The Italians are still celebrating the 12 days of Christmas. Apparently that is more than a song here, although there are no lords a leaping anywhere that I’ve seen. With only a few days left until the Epiphany, the ladies wearing dead animals on their backs have a lot of shopping to do, and their husbands appear to have a lot of cigarette smoking to handle.
We let ourselves into the massive doors of Hotel Maxim and dragged our suitcases up a few steps. The guidebook-promised elevator was even larger than we’d imagined, almost big enough for the two of us, our luggage, and a celery stalk. I pressed the 3 button with my frozen nose--did I mention that Florence is even colder than Rome?-- and the elevator made some rolling sounds and then deposited us upstairs.
The clerk--let’s call her Paulina--perched behind the desk, speaking into the telephone. She looked at us with large green eyes and then whirled her chair so that her back was to us. “Blindini balistrano Giuliani….”she rattled into the phone. We waited.
Finally, she said, “Arrivederci,” and turned her chair around. Paulina looked like a cross between Diana Ross and Eddie Izzard, which is not to say that she was a particularly attractive woman. Her reddish hair hung in hanks of processing, as if she’d tried to straighten it a few months ago and now simply deep fried it in oil before coming to work. Her mascara made each eyelash the width of a telephone pole, which was a good thing, because they offset a Karl Madden nose.
We gave her the particulars and she recited the rules. No coming in after 1:00AM. Internet access only until 1:00 AM. No smoking. No talking. Fifteen minutes on the computer, maximum. Then she smiled. “Would you like a map of the city?” She handed one over.
“You’d like another?” Well, there were two of us, and unlike Siamese twins, we were separable.
Big sigh. She reached to the pad of maps and painstakingly tore off another. Clearly each of them cost less than 10 Euro cents, but she had a point. With the exchange rate, that would buy a house in Santa Barbara.
Paulina gave us directions to our room, which involved fording a few streams and then rappelling down the Alps before finishing off with a ten mile forest hike.
There would also be a few stairs. “How many?” MK asked.
“A few.”
“How many?”
Rock hard smile. She turned toward MK and her hair bounced off her head, like a broom's bristles on concrete. “A few.” This could take longer than it would take Israel to negotiate a relationship with Iran. I changed the subject.
“We’ll get wi fi?”
Ah, yes. “For a fee.”
The guidebook had promised free wi-fi for its readers. “We booked through Rick Steves.”.
“Wi Fi is for a fee.”
“But it’s supposed to be free.”
Paulina nodded and smiled. “There is a fee.” The proof of our guidebooks were buried somewhere deep in our backpacks, beneath small bags of biscotti, travel rolls of Charmin and bleach wipes.
We gave up and packed up our sacks and suitcases and satchels and backpacks and headed off in the direction in which she’d pointed. Dragging and toting our bags, we scooted sideways past cleaning products, leftover torture devices from the 1400s, a catapult and a few boulders from Jesus’ tomb. The stairs appeared. Perhaps Paulina meant a few flights.
Our room smelled of cigarette smoke. The diamond shaped veneer inlays that held our bedside lights were slowly prying themselves off the wall. The bed sagged in the middle, and the window had clearly not been restored since 1800. The north wind blew through the room, making the peeling paint flap against the walls. We heaved our bags onto the bed.
“This was my bargain find,” MK said.
“This is a cheap room? I wouldn’t have known.” I tried to sound sweet.
When MK is tired, as she might be after five hours sleep and 14 hours awake, and an interaction with the Rome train station, a taxi cab and Paulina, she begins to get a little edgy. She looked as if she might either throw her suitcase out of our garret, or cry. “$65 Euros a night, for five nights.”
“You know, I like it.” I tried to smile.
I went to pee. There was a button on the top of the toilet that I pushed, expecting a flush. I tried again. There was a sucking noise but the yellow water and the lone piece of toilet paper waved at me.
I finally called to MK and she came into the bathroom and stared at the water lapping at the bottom of the toilet bowl. She opened the tank and wiggled things. She pushed the button on top, and sucking noises led to a gentle wave-like action in the water, but the toilet paper and the pee remained behind.
We knew we had to talk to Paulina.
“I’ll go,” I volunteered. If one of us had to sacrifice ourselves for a toilet, it might as well be me. Let MK carry on and provide for the children.
MK went with me, though, primarily because she didn’t want to stay in our little prison room alone. MK was nearing the end of her ability to cope with either walking or talking, let alone both. She was exhausted and we were staying in a room that looked like it doubled as a crack den, and which smelled like a casino.
On the way down, she sat at the bottom of the stairs, near tears, trying to breathe. The cigarette smoke in the room made her feel wheezy, she said. I urged her to carry on; we were only a few miles from Paulina.
Paulina stared at me blankly when I told her the problem. “I don’t fix toilets. The owner will be back around 6.”
“And he’ll fix it?”
“I don’t fix toilets.”
“The owner will be back around 6 and he can fix it?”
Paulina wordlessly went to a rolodex and then picked up the handset from an elaborate telephone system that probably communicated with NASA in 1963. She punched several buttons before hanging up the handset. “He’s not answering his mobile."
"But he'll fix it tonight?"
"I don’t fix toilets. He’ll be here after 6.”
“So if we go out and come back around 7, our toilet will be fixed?”
“I don’t fix toilets.”
I gave up and grabbed MK, who was now whimpering in front of the “internet point,” a spot that was off limits after 1:00 AM, according to signs posted in front of, above, under and on the computer. We went downstairs in search of a sight or two.
We’d passed the Duomo earlier. Each city’s main cathedral is called a “duomo,” but this duomo had been built without a dome, until Michaelangelo figured out how to engineer one, three hundred years after the cathedral was erected. Talk about faith. Sitting in an open cathedral in winter or in the heat of summer would surely make one feel so much closer to God.
We wanted to get another look. The exterior was covered in diamond-shaped emerald green and white marble, like a bathroom floor from The Wizard of Oz. There were little nooks, with statues of saints and popes peeking out, jack in the box style. If you don’t like one holy figure, you can just look at a different one, carved from marble and immortalized on little perches. They looked down at us from their turrets, while we shivered in the cold square beneath them. The Baptistery (this building may produce Southerners that want to fry up squirrels and deny me the right to marry) has doors that depict various Bible scenes, including ones from the Old Testament, known by my kind as the Five Books of Moses.
Faced with staring at the bronze doors--lovely, but unfortunately they were still doors and thus outdoors--or going inside the cathedral, we figured that in a cold snap, everyone’s a Catholic. The cathedral, though, wasn’t much warmer. Cavernous, it had its own nativity scene--set in a Tuscan village--and a few thousand statues of Jesus, Mary, and assorted popes. We wandered, subtly going as far away from the doors as possible, until we could no longer feel our earlobes or noses. Time to go back to Paulina.
Once we traversed the barren ice fields known as Via Calzaiuoli, past the Gucci shop and the Lady Bar, we got to our little home-away-from-home (next door to the Disney Store), which we were now calling Prison Maxim. Paulina still sat at her desk, but there was a man in a navy blue suit in front of her. Since no one visiting Prison Maxim would wear a suit, unless he was the warden, I broke into a smile. “The owner?” I asked Paulina.
“Si, he can fix the toilet. I don’t fix toilets,” she added in a whisper.
“Buon Giorno.” Paolo looked like an older cherub with wireless glasses. MK was prostrate, coughing on the couch. “I’m going to check my email,” she croaked, her eyes pleading for a reprieve from the torture chamber of our room.
So Paulo and I went through the passageways of the ancient building, around the moats and over the ramparts. As we entered the room, Paolo turned to me, shocked. “You SMOKE?”
“No! But we didn’t want to complain. But my, uh, my friend”--we were in a Catholic country and I don’t have a partner or a wife here--”my friend, she was having trouble breathing, but we don’t want to make trouble…”
Paolo sighed. “Lately, we get a lot of young people. Parties.“ He shook his head. “We’ll fix it. In the morning. It’s too late tonight, but in the morning.”
MK came in the door. I related the news to her. She nodded wearily, exhausted from her hike through outer Siberia and to the Duomo, and the problems with the hotel.
Paulo fiddled with the toilet, clucking. He held up a black wire, and then pushed into the tank, lifting small pieces of knights’ armor out of the way as he worked. Finally, he pushed the button and whoosh, the water rushed into the bowl. Later it might come out of our sink, but that was later.
Paolo began to reminisce. He told us that the building was constructed in the 1200s. Our room was located in the modern portion of the building, built in the 1700s.
Paulo remembered when Florence was served by horses and carriages, until the mid 1960s. Since it is a pedestrian-only city, few people actually live in it. Living without a car, in an ancient city that consists of museum and Gucci stores is difficult: city life without any access to modern conveniences such as day care, air conditioning or dentists. Parking one’s child so that one can go to work might mean setting them out on the street with a leash tied to a street lamp.
After Paulo was done---half an hour later, since Paolo loves to talk--I dragged MK down the stairs to get dinner. We ended up in a Sardinian restaurant a few blocks from our hotel. Like everyone else, we ate wearing our coats and hats. The waitress brought us bread, which we think might have started out life as a snowshoe. The food was edible. Florence was turning into Rome with ice up our noses.
