, very loudly speaking English to the Italian immigration officer who pretends not to understand a word he is saying. Another inspector looks at me and then waves me through.

No passport inspection.

No questions about how long I plan stay in their beautiful country.

No interrogation about whether or not I’m a member of the Dutch Liberation Movement here to protest something or other.

So we go through the turnstiles and find ourselves in fresh air, in Italy, just south of Rome. It is Nov. 18, 2000, and I am outside the ruined gates of the eternal city. We grab a taxi and settle in for a long ride in bumper-to-bumper traffic. My head bobs against the leather seatback in a drugged dance as the driver tells about the beauty of Rome, the places we must go and the sites we must explore.

He zigzags through the tiny medieval streets before slamming on his brakes. “Your hotel is through there. The road is too narrow for my car. And,” he says as a final warning, “beware the gypsy children.”

Tomorrow: The truth about the Dying Gaul

Uninspired

On Tuesday, I guest-blogged about travel and its affect on my writing, but it got me thinking about the type of travel that might be detrimental to my writing. The "bad" travel, so to speak.


Yes, even a traveling addict like me can take an uninspiring trip.


In fact, I've taken many that didn't get the creative juices flowing--a few barely inspired me to brush my teeth.


Travels for the day job have deposited me in such unlikely destination as Hartford, Conn., and Shanghai. But the destination isn't what makes these trips bad. It's the fact that it didn't matter what where I was. I went from airport, to taxi, to hotel, to conference room, to taxi, to airport. My schedule in Shanghai was such that if not for the faces and accents of the folks working at the JW, I wouldn't have known where I was.


For a gypsy like me, these trips are heart-breaking. I get all the headaches of travel--waiting in taxi queues that stretch around the block, disrobing for airport security and wondering if it's the bubonic plague that gives the hotel air such unique odor--without the joie de vivre of exploration.


And these trips rarely move my muse to begin whispering plot points in my ear. Instead, he (don't know why, but I think of "him" not "her" when I think of my muse--but that's another blog) usually grouses about the 5 a.m. wake-up call and reminds that terrorists love to target hotels.


And, yes, that low-level paranoia has found its way into at least one of my characters--to very interesting, dark-souled results--but I'm not going to beginning planning corporate travel just to dirty-up my characters. But the thought does lead to the question of the week: What uninspiring trip has found its way into your book? And would you go again?