Carey on wandering: Rome
Listen to me above, or read me below
I can’t date my fascination with this city. I sat down to write this post and I promise you I tried. I imagined this great opener detailing that one quintessential moment that changed everything for me. A life-changing pasta dish or the waft of a steaming cappuccino or the first time I heard my dad speak Italian to my mum.
In all honesty, it is far more likely that 5-year-old me liked spaghetti and Italy, I was told, was where pasta came from.
When it came to planning our trip around Europe, Rome was a non-negotiable destination. I was willing to go to the mattresses for the city I had been dreaming about since I was a little girl. I imagined myself at the Colosseum, sipping espresso at the Spanish steps and walking the markets like I was Don Corleone. I imagine my boyfriend at the time felt much like Europe did during the expansion of the Roman empire: resist at your peril.
It took 12 hours to travel from Paris to Rome, on three different trains. We had had some issues with booking our seat through our Interrail passes- something that all aspiring European travellers should know about. There is nothing straightforward about Italian trains. Nothing is simple about Italian travel — period — but I’ll get to that.
We had left Paris early in the morning, poorly equipped with our rucksacks and barely enough food to last us the day. From my journal, you can see that this train was the first time that I must have stopped to breathe in a few days. It had been very stressful, we had a bomb scare at the train station in the morning amongst other things. My boyfriend and I were on the outs of our relationship by then, not that I necessarily knew that at the time but Rome was definitely about to show me.
I don’t remember what time we had arrived in Rome. I remember being starving. It feels ridiculous to say but I actually had enjoyed the journey. I was a sitting cliché, realising and accepting my own insignificance, as the train speeded past these towering mountains in Switzerland into Northern Italy. I felt so inspired. I was breathing the same air, seeing the same sights as the great Romantic writers and free thinkers like Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. I could see them scribbling stories, writing poetry and absorbing every ray of inspiration that this part of the world has to offer. I couldn’t tell where exactly it was coming from but I felt it. I felt closer to them somehow.
It’s not in my journal but my memory is as vivid as if it happened yesterday. My one burning desire when I eventually lumbered my rucksack off the train was to get my boyfriend something to eat. His hanger was always something we joked about. There was no joking today. His mum once teased that I should carry food in my bag for him because of how he could get when he was hungry. This was the only time I ever regretted not following that advice. We found an extortionate (and tasteless) toastie in the train station, negotiating bites between the snaking crowds of commuters as we made our way to the Metro. I tore at it like an animal as I sat down in the train car with one all-consuming thought:
“Isn’t Italian food meant to be… good?”
The underground felt as old as the city crumbling above me did. Our stop — Cornelia — was almost the end of the line. In my journal, I wrote about the humidity — extensively — and how every footstep took me closer to the painful realisation that we had no idea where we were. I’ll hold my hands up and say that directions were and still aren’t my strong suit. If I were in one of those mazes guarded by some monstrous Minotaur, it’s got me because I ain’t making my way out of there. I was the planner, I did the research and the bookings of the accommodations, the trains, the attractions. My ex was the GPS. But after a 12-hour journey and flimsy toastie as fuel, my GPS had been substituted for a second hand, barely operational compass that your mum packed in your backpack on your first day to Scouts ‘just in case’.
After just bumping into our hosts around the corner from the apartment we were staying in, they led us up to our room. Several years on, I can’t believe our luck and how trusting we were especially when this small, smiling Italian woman led us into a creaking Victorian lift to our floor. I wrote about her affectionately in the journal, fussing about after us in Italian while we blankly stared back at her, partly because we were exhausted but mostly because we didn’t speak a word of Italian.
I was only in Rome a couple of days but that’s all you need to get a feel for the place. When I think about it, as a city, I can’t help but be reminded of a quote from ‘Eat Pray Love’ which is very basic of me, I know.
“But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn’t compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed, exuding an air like: Hey — do whatever you want, but I’m still Rome.”
I had waited for this moment for so long- to be in Rome. So many people had told me how overrated it was, how touristy and old-fashioned it could be. How it was like walking in a museum with an incessant angry Italian woman carrying a red flag to shepherd her tourists from one overcrowded exhibit to another. I get their point. I noted that from our awkward encounter with our host on the first night, hearing Italian became a rarity. It was a tourist town now and I was unashamedly part of it. I had done extensive research on every attraction worth seeing and I intended to see as much as I could in the time I had left.
We started in Vatican City, a story I will save for another time. We started as we meant to go on, ticking off my bucket list of attractions furiously from the Trevi Fountain to the Spanish steps to the Pantheon. I absorbed it all.
I Facetimed my family from the Colosseum, the first time I had really spoken to them since I had been away. I knew Rome meant a lot to my parents and their relationship. They had spent my Mum’s 40th birthday there together which was their first holiday without my sister and I since we were born. A fact I haven’t let them forget since. I distinctly remember us waiting for them to come back. I was already in love with the concept of Rome at that point and was hoping that some glimpses of the city, even in a photo, would tie me over until I could see the real thing. When they returned with a ‘City of Rome’ colouring book in hand, they informed me that they had lost all the pictures due to an incident with my Dad’s phone. I was devastated for them, and for me. I yearned to see Rome even more after that.
In the journal, I reflect on all these attractions but in remarkably brief detail. I was obviously impressed, I clearly enjoyed the views but when rereading some of my musings, I was taken by one sentence in particular.
“I loved just getting lost. This was the real Rome.”
I was talking about walking the side streets of the city with no discernible purpose except in search for Ice Cream. I was channelling Elizabeth Gilbert in ‘Eat Pray Love’, I was embracing Rome and everything it stood for. At home, even then, I was high strung. I had three jobs on my summer break to make it to this wonderful city. I had worked so hard to get there. This was what I had been working for, not just that summer but for years previous. This was the destination to a journey that I didn’t even know I was on. It is the only place, outside my hometown that I have ever felt at peace.
You can see it in my writing. I talk about Rome having all the romance and glow that Paris had and more. You can see that in the pictures I took. The one below was taken in Piazza Navona which I am convinced is still one of my favourite spots in the entire world. We sat looking out over the ancient and intricate fountains at a square full of life and lights. It was one of the most romantic nights of my life. I sat with my ex, remembering our first date while the wine steadily depleted from our glasses. It was magical, it was perfect.
Of course, it wasn’t but I wasn’t going to tell you that then.
Travel quotes, unlike other quotes, not only can show you a place but actually have you understand what it feels like to be there.
Before writing this piece I read one about Rome, written by a Renaissance painter, Giotto di Bondone.
“Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.”
Sometimes with travel quotes, you need to have stood there to understand what they mean. Rome is uniquely and unapologetically beautiful and ancient. If it weren’t for all the tourists, you would almost feel like you were intruding on something. It’s not like other cities. It is not fighting to modernise and to advance. Modernise what? Advance to where? It’s still living in its history and every footstep in its streets are echoes of the footsteps that walked there before you.
I didn’t just hear echoes in Rome’s streets or see illusions in its ruins. Rome is a city that yearns for its past. But I was a girl yearning for mine too. While I was sitting in Piazza Navona, drunk on white wine and romance, I was leaving my own echo. Like Rome’s ruins, my relationship was crumbling around me. Within the month, there would be nothing left but rubble. There was no Pompeii, no explosions. It was just a relationship that fell into disrepair through the passing of time.
While, Rome frantically clings to its past, afraid of what losing a fragment of it will do to its future. I continue to admire it, from afar. But I don’t want to yearn for something that is already gone. I don’t want to cling to an illusion of something that isn’t there. You don’t hear echoes from the past when you learn to let go.