MK’s head fell into her soup, so I pushed her onto the sled, and mushed my way back to the hotel with her. She coughed and hacked her way right to sleep and I followed without a fuss. It was 9PM and our little prison cell reeked of cigarettes. But at least Paulina was gone for the night and our toilet flushed. It’s the little things that count.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Link to Photo of a Dead Pope
No, it's not a rock band. It's a saint. On MK's Facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29626142362#/photo.php?pid=1245709&id=752023152
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29626142362#/photo.php?pid=1245709&id=752023152
Monday, January 5, 2009
The Rape of the Taxi Riders
We’re starting to wonder if the Italian word for stroll” is “Standini in frontini of Jane and Mk-ina.” It appears that every person in Italy is out shopping this weekend, and has every intention of turning their body into a leg-propelled anti-American missle device aimed straight at one of us.
On Sunday, we went to the Borghese Museum, but we had a few minutes to spare so MK thought we’d take a quick side trip to see a Vermeer and Rembrandt exhibit at an art gallery near the Spanish Steps. Not so hard, we thought.
After all, we’d negotiated the muni to get to the Spanish Steps on Saturday, and braved the crowds and the threatening baby Jesus display in the middle of the steps. We could wade through the religious paraphernalia to get to an art show. At the top of the steps, there was an art show of a different sort, with local artists displaying their wares. I couldn't help but be tempted by a lovely portrait of the lovebirds Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes that graced one vendor's stand. Who wouldn't want a lovely rendition of Fake Heterosexuality hanging on their walls?
Aas we came down the steps, we didn’t know that they disguise the neighborhood just below them, which is filled with stores from Armani to Fendi to Capitalismimo Up Your Ass-o. Looking around at the opulence in the stores, and then the opulence on people’s backs, we realized that we found the Rodeo Drive of Rome. Perhaps that makes it Rome-O Drive. Either way, both of us began to say to each other, at first under our breaths, and then louder and louder, as a woman of a acertain age would approach us--”Dead Animal Alert.”
Minks and chinchillas passed us every three minutes, adorning the backs of women who looked much more unhappy than a $5,000 coat would suggest was right. I told MK, even though I know it's sexist, that each fur coat we saw was payment for adultery. MK had asked Aubrey (our Vatican tour guide helper) about the inordinate amount of fur we saw, and she had replied that most of it was inherited. Inherited or not, there is enough fur in Rome to carpet George Bush's special apartment in Hell.
MK at one point accidentally ran into a dark brown number--once again, a victim of the Italian Stroll--- and whispered to me, “It was soft.” I nodded. We knew that it was soft. Little animals often are. Little dead animals can’t be any different.
So we pushed and shoved our way through rich Italian people, and finally found the right street. The Italians have a cute habit of numbering addresses how they’d like. So we were looking for 320, and since the numbers in front of us ran as 192 and 194, we turned in the direction of the numbers going up. In the next block, the street numbers were 82 and 84. The next block brought 485 and 588. In Paris, it is easy to believe that capriciousness of this sort would be the result of hating anyone who isn’t French. In Italy, we just assumed that it is the result of an obliviousness that anyone unfamiliar with the area would even try to negotiate something so complex as an address.
Eventually, we gave up. We had an appointment at the Borghese for 1:00PM, which meant we needed to be there by 12:30, and it was almost noon. Even if we found 320 Via Corgolonossibustamenate Leone IV, we wouldn’t have time to see a single painting. The girl with the pearl earring was going to have a lonely Sunday afternoon.
We trudged back to the Spanish Steps, stopping on the way for a quick lunch at a café. I had a plate of spaghetti with mushrooms--the promised fish never arrived because it was apparently having a chat with the girl with the pearl earring--and we then hurried over to the stand with horses and carriages and the Baby Jesus overlooking the Gucci and Prada extravaganza below. Someone once told me that Jesus overthrew the tables in the temple, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the little lord in the manger on the Spanish Steps was getting ready to shake his groove thing and stomp down those steps with a vengence. We didn’t want to find out; instead, we hopped into a taxi.
The taxi driver was in his 60s, a well preserved George Hamilton kind of guy. His coat was a beautiful grey wool and he wore his cream colored scarf like an ascot, folded neatly beneath his coat. He looked as if he might have been a Borghese himself, or at least married into the family. He asked us where we were from and MK said, “The United States.”
“AH! Cal E Furnya!”
I was surprised. I’m used to Europeans knowing we’re American; how could he know we were from California? Did we smell of Coppertone and patchouli? “How did you know!?” I asked.
Big smile from Georgio in the rear view mirror. “Chay luggisimo ventana linguani beligiani.” Or something like that. Of course.
He gunned the little car down the street, while MK blanched and grabbed for her seat belt. I felt as if I was on a ride at Disneyland, as we veered down narrow, cobbled streets, barely missing other motorcars that seemed to think that they had the right of way just because their light was green. Georgio ignored everyone else on the road, and grinned with his big white teeth every time he grazed another car, motorcycle or pedestrian. He was playing for keeps, and we were captive to his driving skills.
“Remind me never to drive in Rome,” I whispered to MK.
“Be quiet. I’m praying to a god I don’t believe in.” The wind whistled outside our car windows as he scraped by a green and orange bus, and the taxi then simply hopped the curb, scattering the waiting bus passengers into the street, where they were safe for a few moments from Georgio.
I began to look out the window, trying to avert the seasickness and terror I felt when I watched through the windshield. There was a cute, quaint little restaurant. There was a small park. We tore around a corner and up a freeway onramp, while pedestrians and bicyclists throughout Rome heaved a sigh of relief. But then off the freeway, with a quick, screeching turn past a villa and a speedy acceleration into a residential neighborhood, emerging without any obvious human road kill onto a large thoroughfare. And then a cute, quaint little restaurant. Wait. It was the SAME cute, quaint little restaurant. I glanced at the meter. We were at $7Euro and we didn’t appear any closer to the Borghese than we’d been a few minutes before.
“Soon?” I said.
Big white teeth appeared again. “Soon! Soon!” and he pushed his foot to the floor and missed a cypress tree by inches.
He began to slow as we approached a large green area. “Elly fants , gee raffs,” he said. “Park Zoological.”
“A zoo?”
“Si, si, a zoo!” I imagined that the zebras and cheetahs were pacing their paddocks, praying that Georgio stayed away from their cages.
“Soon Borghese?”
The brakes slammed on. “Here it ess!” he grinned at us. The meter read $9.50. MK handed him a $20 --the smallest bill she had--and some change. “Thank you! Thank you,” he said.
“No, I need $10 back.”
The motor clattered and died as she spoke, making the meter go blank. It was 12:25, and we had five minutes to confirm our reservation at the Borghese by presenting ourselves to a clerk somewhere. Georgio said, “No, it’s $20 Euro.” Amazing how suddenly he knew English.
“It said $10.” MK wasn’t letting it go.
Georgio smiled at us. He shrugged his grey wooled, handsome shoulders. We had little choice and he knew it. We’d been had by an Italian cab driver. There was nothing to do but get out of the taxi with as much dignity as we could, and try to be grateful that we were alive to complain about him.
The Borghese itself was run like an Italian museum. There were five lines that snaked into each other, thus enabling no one to get where they wanted to go. Of course, there were no signs distinguishing the mandatory bag check line from the mandatory reservation line from the mandatory entrance line. We were lucky enough to stand in a random line behind some Americans who had been traveling in Europe for the last year and a half. They’d been at the Borghese before, and assured us we were in the right line to confirm our reservations.
We told them about our cab ride and they assured us that not all Italians conspire to figure out ways to rip off Americans. MK wasn’t having any of it, since she had not only gotten a free haircut by virtue of the close scrape between the taxi and the bus, but she doesn’t like to be taken for a ride of a different sort. We groused about the taxi experience until the other Americans got sick of us and found something important they needed to do, like plan their route to Botswana.
It didn’t matter. By that time a loudspeaker announced that the exhibit was open to those with 1:00 reservations. We rushed the doors of the palace and landed in front of Bernini’s statue of the Rape of Proserpine. The taxi driver faded from our memories. Pluto’s grasp of Persephone’s thigh, his fingers digging deep into her flesh, suppleness outlined in the improbable medium of marble, defies description. His fingernails were detailed to the cuticle, her terror evident not only in her face, but also in the force with which her hand swept into his forehead, stretching his eyebrow to his ear. It was impossible that this man was truly marble; it was amazing that anyone could sculpt with such emotion.
Our friend Karen told MK that her trip to Italy last Fall was special because she will always think of it as the trip during which she discovered Bernini. And now that is how we will remember this trip, too. Bernini surprised us with his rendition of Apollo and Daphne, again sculpting emotion and tension and life into cold, white marble.
There was so much to love about the Borghese, even in the winter. Paintings by Carvaggio, and of course once again Demon Jesus appeared. The last time we saw a lot of religious art, I noticed that Jesus is depicted in only three ways: at birth, as a toddler, and during his last days of life. Birth Jesus is always an anatomically correct baby. Middle aged Jesus is always long-suffering and virtuous. But Toddler Jesus is my favorite, because he looks like a little devil. Oh sure, he has a halo above his head, and he’s always waving around two sticks stuck together as if he was the damn savior or something, but he also looks like a kid on the edge of a temper tantrum, just about to blow his stack. Demonic Jesus looks like your typical two year old, except that he’s always playing with his little Jewish friend John the Baptist, and cheating at peek a boo. I wouldn’t trust that kid in a poker game or behind the wheel of a taxi, that’s for sure.
