Jet Boy Jet Girl

I visited La Bocca della Verità and told only the truth, but it bit off my hand anyway.

Having seen others off every day this week, I'm on my own now, the last one left. Not that Rome is empty, by any means -- it's been busier this Easter than ever before, and the streets are dense with roaming packs of tourists, school parties, scout troops, cheerleaders chaperoned by nuns. They're a curse, but of course I'm just another visitor myself. At least I wander solo much of the time, lost in music and antiquity. This is a city of old ruins; in that respect, anyway, I fit right in.

I've been joining the dots. I knew Rome fairly well as a child, but visits since have invariably taken place within a protective cloud of others who know it better, speak the language properly, have their own habits and patterns and assumptions of shared experience, and I've been left with a vague and fragmented familiarity unsupported by any real understanding; akin, perhaps, to knowing London only by the tube map. Walking is my antidote, and it seems to be working.

So now I've one final night here, all alone. It's getting dark. Cooler, but still warm. In a little while I shall go looking for trouble; but I'll probably make do with food.
Posted by matt at April 20, 2006 05:38 PM