Quiet Rome

 

I love the feeling of waking up with a purpose, especially when that purpose involves going off on an adventure. So I woke up in a good mood Saturday morning, I showered, took my bag and left (I will mention also, for Stéphane's sake, that I dutifully brushed my teeth). Before long, I was happily sitting on a train, on its way to Rome.

Unfortunately for me, all the walking I've been doing these last few weeks finally took its toll, and I arrived at my hostel in Rome with gigantic blisters under my heels. I stubbornly went out to explore anyways, treading carefully on the balls of my feet, but I wasn't able to do as much walking as I would have liked. Still, I enjoyed weaving in and out of the chaos of the city.

The miracle of Rome is that, bustling as it is, with its traffic and its hoards of tourist, you need only duck into a small street and you enter a completely different world: a quiet Rome of paved alleys, flower-adorned windowsills, little cafés, and few pedestrians.

It is particularly in those moments, when the sounds and chaos of the city seem closed off by a bubble, that I feel most connected to Rome. There is only me and the city, and from this nest of serenity hatch the little bursts and hints of life that make Rome a magical place: a sleeping cat, a piano melody drifting from an open window, and a lost tourist like myself, trying in vain to catch the magic around her with her clunky camera.

That is all I have to say for today, ragazzi. Hope you all had a lovely, and preferably blister-free, weekend.