At 3:00, a buzzer sounds and it’s all hands on deck as far as the Borghese is concerned. The next set of tourists is coming in, and it’s time to clear out. So we went to the gift shop---of course--and then trudged up the walk. There was a beautiful park around us--those rich counts and dukes and popes sure knew how to live-- but it was cold, far colder than we are used to, and we wanted to get back to our hotel.
Just as we wondered how to take the bus--MK was consulting All Rick! All the Time!---we saw a cab pull up where Georgio had dropped us off two and a half hours earlier. A bewildered couple emerged, almost running to their 3:00 appointment at the Borghese, knowing it was almost 4:00.
"Taxi?" MK asked me.
"Great," I said.
I had my hand on the door and the cab driver was smiling at me. "Are you sure?" she asked me. "He might just rip us off."
"Now or never. I'm willing to try."
She closed her eyes and grabbed the handle.
"How much to the Spanish Steps?" she asked the driver as she pulled her coat, hat, gloves and body into the car, shivering.
"I don't know. Five Euro? Six?"
"Not twenty?"
He laughed. He was a dark haired, young Italian man, someone that I could work up an attraction to if I were alone and about thirty years younger. "No, not twenty Euro! That is too too much!"
"Hmmmph." MK setttled into skepticism. Huey Lewis and the News played on the car radio. "Go ahead. The Spanish Steps." It was a dare.
He pulled into traffic cautiously. No turn signals--those are for wimps--but he did use his rear view mirrors for more than vanity devices, and he braked at red lights. He even slowed for an old lady crossing the street. And we arrived at the Spanish Steps, the Land of Gucci, Jesus and Fendi, in one piece, for $6 Euros. I gave him a Euro as a tip. It was the least I could do for someone who restored our belief in humanity.
On Sunday, we went to the Borghese Museum, but we had a few minutes to spare so MK thought we’d take a quick side trip to see a Vermeer and Rembrandt exhibit at an art gallery near the Spanish Steps. Not so hard, we thought.
After all, we’d negotiated the muni to get to the Spanish Steps on Saturday, and braved the crowds and the threatening baby Jesus display in the middle of the steps. We could wade through the religious paraphernalia to get to an art show. At the top of the steps, there was an art show of a different sort, with local artists displaying their wares. I couldn't help but be tempted by a lovely portrait of the lovebirds Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes that graced one vendor's stand. Who wouldn't want a lovely rendition of Fake Heterosexuality hanging on their walls?
Aas we came down the steps, we didn’t know that they disguise the neighborhood just below them, which is filled with stores from Armani to Fendi to Capitalismimo Up Your Ass-o. Looking around at the opulence in the stores, and then the opulence on people’s backs, we realized that we found the Rodeo Drive of Rome. Perhaps that makes it Rome-O Drive. Either way, both of us began to say to each other, at first under our breaths, and then louder and louder, as a woman of a acertain age would approach us--”Dead Animal Alert.”
Minks and chinchillas passed us every three minutes, adorning the backs of women who looked much more unhappy than a $5,000 coat would suggest was right. I told MK, even though I know it's sexist, that each fur coat we saw was payment for adultery. MK had asked Aubrey (our Vatican tour guide helper) about the inordinate amount of fur we saw, and she had replied that most of it was inherited. Inherited or not, there is enough fur in Rome to carpet George Bush's special apartment in Hell.
MK at one point accidentally ran into a dark brown number--once again, a victim of the Italian Stroll--- and whispered to me, “It was soft.” I nodded. We knew that it was soft. Little animals often are. Little dead animals can’t be any different.
So we pushed and shoved our way through rich Italian people, and finally found the right street. The Italians have a cute habit of numbering addresses how they’d like. So we were looking for 320, and since the numbers in front of us ran as 192 and 194, we turned in the direction of the numbers going up. In the next block, the street numbers were 82 and 84. The next block brought 485 and 588. In Paris, it is easy to believe that capriciousness of this sort would be the result of hating anyone who isn’t French. In Italy, we just assumed that it is the result of an obliviousness that anyone unfamiliar with the area would even try to negotiate something so complex as an address.
Eventually, we gave up. We had an appointment at the Borghese for 1:00PM, which meant we needed to be there by 12:30, and it was almost noon. Even if we found 320 Via Corgolonossibustamenate Leone IV, we wouldn’t have time to see a single painting. The girl with the pearl earring was going to have a lonely Sunday afternoon.
We trudged back to the Spanish Steps, stopping on the way for a quick lunch at a café. I had a plate of spaghetti with mushrooms--the promised fish never arrived because it was apparently having a chat with the girl with the pearl earring--and we then hurried over to the stand with horses and carriages and the Baby Jesus overlooking the Gucci and Prada extravaganza below. Someone once told me that Jesus overthrew the tables in the temple, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the little lord in the manger on the Spanish Steps was getting ready to shake his groove thing and stomp down those steps with a vengence. We didn’t want to find out; instead, we hopped into a taxi.
The taxi driver was in his 60s, a well preserved George Hamilton kind of guy. His coat was a beautiful grey wool and he wore his cream colored scarf like an ascot, folded neatly beneath his coat. He looked as if he might have been a Borghese himself, or at least married into the family. He asked us where we were from and MK said, “The United States.”
“AH! Cal E Furnya!”
I was surprised. I’m used to Europeans knowing we’re American; how could he know we were from California? Did we smell of Coppertone and patchouli? “How did you know!?” I asked.
Big smile from Georgio in the rear view mirror. “Chay luggisimo ventana linguani beligiani.” Or something like that. Of course.
He gunned the little car down the street, while MK blanched and grabbed for her seat belt. I felt as if I was on a ride at Disneyland, as we veered down narrow, cobbled streets, barely missing other motorcars that seemed to think that they had the right of way just because their light was green. Georgio ignored everyone else on the road, and grinned with his big white teeth every time he grazed another car, motorcycle or pedestrian. He was playing for keeps, and we were captive to his driving skills.
“Remind me never to drive in Rome,” I whispered to MK.
“Be quiet. I’m praying to a god I don’t believe in.” The wind whistled outside our car windows as he scraped by a green and orange bus, and the taxi then simply hopped the curb, scattering the waiting bus passengers into the street, where they were safe for a few moments from Georgio.
I began to look out the window, trying to avert the seasickness and terror I felt when I watched through the windshield. There was a cute, quaint little restaurant. There was a small park. We tore around a corner and up a freeway onramp, while pedestrians and bicyclists throughout Rome heaved a sigh of relief. But then off the freeway, with a quick, screeching turn past a villa and a speedy acceleration into a residential neighborhood, emerging without any obvious human road kill onto a large thoroughfare. And then a cute, quaint little restaurant. Wait. It was the SAME cute, quaint little restaurant. I glanced at the meter. We were at $7Euro and we didn’t appear any closer to the Borghese than we’d been a few minutes before.
“Soon?” I said.
Big white teeth appeared again. “Soon! Soon!” and he pushed his foot to the floor and missed a cypress tree by inches.
He began to slow as we approached a large green area. “Elly fants , gee raffs,” he said. “Park Zoological.”
“A zoo?”
“Si, si, a zoo!” I imagined that the zebras and cheetahs were pacing their paddocks, praying that Georgio stayed away from their cages.
“Soon Borghese?”
The brakes slammed on. “Here it ess!” he grinned at us. The meter read $9.50. MK handed him a $20 --the smallest bill she had--and some change. “Thank you! Thank you,” he said.
“No, I need $10 back.”
The motor clattered and died as she spoke, making the meter go blank. It was 12:25, and we had five minutes to confirm our reservation at the Borghese by presenting ourselves to a clerk somewhere. Georgio said, “No, it’s $20 Euro.” Amazing how suddenly he knew English.
“It said $10.” MK wasn’t letting it go.
Georgio smiled at us. He shrugged his grey wooled, handsome shoulders. We had little choice and he knew it. We’d been had by an Italian cab driver. There was nothing to do but get out of the taxi with as much dignity as we could, and try to be grateful that we were alive to complain about him.
The Borghese itself was run like an Italian museum. There were five lines that snaked into each other, thus enabling no one to get where they wanted to go. Of course, there were no signs distinguishing the mandatory bag check line from the mandatory reservation line from the mandatory entrance line. We were lucky enough to stand in a random line behind some Americans who had been traveling in Europe for the last year and a half. They’d been at the Borghese before, and assured us we were in the right line to confirm our reservations.
We told them about our cab ride and they assured us that not all Italians conspire to figure out ways to rip off Americans. MK wasn’t having any of it, since she had not only gotten a free haircut by virtue of the close scrape between the taxi and the bus, but she doesn’t like to be taken for a ride of a different sort. We groused about the taxi experience until the other Americans got sick of us and found something important they needed to do, like plan their route to Botswana.
It didn’t matter. By that time a loudspeaker announced that the exhibit was open to those with 1:00 reservations. We rushed the doors of the palace and landed in front of Bernini’s statue of the Rape of Proserpine. The taxi driver faded from our memories. Pluto’s grasp of Persephone’s thigh, his fingers digging deep into her flesh, suppleness outlined in the improbable medium of marble, defies description. His fingernails were detailed to the cuticle, her terror evident not only in her face, but also in the force with which her hand swept into his forehead, stretching his eyebrow to his ear. It was impossible that this man was truly marble; it was amazing that anyone could sculpt with such emotion.
