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Fourth Grade History

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  Day Eight: The ancient structures and the art of Rome . I’m still lost in a fourth grade history lesson. The photos in the old history books, whose paper edges we’d clean with sandpaper at the end of the school year so that they looked like new for the class that arrived in September. Restoration . Make things last.These thoughts tumble around as we step off the metro and are visually assaulted by the Colosseum . It takes my breathe away, it looks exactly like those grainy history book photos except that the sky is blue and when I consider the millions, maybe billions of people who have walked this path, I feel insignificant, in a good way. All these things that we concern ourselves with, will one day be history, a story to tell to ten year olds. Later we see the 5th Century BC Etruscan bronze statue of the Capitoline Wolf with Romulus and Remus and I remember that photo was scandalous to our Catholic school sensibilities . I didn’t care for my 4th grade teacher, a nun with a s...
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Chestnuts in Rome

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  Day Six: Beautiful walk to the Spanish Steps which, until the 1600’s was just a muddy hill. We were welcome to the square by a trio singing “ le donna e mobile ”. I’m happy even as I mark the anniversary of my mother’s death. I am thinking about Rose as we come upon a woman selling chestnuts, something my Mom would make for me on cold winter nights as we’d sit close together on the couch watching an old black and white movie. I hated the movies, loved my Mom and enjoyed the chestnuts. Caesar buys the chestnuts and we share them while sitting on the Spanish steps. We finish and scale the stairs to the top where sits the Church of the Trinity dei Monti, one of the French Catholic Churches in Italy. Should we go in? We visit lots of churches, sometimes I skip one. Well, we’re here and the sun is hot, it will be cool inside. I light more candles, say more prayers. I kneel in the pew and I notice a few nuns praying by a small altar. I approach the altar, curious, and find a shrine...
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Window Shopping. Guardando le Vetrine di Bologna

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  Day Five: As we start the next leg of our journey (Rome, here we come), I want to share our joy at window shopping in Bologna. Once a popular and common American activity, one I shared with my Mom and sisters beginning as a baby in the stroller. We’d walk Main Street in Darby, 69th Street in Upper Darby and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia on a regular basis. We didnt buy much, we couldnt, but we enjoyed looking. It was beautiful fantasy. Window shopping barely exists nowadays. Big box stores don’t have windows. Marshall’s and TJ Maxx are more like a walk through the storeroom. Malls are scarce and those that exist, such as KOP, have pretty basic window displays, clean and neat but not necessarily inspirational. To me, merchandising a product through a storefront is magical and Bologna was throwing pixie dust everywhere.
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Location: Bologna, Metropolitan City of Bologna, Italy
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Mangiare a Bologna

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Day Four: Food pics in Bologna. Pasta Bolognese was as wonderful as you’d suspect! We also enjoyed the amazing Biscotti di Carnevale, a treat only available this time of year. Growing up, we called them fried bows, also known as cioffe. Fried thin dough strips covered in powder sugar. Amazing!!
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Hit Me with Your Best Shot

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  Day Three: Soccer match. Bologna vs. Cagliari. This is Caesar’s itinerary item and I’m going along for the fun (?). I owe it to him for all the televised soccer matches I’ve ruined with vacuuming during the single goal of the match, which seems to happen with relative frequency.  The night before the match, he tries to get tickets, which are available but the firewall on the site is blocking the final payment. We spend an hour on different devices but just can’t get the tickets. No worries, we’ll buy at the stadium, which is about three miles away. Then we learn that there is a marathon taking place in the city and we can’t get the car out. No worries, we’ll get a bus.  Morning comes and we start out to get the bus but the marathon route changes the bus route. No worries, we’ll walk. Forty five minutes later we are at the  Stadio Dall’ara but can’t find the ticket office. No worries, we’ll ask some fans. Caesar Caramanico approaches a large group of them outside a ...
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Location: Via Andrea Costa, 174, 40134 Bologna BO, Italy
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You Say Bologna

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  Day Two: Trying to recall when we learned about the great European cities and I’m thinking it was fourth grade with Sr. Immaculata. What I do remember is all of us kids calling Balogna,  “Baloney” and this thought came to my head as we were served mortadella on a table covered in starched , white linens.  The world’s oldest university, established in 1088,  is located here, so the city feels young, especially late evenings when students clog the portico covered sidewalks outside the bars and restaurants, eating pizza, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and having thoughtful conversation.  This too, reminds me of my youth as I remind Caesar Caramanico that there is Advil in the bag for his hip pain and that I really need to get some sleep.
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Location: Bologna, Metropolitan City of Bologna, Italy
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Italy in Winter

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Day One. Why the hell are we here in the dead of winter and during a political firestorm while the Pope is dangerously ill? I’ve never seen Rome. Aside from flying into and out of Fumicino airport and spending a single night during a heatwave in a hundreds year old house without AC, I’ve not seen Rome. While Caesar Caramanico was teaching, we always opted to travel during the summer and Rome in summer is huge crowds and unbearably hot. I despise crowds and CC hates  the heat, so we always would say “next time” and end up next time on the beach somewhere on the east coast of Italy or visiting a hidden gem in a town high in the mountains without tourists.  So, when I heard it was a Jubilee Year for the Catholic Chirch and Caesar’s first year not teaching, I planned our trip to coincide with Carnevale and Ash Wednesday. After sharing my ideas and plan with CC, who has already been to Rome, and doesn’t share my fervor about the plenary indulgence (more about that later) we will re...
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