Our friend Karen told MK that her trip to Italy last Fall was special because she will always think of it as the trip during which she discovered Bernini. And now that is how we will remember this trip, too. Bernini surprised us with his rendition of Apollo and Daphne, again sculpting emotion and tension and life into cold, white marble.
There was so much to love about the Borghese, even in the winter. Paintings by Carvaggio, and of course once again Demon Jesus appeared. The last time we saw a lot of religious art, I noticed that Jesus is depicted in only three ways: at birth, as a toddler, and during his last days of life. Birth Jesus is always an anatomically correct baby. Middle aged Jesus is always long-suffering and virtuous. But Toddler Jesus is my favorite, because he looks like a little devil. Oh sure, he has a halo above his head, and he’s always waving around two sticks stuck together as if he was the damn savior or something, but he also looks like a kid on the edge of a temper tantrum, just about to blow his stack. Demonic Jesus looks like your typical two year old, except that he’s always playing with his little Jewish friend John the Baptist, and cheating at peek a boo. I wouldn’t trust that kid in a poker game or behind the wheel of a taxi, that’s for sure.
At 3:00, a buzzer sounds and it’s all hands on deck as far as the Borghese is concerned. The next set of tourists is coming in, and it’s time to clear out. So we went to the gift shop---of course--and then trudged up the walk. There was a beautiful park around us--those rich counts and dukes and popes sure knew how to live-- but it was cold, far colder than we are used to, and we wanted to get back to our hotel.
Just as we wondered how to take the bus--MK was consulting All Rick! All the Time!---we saw a cab pull up where Georgio had dropped us off two and a half hours earlier. A bewildered couple emerged, almost running to their 3:00 appointment at the Borghese, knowing it was almost 4:00.
"Taxi?" MK asked me.
"Great," I said.
I had my hand on the door and the cab driver was smiling at me. "Are you sure?" she asked me. "He might just rip us off."
"Now or never. I'm willing to try."
She closed her eyes and grabbed the handle.
"How much to the Spanish Steps?" she asked the driver as she pulled her coat, hat, gloves and body into the car, shivering.
"I don't know. Five Euro? Six?"
"Not twenty?"
He laughed. He was a dark haired, young Italian man, someone that I could work up an attraction to if I were alone and about thirty years younger. "No, not twenty Euro! That is too too much!"
"Hmmmph." MK setttled into skepticism. Huey Lewis and the News played on the car radio. "Go ahead. The Spanish Steps." It was a dare.
He pulled into traffic cautiously. No turn signals--those are for wimps--but he did use his rear view mirrors for more than vanity devices, and he braked at red lights. He even slowed for an old lady crossing the street. And we arrived at the Spanish Steps, the Land of Gucci, Jesus and Fendi, in one piece, for $6 Euros. I gave him a Euro as a tip. It was the least I could do for someone who restored our belief in humanity.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Away in the Manger
MK was referring to our tour of the Vatican yesterday as our visit to the Raping, Pillaging, Thieving, Oppressing, Murdering Capitol of the World, but I actually found a newfound appreciation for Catholicism in our tour. They may have managed to steal every art treasure imaginable, but they also managed to preserve a lot of art that otherwise might have been destroyed. Yeah, ok, a few million people had to die here and there in the name of Jesus, but what’s a couple of deaths between friends?
The day started out cold but clear, and we had our breakfast in our hotel, as usual. This place lays out a spread--slices of what they call proscuitto (looks like turkey), which lists its ingredients as pork and salt, slices of cheese, fruit, breads, croissants, butter, cereals, juices, coffee. It’s all buffet style with a young man staffing the room. I mentally call him Igor because he stares at a point on the wall directly behind my head when I speak with him. Since I need to ask him for decaf coffee--believe it or not, I don’t drink caffeine--I speak to Igor a lot. He says, “Prego,” which is not a reference to my uterus, and then my coffee appears. I want to tip him, but no one else tips him, and I see cappucinos and mochas being ordered all around.
There are signs on all the tables that say, “Please keep your voices soft. Lift up the chairs when moving them. The chairs on the floor make an incredible noise.” This would be all well and good, since our room is directly across the hall from the breakfast room, except that Igor and another hotel employee have regular, enthusiastic conversations, and the espresso machine makes its train whistle noises. Fortunately, we have been going to bed at 8 and 9 pm, so we wake up before the dishes do, but I can see how the clank, clank of silverware would be far more intrusive than the sounds of Americans speaking over breakfast. Europeans complain about us being too loud, but Igor and his cohorts seem perfectly happy to compete with us in the noise department.
Yesterday was cold and clear in the morning, but I only saw the clear part. So I dressed la dee duh Californian, with a raincoat, a silk scarf and no long underwear. My foot, with its sore toe, was happy in Keens. We had a tour scheduled for 12:30 at The Vatican--normally we conduct our own tours, but we had been told by our good friend Rick Steves (All Rick, All The Time!) that we could bypass the line by paying for a tour. The subway from our hotel to the Vatican seemed reasonable, although we hugged our money belts, our backpacks and our non-slash able purses close to our bodies. Everyone talks about thieves in Rome, although my guess is that it’s Monkey See, Monkey Do--the Catholic Church steals from the world, the Romans steal from the American tourists. But our purses and our money belts and our backpacks made it onto the Spanish Steps, which was a few stops short of the Vatican. We surveyed the scene and began to see the Dead Animal parade around us. It seemed that every fifth or sixth woman was wearing fur, enough fur to make Jennifer Lopez pull her fox fur fake eyelashes out.
It was cold. I wrapped my little silk scarf around my big cold neck as we started up the Spanish stairs. This scarf is scarlet red and black, and I imagine that I look very European in it. The Europeans don’t seem to imagine it, though. Everyone says “Hello” to me, knowing immediately that I am an American.
Midway, there was a nativity scene, a big elaborate tableau. There was the baby Jesus, and the wise men, and Mary, and Joseph---all under the big Tuscan sky. Ah, it’s good to be in Rome, where our lord and savior was born.
Up the next set of steps, we ran into a man carrying a cat on a leash. “Awww,” I said, and he said, “Awww,” echoing me. He stopped and allowed me to pet the cat. “His name?” I asked. “Pepe.” I called “Pepe” to the cat, who kept his eyes averted. He had no interest in me. Then the man handed Pepe to me. Afraid of a scam of some sort, I still took the big orange cat and petted him, while the man walked to a nearby wall and faced nothing. Did he want money? What was going on? MK and I gave big pets to Pepe and then I walked to the man and gave Pepe back--by this time, he was purring but still refusing to look at either MK or me. The man took Pepe and then said, “Awww, Pepe,” as if he were making fun of me. OK. My money bag, purse and backpack were safe, and that was the important part.
From the Spanish Steps, we made our way to the neighborhood of the Vatican, where we ate lunch at a place our good friend Rick recommended (All Rick Steves, All the Time!). It was ok. Nothing great. Salmon and pasta for me, a pizza that looked as if it were made on a tortilla for MK. And then we met Aubrey, who would take us to our leader.
Aubrey had pink and black hair and wore a nose piercing and black stockings with big red polka dots on them. Needless to say, Aubrey was American. She led us to some stairs near the Vatican and then said brightly, “Well, good news and bad news. Bad news is that our reservation with the Vatican never made it through, so we’ll have to stand in line. The good news is that the line is moving pretty fast today.” Wait. We paid $50 Euro so that we’d skip the line. You’re telling us that we’ll have to stand in it? Yup.
On the pretense of getting gelato--- never one to miss the opportunity, even in the rapidly declining temperature---MK and I conferred. We would give the tour a miss and stand in line ourselves. When we told Aubrey this decision, she offered to give us back our money if the wait was more than ten minutes. OK, we’d try.
Little radio receivers and earphones were distributed and we took off for the end of the line. Aubrey waited with us, but Michael, our tour guide appeared. Micheal is a sprite like man, from Chicago originally, with bright blue eyes and a kind of elfin smile. He began the tour with some history, first of the Vatican wall, and then of the surrounding land and the Vatican’s history. It was fascinating, and made the long line SEEM like it would last only ten minutes, even though it started to rain as we stood in it. The line snakes and snakes around the Vatican’s walls, which as Michael informed us, is a country of its own.
As the temperature dropped and my feet began to hurt, I thought about Jesus. What would he do? Would he tolerate a line like this? Give me your tired, your poor, your $10 Euro? Or would he part the Red Sea of the Vatican Wall and let all of us in for free, even the unbelievers like me? Michael was talking about Peter refusing to be crucified right side up, because he didn’t deserve to die in the same way that Jesus did. Boy, these Christians really know how to do martyrdom. But the line did begin to move after I thought about what Jesus would do, so maybe my little Jew contemplation got through to someone. Either that, or God thought I was a European because of my lovely red and black silk scarf.
Once inside the Vatican, we decided to go with the tour. Michael seemed to have a lot of knowledge--imagine that, a guide with knowledge. He went to UCLA for graduate school in Italian studies, so perhaps he knew more than MK and me regarding Italian art, maybe even more than our good friend Rick.
I won’t go into all the details, but when they tell you that the Vatican museum is seven miles of art, they mean seventeen. Michael rushed us through some galleries, and then paused for longer lectures in front of Important Art. If we’d done this on our own, we would still be staring at some obscure 14th century painting, and would have missed the Pieta. Thank God for Michael.
Our middle aged bodies, though, weren’t happy with us. Our backpacks, purses, and money belts didn’t balance well on our rotund little American bodies. My legs were shaking by the end, and my toe, which had already had enough insult to warrant amputation, pounded in my normally comfortable Keens. My nose, my ass and my thighs were cold. The Vatican doesn’t spend a lot of money on central heat, probably reserving all the warmth for the Pope’s private apartments. When Michael graciously said goodbye to us in St. Peter’s, we took one last circuit of the joint. Yup, the dead popes were still there in their glass tombs, with their masks on. I’d like to know why the Catholics like to dig up their dead and put them on display for the masses, or the mass. How reverent is it to parade one’s saints’ bones around the church, like last year’s beauty queen? I did like the little red slippers they all wore, though. I wonder if they were Keens. They sure looked comfy to me.
The Vatican figured out a way to uproot the floors of Roman villas from the first century and install them into their own little palace known as the Catholic Church. One floor even had the Star of David embedded in the mosaic. I took a picture of my feet with that star.
The Sistine Chapel was gorgeous, but even in a pouring rain in January, there were too many people there. No one parted before my red scarf and I had to shove my way through crowds of Italian people there to gawk, so that I could find a place of my own from which to gawk. People told me before I left that I’d at least get to see Italy when it’s uncrowded, so between the Trevi fountain and the Vatican, I’m wondering what it must be like to see Italy in the summer. MK would have to pack some smelling salts, just to keep me from becoming a Jew version of a dead pope,
One highlight of St. Peter’s--a working church, I might add--they were saying mass in Latin while we were there--was the nativity scene. Once again set in rural Italy, the baby Jesus in St. Peter’s had a big gold halo and a pristine Mary holding him. That woman never looks as if she passed a fifty pound bowling ball in the night, but Jesus always looks more like a toddler than a newborn in these things. But the best part was the way the sky changed from day to night, complete with flashing stars. There was even a water wheel--not sure of its purpose, but it churned water over and over into a pond. I felt as if I was at the State Fair, looking at the winning exhibit from Modoc County.
Lsst night, we stumbled through the pouring rain to the subway, finding it more by luck than by map, and then tripped our way up Via Saint Swollen Feet to a restaurant that Rick recommended. Rick apparently has different taste than us-- it was ok, and came to $53 Euros. Seemed kind of pricey for ok. We have yet to have great pasta, in fact. Seems a shame. But we were too tired to care-- we hauled our physically exhausted bodies back to our hotel, and I laid down. It was 8:00PM. “You going to sleep?“ MK asked me. “No, just resting my body, “ I said, and the next thing I knew, it was midnight and I was waking up again. I had no problem turning over and going to sleep for another five hours.
I keep remembering that I don’t like crowds, right about the time I get to some crowded tourist spot. I’ve been thinking, though, about my career choices. It would be good to be a pope, I think--you’d get to see the Sistine Chapel and all that artwork when everyone else had left for the night. You could build your own private nativity scene. Plus you’d get to wear some nifty red slippers all the time. Those would match my scarf.
The day started out cold but clear, and we had our breakfast in our hotel, as usual. This place lays out a spread--slices of what they call proscuitto (looks like turkey), which lists its ingredients as pork and salt, slices of cheese, fruit, breads, croissants, butter, cereals, juices, coffee. It’s all buffet style with a young man staffing the room. I mentally call him Igor because he stares at a point on the wall directly behind my head when I speak with him. Since I need to ask him for decaf coffee--believe it or not, I don’t drink caffeine--I speak to Igor a lot. He says, “Prego,” which is not a reference to my uterus, and then my coffee appears. I want to tip him, but no one else tips him, and I see cappucinos and mochas being ordered all around.
There are signs on all the tables that say, “Please keep your voices soft. Lift up the chairs when moving them. The chairs on the floor make an incredible noise.” This would be all well and good, since our room is directly across the hall from the breakfast room, except that Igor and another hotel employee have regular, enthusiastic conversations, and the espresso machine makes its train whistle noises. Fortunately, we have been going to bed at 8 and 9 pm, so we wake up before the dishes do, but I can see how the clank, clank of silverware would be far more intrusive than the sounds of Americans speaking over breakfast. Europeans complain about us being too loud, but Igor and his cohorts seem perfectly happy to compete with us in the noise department.
Yesterday was cold and clear in the morning, but I only saw the clear part. So I dressed la dee duh Californian, with a raincoat, a silk scarf and no long underwear. My foot, with its sore toe, was happy in Keens. We had a tour scheduled for 12:30 at The Vatican--normally we conduct our own tours, but we had been told by our good friend Rick Steves (All Rick, All The Time!) that we could bypass the line by paying for a tour. The subway from our hotel to the Vatican seemed reasonable, although we hugged our money belts, our backpacks and our non-slash able purses close to our bodies. Everyone talks about thieves in Rome, although my guess is that it’s Monkey See, Monkey Do--the Catholic Church steals from the world, the Romans steal from the American tourists. But our purses and our money belts and our backpacks made it onto the Spanish Steps, which was a few stops short of the Vatican. We surveyed the scene and began to see the Dead Animal parade around us. It seemed that every fifth or sixth woman was wearing fur, enough fur to make Jennifer Lopez pull her fox fur fake eyelashes out.
It was cold. I wrapped my little silk scarf around my big cold neck as we started up the Spanish stairs. This scarf is scarlet red and black, and I imagine that I look very European in it. The Europeans don’t seem to imagine it, though. Everyone says “Hello” to me, knowing immediately that I am an American.
Midway, there was a nativity scene, a big elaborate tableau. There was the baby Jesus, and the wise men, and Mary, and Joseph---all under the big Tuscan sky. Ah, it’s good to be in Rome, where our lord and savior was born.
Up the next set of steps, we ran into a man carrying a cat on a leash. “Awww,” I said, and he said, “Awww,” echoing me. He stopped and allowed me to pet the cat. “His name?” I asked. “Pepe.” I called “Pepe” to the cat, who kept his eyes averted. He had no interest in me. Then the man handed Pepe to me. Afraid of a scam of some sort, I still took the big orange cat and petted him, while the man walked to a nearby wall and faced nothing. Did he want money? What was going on? MK and I gave big pets to Pepe and then I walked to the man and gave Pepe back--by this time, he was purring but still refusing to look at either MK or me. The man took Pepe and then said, “Awww, Pepe,” as if he were making fun of me. OK. My money bag, purse and backpack were safe, and that was the important part.
From the Spanish Steps, we made our way to the neighborhood of the Vatican, where we ate lunch at a place our good friend Rick recommended (All Rick Steves, All the Time!). It was ok. Nothing great. Salmon and pasta for me, a pizza that looked as if it were made on a tortilla for MK. And then we met Aubrey, who would take us to our leader.
Aubrey had pink and black hair and wore a nose piercing and black stockings with big red polka dots on them. Needless to say, Aubrey was American. She led us to some stairs near the Vatican and then said brightly, “Well, good news and bad news. Bad news is that our reservation with the Vatican never made it through, so we’ll have to stand in line. The good news is that the line is moving pretty fast today.” Wait. We paid $50 Euro so that we’d skip the line. You’re telling us that we’ll have to stand in it? Yup.
On the pretense of getting gelato--- never one to miss the opportunity, even in the rapidly declining temperature---MK and I conferred. We would give the tour a miss and stand in line ourselves. When we told Aubrey this decision, she offered to give us back our money if the wait was more than ten minutes. OK, we’d try.
Little radio receivers and earphones were distributed and we took off for the end of the line. Aubrey waited with us, but Michael, our tour guide appeared. Micheal is a sprite like man, from Chicago originally, with bright blue eyes and a kind of elfin smile. He began the tour with some history, first of the Vatican wall, and then of the surrounding land and the Vatican’s history. It was fascinating, and made the long line SEEM like it would last only ten minutes, even though it started to rain as we stood in it. The line snakes and snakes around the Vatican’s walls, which as Michael informed us, is a country of its own.
As the temperature dropped and my feet began to hurt, I thought about Jesus. What would he do? Would he tolerate a line like this? Give me your tired, your poor, your $10 Euro? Or would he part the Red Sea of the Vatican Wall and let all of us in for free, even the unbelievers like me? Michael was talking about Peter refusing to be crucified right side up, because he didn’t deserve to die in the same way that Jesus did. Boy, these Christians really know how to do martyrdom. But the line did begin to move after I thought about what Jesus would do, so maybe my little Jew contemplation got through to someone. Either that, or God thought I was a European because of my lovely red and black silk scarf.
Once inside the Vatican, we decided to go with the tour. Michael seemed to have a lot of knowledge--imagine that, a guide with knowledge. He went to UCLA for graduate school in Italian studies, so perhaps he knew more than MK and me regarding Italian art, maybe even more than our good friend Rick.
I won’t go into all the details, but when they tell you that the Vatican museum is seven miles of art, they mean seventeen. Michael rushed us through some galleries, and then paused for longer lectures in front of Important Art. If we’d done this on our own, we would still be staring at some obscure 14th century painting, and would have missed the Pieta. Thank God for Michael.
Our middle aged bodies, though, weren’t happy with us. Our backpacks, purses, and money belts didn’t balance well on our rotund little American bodies. My legs were shaking by the end, and my toe, which had already had enough insult to warrant amputation, pounded in my normally comfortable Keens. My nose, my ass and my thighs were cold. The Vatican doesn’t spend a lot of money on central heat, probably reserving all the warmth for the Pope’s private apartments. When Michael graciously said goodbye to us in St. Peter’s, we took one last circuit of the joint. Yup, the dead popes were still there in their glass tombs, with their masks on. I’d like to know why the Catholics like to dig up their dead and put them on display for the masses, or the mass. How reverent is it to parade one’s saints’ bones around the church, like last year’s beauty queen? I did like the little red slippers they all wore, though. I wonder if they were Keens. They sure looked comfy to me.
The Vatican figured out a way to uproot the floors of Roman villas from the first century and install them into their own little palace known as the Catholic Church. One floor even had the Star of David embedded in the mosaic. I took a picture of my feet with that star.
The Sistine Chapel was gorgeous, but even in a pouring rain in January, there were too many people there. No one parted before my red scarf and I had to shove my way through crowds of Italian people there to gawk, so that I could find a place of my own from which to gawk. People told me before I left that I’d at least get to see Italy when it’s uncrowded, so between the Trevi fountain and the Vatican, I’m wondering what it must be like to see Italy in the summer. MK would have to pack some smelling salts, just to keep me from becoming a Jew version of a dead pope,
One highlight of St. Peter’s--a working church, I might add--they were saying mass in Latin while we were there--was the nativity scene. Once again set in rural Italy, the baby Jesus in St. Peter’s had a big gold halo and a pristine Mary holding him. That woman never looks as if she passed a fifty pound bowling ball in the night, but Jesus always looks more like a toddler than a newborn in these things. But the best part was the way the sky changed from day to night, complete with flashing stars. There was even a water wheel--not sure of its purpose, but it churned water over and over into a pond. I felt as if I was at the State Fair, looking at the winning exhibit from Modoc County.
Lsst night, we stumbled through the pouring rain to the subway, finding it more by luck than by map, and then tripped our way up Via Saint Swollen Feet to a restaurant that Rick recommended. Rick apparently has different taste than us-- it was ok, and came to $53 Euros. Seemed kind of pricey for ok. We have yet to have great pasta, in fact. Seems a shame. But we were too tired to care-- we hauled our physically exhausted bodies back to our hotel, and I laid down. It was 8:00PM. “You going to sleep?“ MK asked me. “No, just resting my body, “ I said, and the next thing I knew, it was midnight and I was waking up again. I had no problem turning over and going to sleep for another five hours.
I keep remembering that I don’t like crowds, right about the time I get to some crowded tourist spot. I’ve been thinking, though, about my career choices. It would be good to be a pope, I think--you’d get to see the Sistine Chapel and all that artwork when everyone else had left for the night. You could build your own private nativity scene. Plus you’d get to wear some nifty red slippers all the time. Those would match my scarf.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Paul Theroux Does Rome
I think we might have been up for 48 hours, except for a couple of naps. The last time I was getting out a bed in my pajamas, it was Tuesday at around noon. I’d gone to sleep at 6AM. Right now, at least in Italy, it’s 5AM on Thursday. There’s this funny thing called the international date line, so I don’t really know how long I’ve been awake, but I can tell you that my body is having some issues.
The seat magazine promised me Wall-E, which I had been anticipating since leaving Sacramento. I have flipped though every station, though, and come up with Ugly Betty episodes and some documentary about endangered sharks--- I think I caught a glimpse of Bernard Madoff--- but no Wall-E. So instead I’ve been curling up in my miniscule seat, trying to pretend that I am in a bed, and sleeping for twenty minutes at a time.
When we got on this plane in Washington D.C., they paraded us right by the first class seats and the economy seats. I want one. I don’t know what I have to do to get one, but those things look like they do everything for you, including sex acts. They not only fold into beds, but it seems as if they become butlers, too. IT is just MK and I in our little row of two, and we feel crowded. My elbow is in her elbow’s space, my carry on luggage is stowed haphazardly beneath the seat in front of me, blocking my feet from extending, and although I have the window--it helps with my fear of flying---I don’t think that jumping out of it would really do much for my feelings of claustrophobia.
When we got to the Sacramento airport, the entire place was covered in fog, that thick fog that makes it seems as if your words are getting swallowed in cotton balls. I told MK that I was hoping that our flight didn’t get cancelled and hoping that it would. She said that the pilots just use their instruments to fly the plane. They don’t need to see, she admonished me. That must be why they put in those superfluous windshields. Just a bow to tradition only.
Mk was right, though. Take off was smooth. Six hours in a plane to D.C. was crowded, but smooth. Our hour layover in D.C. lasted long enough for me to get a bottle of water for $6 and get in line for our miniscule seats. The boarding agent nicely announced that they would board first class first. “Just follow the red carpet for boarding!” They don’t roll out the red carpet for us, let me tell you. We trudged behind all the other plebes.
We dragged in at 9AM, after negotiating a confusing baggage pickup situation. We wandered the airport, until we found other people from our plane. It was raining. I mean raining inside the airport. MK went to the bathroom and there was a repair guy sitting on his mini bulldozer contraption, right outside the women’s bathroom, guarding the torrent of water that served as a waterfall entrance to the restroom. “Go in, go in,” he told each woman who approached. “It’s fine.” So MK popped up her umbrella and waltzed in. A woman next to me with a baby came back and told her husband, “I can’t find any restrooms,” and I told her the one with the Niagra Falls entrance was fine. She brightened up, and then came back a few moments later. “It’s closed?” I asked. My sweetie was in there. Had she entered some sort of Roman Blue Lagoon? “They can’t let me take the baby in because it’s raining too hard in there,” she said. MK told me later that the man had a point. She felt as if she was peeing outdoors in Portland, Oregon. In other words, she felt right at home.
Rome has some similarities to Paris, except that I think they fired the garbage collectors. Either that, or the trash guys are too busy running people over to pick up actual garbage. The place is not just awash in rain but also awash in discarded bottles, bags, and fast food wrappers. It’s almost as dirty as an American city I’ve been to, but not quite. We’re Number One still!.
Once, when I was in book club, we read a book about traveling in China by Paul Theroux. Theroux’s narration seemed to consist of three conclusions: 1. Why weren’t the Chinese more Western? 2. How could anyone eat this godawful food? And 3. Why the hell would anyone come here?
So I never want to be Paul Theroux. On the other hand, after one jet-lagged day in Rome, I may be a little cranky. I have had to stop abruptly on sidewalks more often than I can count, because some Italian took it into their head that they needed to stop in the middle of a busy walkway. Small children have tried to eviscerate me by hurling pointy objects in my direction. Last night, while we slept in our room on the alley way (a nice voice magnifying device for all those exiting bars, restaurants and homes), we got to hear all the famous Italian passion as large groups of people said good bye to each other forever, over and over again, all night long. If it weren’t for the noise from the alley, I’m sure we’d be awakened by the noise for the “breakfast room” which is next to our hotel room---the dishes begin clanking at 6:00AM. Nicely, though, there is a sign on each table, instructing the guests to not slide their chairs too noisily. The sound of espresso being made, as we all know, is nothing in comparison to the sound of a chair being pushed back.
Craziness isn’t limited to the US and people who name their children Mowgli, Track, Trig or Sunday Rose. We saw one woman squat in front of us, on a narrow sidewalk, as if she were going to urinate, thorugh her clothing. She didn’t/. Instead she began pushing her arms into the air, as if she were pumping iron, while we tried to negotiate the edges of the sidewalk, the better to escape. She shouted at us as we passed, still pumping imaginary iron above her head, and we were grateful to not have understood a word of what she said. She probably called us crazy American dykes, or sleazy visitors from Xenu, but I don’t know. I kind of doubt that she welcomed our presence on the behalf of all the Italian people, but I suppose it’s not impossible.
We and 10,000 other people saw the Trevi fountain yesterday, in the pouring rain. I got some photos of umbrellas surrounding the fountain, and MK claims to have gotten a photo of the two of us in front of it. All I know is that by the time I was done with being bumped and grinded by a bunch of Italian strangers--my God, these people friggin’ live here, couldn’t they have the decency to come see the tourist traps in summer, leaving us alone to see Romantic Italy?--I was getting cranky. There’s not a lot that makes me cranky, but extreme lack of sleep and too many people are a pretty sure bet. I was also dehydrated--those planes are so refreshing normally, but this one seemed to suck the juice right out of me, like Tom Cruise in a bad Anne Rice movie--and I craved orange juice. We wandered to some tourist café populated by Italians--the nerve--and ordered some oj and a Panini sandwich of salami. Yes, it was kosher salami. We almost got the kosher proscuittio. At least we didn’t get cheese on it, Izzy. The Panini was great--no mayo, no butter, nothing but salami and Italian bread--and we watched the barkeep squeeze the orange juice. It was so thick that it came with a spoon. Really. I have the photo. Ah. Relaxation, finally.
And then off on one of our first day we’re-lost-let’s-get-more-lost-in-the-rain-in-Europe walks. Up hills, down hills--who knew there were hills in Rome?--and both of us sleep deprived and cold and wet. Amazingly, we didn’t fight. MK didn’t throw a beret in the air, though she does have the charming habit of stopping to take a photogaph every time an Italian isn’t stopping dead in their tracks in front of me. “Oh look,” she’ll say. “There’s a door!” and out pops the camera. “There’s a street sign!” “There’s a church.” Now, of course churches are in short supply around here, so I can understand that, but when one is exercising and one has a corn (yes, thank you, it has not evaporated with use), and when one is dying to eat some Italian food that isn’t shoved down with the watchful eyes of 10,000 tourists, and when one just wants to find one’s bed, one does not have much patience for one’s companion who merrily wants to take photographs of cobblestones and those darling--but empty--unused garbage cans.
OK, I admit it. I’ve become the Paul Theroux of Rome. Scrooge of Italy. Whatever. Today we see the Vatican, so you can imagine my excitement. But sometime today, I’ll get to eat a real Italian meal, and that does have me excited. Food is a reliable companion to joy for me, even if I’m not such a reliable companion to joy for poor MK. She’ll always have her pictures to console her, though. Maybe the one of the McDonald’s sign will sleep with her at night and keep homesickness at bay until my normal good mood returns.
The seat magazine promised me Wall-E, which I had been anticipating since leaving Sacramento. I have flipped though every station, though, and come up with Ugly Betty episodes and some documentary about endangered sharks--- I think I caught a glimpse of Bernard Madoff--- but no Wall-E. So instead I’ve been curling up in my miniscule seat, trying to pretend that I am in a bed, and sleeping for twenty minutes at a time.
When we got on this plane in Washington D.C., they paraded us right by the first class seats and the economy seats. I want one. I don’t know what I have to do to get one, but those things look like they do everything for you, including sex acts. They not only fold into beds, but it seems as if they become butlers, too. IT is just MK and I in our little row of two, and we feel crowded. My elbow is in her elbow’s space, my carry on luggage is stowed haphazardly beneath the seat in front of me, blocking my feet from extending, and although I have the window--it helps with my fear of flying---I don’t think that jumping out of it would really do much for my feelings of claustrophobia.
When we got to the Sacramento airport, the entire place was covered in fog, that thick fog that makes it seems as if your words are getting swallowed in cotton balls. I told MK that I was hoping that our flight didn’t get cancelled and hoping that it would. She said that the pilots just use their instruments to fly the plane. They don’t need to see, she admonished me. That must be why they put in those superfluous windshields. Just a bow to tradition only.
Mk was right, though. Take off was smooth. Six hours in a plane to D.C. was crowded, but smooth. Our hour layover in D.C. lasted long enough for me to get a bottle of water for $6 and get in line for our miniscule seats. The boarding agent nicely announced that they would board first class first. “Just follow the red carpet for boarding!” They don’t roll out the red carpet for us, let me tell you. We trudged behind all the other plebes.
We dragged in at 9AM, after negotiating a confusing baggage pickup situation. We wandered the airport, until we found other people from our plane. It was raining. I mean raining inside the airport. MK went to the bathroom and there was a repair guy sitting on his mini bulldozer contraption, right outside the women’s bathroom, guarding the torrent of water that served as a waterfall entrance to the restroom. “Go in, go in,” he told each woman who approached. “It’s fine.” So MK popped up her umbrella and waltzed in. A woman next to me with a baby came back and told her husband, “I can’t find any restrooms,” and I told her the one with the Niagra Falls entrance was fine. She brightened up, and then came back a few moments later. “It’s closed?” I asked. My sweetie was in there. Had she entered some sort of Roman Blue Lagoon? “They can’t let me take the baby in because it’s raining too hard in there,” she said. MK told me later that the man had a point. She felt as if she was peeing outdoors in Portland, Oregon. In other words, she felt right at home.
Rome has some similarities to Paris, except that I think they fired the garbage collectors. Either that, or the trash guys are too busy running people over to pick up actual garbage. The place is not just awash in rain but also awash in discarded bottles, bags, and fast food wrappers. It’s almost as dirty as an American city I’ve been to, but not quite. We’re Number One still!.
Once, when I was in book club, we read a book about traveling in China by Paul Theroux. Theroux’s narration seemed to consist of three conclusions: 1. Why weren’t the Chinese more Western? 2. How could anyone eat this godawful food? And 3. Why the hell would anyone come here?
So I never want to be Paul Theroux. On the other hand, after one jet-lagged day in Rome, I may be a little cranky. I have had to stop abruptly on sidewalks more often than I can count, because some Italian took it into their head that they needed to stop in the middle of a busy walkway. Small children have tried to eviscerate me by hurling pointy objects in my direction. Last night, while we slept in our room on the alley way (a nice voice magnifying device for all those exiting bars, restaurants and homes), we got to hear all the famous Italian passion as large groups of people said good bye to each other forever, over and over again, all night long. If it weren’t for the noise from the alley, I’m sure we’d be awakened by the noise for the “breakfast room” which is next to our hotel room---the dishes begin clanking at 6:00AM. Nicely, though, there is a sign on each table, instructing the guests to not slide their chairs too noisily. The sound of espresso being made, as we all know, is nothing in comparison to the sound of a chair being pushed back.
Craziness isn’t limited to the US and people who name their children Mowgli, Track, Trig or Sunday Rose. We saw one woman squat in front of us, on a narrow sidewalk, as if she were going to urinate, thorugh her clothing. She didn’t/. Instead she began pushing her arms into the air, as if she were pumping iron, while we tried to negotiate the edges of the sidewalk, the better to escape. She shouted at us as we passed, still pumping imaginary iron above her head, and we were grateful to not have understood a word of what she said. She probably called us crazy American dykes, or sleazy visitors from Xenu, but I don’t know. I kind of doubt that she welcomed our presence on the behalf of all the Italian people, but I suppose it’s not impossible.
We and 10,000 other people saw the Trevi fountain yesterday, in the pouring rain. I got some photos of umbrellas surrounding the fountain, and MK claims to have gotten a photo of the two of us in front of it. All I know is that by the time I was done with being bumped and grinded by a bunch of Italian strangers--my God, these people friggin’ live here, couldn’t they have the decency to come see the tourist traps in summer, leaving us alone to see Romantic Italy?--I was getting cranky. There’s not a lot that makes me cranky, but extreme lack of sleep and too many people are a pretty sure bet. I was also dehydrated--those planes are so refreshing normally, but this one seemed to suck the juice right out of me, like Tom Cruise in a bad Anne Rice movie--and I craved orange juice. We wandered to some tourist café populated by Italians--the nerve--and ordered some oj and a Panini sandwich of salami. Yes, it was kosher salami. We almost got the kosher proscuittio. At least we didn’t get cheese on it, Izzy. The Panini was great--no mayo, no butter, nothing but salami and Italian bread--and we watched the barkeep squeeze the orange juice. It was so thick that it came with a spoon. Really. I have the photo. Ah. Relaxation, finally.
And then off on one of our first day we’re-lost-let’s-get-more-lost-in-the-rain-in-Europe walks. Up hills, down hills--who knew there were hills in Rome?--and both of us sleep deprived and cold and wet. Amazingly, we didn’t fight. MK didn’t throw a beret in the air, though she does have the charming habit of stopping to take a photogaph every time an Italian isn’t stopping dead in their tracks in front of me. “Oh look,” she’ll say. “There’s a door!” and out pops the camera. “There’s a street sign!” “There’s a church.” Now, of course churches are in short supply around here, so I can understand that, but when one is exercising and one has a corn (yes, thank you, it has not evaporated with use), and when one is dying to eat some Italian food that isn’t shoved down with the watchful eyes of 10,000 tourists, and when one just wants to find one’s bed, one does not have much patience for one’s companion who merrily wants to take photographs of cobblestones and those darling--but empty--unused garbage cans.
OK, I admit it. I’ve become the Paul Theroux of Rome. Scrooge of Italy. Whatever. Today we see the Vatican, so you can imagine my excitement. But sometime today, I’ll get to eat a real Italian meal, and that does have me excited. Food is a reliable companion to joy for me, even if I’m not such a reliable companion to joy for poor MK. She’ll always have her pictures to console her, though. Maybe the one of the McDonald’s sign will sleep with her at night and keep homesickness at bay until my normal good mood returns.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Shoes and Sleep
MK has come up with all kinds of schemes to insure that we don’t have jet lag on our first day in Rome. Her first scheme involved a slowly rotating clock, a gentle introduction to European time. This was supposed to start two weeks ago, with a bedtime one hour later each night, until she would be going to bed at noon every day and wakening, refreshed at 8:00PM. According to her calculations, this would be analogous to going to bed at 9:00PM in Italy, and awakening at 5:00AM.
When she first proposed this to me, I started laughing. I do this time adjustment thing for a living. Every week, I spend my first night at work wondering why I did this to myself, and then the next day, I collapse into bed, feeling like a piece of summer roadkill in Arkansas. I think I’m a bit of an expert in jet lag, as all night shift workers are. Our first nights at work and our first days off are always painful for us and for our families. Just like these years with W at the helm (“Good job, Brownie”), there is no way to avoid the pain. I’m not sure if MK ever noticed, but I’m a little snappy after only two hours sleep. I’m sure Rome will be just lovely with two exhausted lesbians hitting the Trevi fountain for a little pick me up.
Since MK has to work for a living—during regular business hours—her first plan to adjust her sleeping patterns gradually was abandoned. Thre’s something a little hinky about showing up for work at 9:00PM, even if you are the boss. Her latest scheme involved staying up all night last night, and then there was supposed to be some sort of early to bed plan for tonight, although I was unclear on that.
Personally, I think we should just stay up all night again. But as Doris Day said, “Que Cera, cera.” At this point, I’m just hoping to make it onto some plane with my xanax, valium and ambien ready to go. Like all good night shift workers, I take sleep where I can. Just call me a sleep slut, the Sienna Miller of Snoring.
As for packing, it appears that we are meeting our goal, which has been revised to one large carryon bag per person, one carryon backpack per person and one checked bag that we share. MK has the Rick Steves carryon bag—for MK, it’s All Rick, All The Time—and I have what’s known as the Mother Load Mini. We have space saver bags, which seem to belch air like Jackie Gleason after a plate of cabbage, and both of us managed to pack the aforementioned layers without incident.
Shoes have been quite a challenge for me, though. For those that don’t know, I have an interesting foot. Shaped a bit like a duck’s, it has toes that spread out as wide as the ball of my foot, which is quite wide. MK spends a great deal of time making fun of my toes, which are all one length, furthering the impression that I might be related to Donald and Daisy. Shoes have never been easy, but I thought I was set. For years, I wore Birkenstocks—they are the exact shape of my foot—and sacrificed style for comfort. That is the essence of lesbianism anyway, right? A few years ago, I discovered Keen shoes, which are both attractive and comfortable.
But I needed shoes for this trip that would be suitable for rain, which even the cutest Keens are not. To find such shoes, we braved the mall for a shoe expedition on Sunday. I know that most women would be in seventh heaven at the possibility of hitting a mall during a big sale weekend. For MK and me, though, we thought that perhaps we had entered some circle of hell that Dante failed to mention, the one with the screaming children, the mass of humanity, the inability to find parking, except in the lane in which I was supposedly “driving.” When the clerk bites, when the couples fight, when I’m feeling poor, I simply remember my favorite mall, and then I try to find the door….
Anyway, first stop was The Walking Company. I grabbed four pairs of men’s Merrell’s, hoping to get a pair of walking shoes for under $100 in the right width. I have the misfortune of wearing a women’s size 8 ½, which is a men’s size 6 ½. Actually, only boys have feet that small. But men have feet as wide as mine. The sales clerk grabbed the shoes from my hands and told me, “We don’t carry Merrell’s in women’s sizes.” She put the shoes to the side and assumed a pitying look. I explained my difficulty—I need a shoe that will feet my EE foot in size 8 ½. “I dunno,” she said. “We’re going to Europe,” I pleaded. She said, “I’ll try to find something.”
Back she came with four boxes of shoes—three pairs did not fit at all. I think they were made for women with size 5AA feet, and the clerk brought them to me as some form of private amusement. Nothing like watching the stepsister try to shove her way into the crystal slipper.
The fourth was the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever worn. It was also the ugliest. Coming from a woman who likes Birkenstocks, that is saying something. In fact, here’s a link to the ugliest shoe on Earth. http://www.finncomfort.com/collections/prod_detail.aspx?style_sku=82015
Check out the price. Yup. $305 for something your crippled grandmother would eschew. The Walking Store was offering them at the bargain price of $285. I told the clerk that I couldn’t see paying $285 for a pair of shoes—politely refraining from saying that I wouldn’t pay $285 for a pair of shoes that I’d be embarrassed to wear in a senior citizen home—and she gathered her four boxes and harrumphed away from my cheap ass.
“Nordstrom’s?” MK asked. Sure. Why not. We were already in screaming toddler hell—why not plunge right into snotty women with too much makeup hell?
Once in the shoe section, I grabbed two pairs of shoes and thrust them at a clerk, telling her my size. A few minutes later, a gentleman with an Italian accent came back with some miniscule elf shoes in his hands. “Yoooou wanted dese?” he asked, thrusting them at me. “Size 8?”
“Size 8 ½,” I said.
“No 8 ½. Dese will fit. You try.”
So I tried. My feet spread themselves out quite nicely in my Cinderella masquerade outfit, with my toes clearly touching the ground on either side of the footbed.
“See? They fit perfectly!” my Italian friend said.
“Uh, my toes are on the ground.”
“That is how the shoe is made.”
“They don’t fit. My feet are too wide for these shoes. “ I bent down to take them off. As I hung over my feet, I asked, “Do you carry men’s sizes that are small enough in length to fit my feet?”
Mr. Italian said, “Excuse me!?”
MK, thinking that he couldn’t hear me, since I was talking to my feet, said, “She wants to know if you have men’s shoes that are small enough in length to fit her feet.”
He backed up, horrified. “I. Don’t. Sell. Men’s. Shoes.”
I looked at him. “You can’t wear men’s shoes!” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Why not?”
“They won’t fit!”
Never mind that the women’s shoes didn’t fit.
MK asked, all sincerity, “What is your concern? Is there something about men’s shoes that we should know?”
Mr. Italian brought his chin to his neck and his nose flared. “The fit! The fit! The fit!” I thought we might have been on Fantasy Island for a moment.
“What about the fit?”
“Your feet are women’s feet.”
“But my feet LOOK like small men’s feet.”
He surveyed my wide, blunt toes, the squat ball of my foot. “No, they look like women’s feet. They are women’s feet.”
“They’re wide like men’s feet.”
“Your feet are not wide.” He looked again. “No, your feet are not wide.” I have waited almost 50 years to hear anyone say that to me. But somehow, as I was contemplating 15 miles a day in shoes too narrow, the words didn’t sound as good as I had once dreamed they would. It was kind of like being told that I was a skinny little thing after a bout with malaria.
He was clearly disgusted with me, and my unwillingness to subject myself to foot torture. He began to look determined. “I will get you shoes that fit. I will go get them now.” He walked away, muttering. Apparently threatening to purchase men’s shoes is enough to send a Nordstrom women’s shoe clerk into a wide shoe frenzy.
Soon he was back with two pairs of shoes, both of which appeared to be made for pygmies with Lilliputian feet. I squeezed one onto my big toe, wincing, and then handed it back to him. “Won’t fit,” I said.
He did some Italian version of a snort, turning away. If he could have washed his hands in the air, he would have. “Uh, thank you,” I said, and he gestured toward the men’s shoe department, across an aisle. “There is the men’s shoes. That is where you can buy men’s shoes,” he said, walking away.
Well, allrighty then. I am hoping this doesn’t mean that the Italians in Italy will treat me with the same sort of disdain. It is not my fault that my feet look like cement blocks shoved onto the ends of my legs. But I will have you know that the men’s shoe department at Nordstrom supplied me with a nice pair of North Face Sno Cat shoes, waterproof for Venice floods and Roman rains, in size men’s 7EE. $58, out the door. And Richard, the non-Italian salesman in men’s shoes, told me that I wasn’t imagining it—my feet are wide. Told you, Italiano Man.
When she first proposed this to me, I started laughing. I do this time adjustment thing for a living. Every week, I spend my first night at work wondering why I did this to myself, and then the next day, I collapse into bed, feeling like a piece of summer roadkill in Arkansas. I think I’m a bit of an expert in jet lag, as all night shift workers are. Our first nights at work and our first days off are always painful for us and for our families. Just like these years with W at the helm (“Good job, Brownie”), there is no way to avoid the pain. I’m not sure if MK ever noticed, but I’m a little snappy after only two hours sleep. I’m sure Rome will be just lovely with two exhausted lesbians hitting the Trevi fountain for a little pick me up.
Since MK has to work for a living—during regular business hours—her first plan to adjust her sleeping patterns gradually was abandoned. Thre’s something a little hinky about showing up for work at 9:00PM, even if you are the boss. Her latest scheme involved staying up all night last night, and then there was supposed to be some sort of early to bed plan for tonight, although I was unclear on that.
Personally, I think we should just stay up all night again. But as Doris Day said, “Que Cera, cera.” At this point, I’m just hoping to make it onto some plane with my xanax, valium and ambien ready to go. Like all good night shift workers, I take sleep where I can. Just call me a sleep slut, the Sienna Miller of Snoring.
As for packing, it appears that we are meeting our goal, which has been revised to one large carryon bag per person, one carryon backpack per person and one checked bag that we share. MK has the Rick Steves carryon bag—for MK, it’s All Rick, All The Time—and I have what’s known as the Mother Load Mini. We have space saver bags, which seem to belch air like Jackie Gleason after a plate of cabbage, and both of us managed to pack the aforementioned layers without incident.
Shoes have been quite a challenge for me, though. For those that don’t know, I have an interesting foot. Shaped a bit like a duck’s, it has toes that spread out as wide as the ball of my foot, which is quite wide. MK spends a great deal of time making fun of my toes, which are all one length, furthering the impression that I might be related to Donald and Daisy. Shoes have never been easy, but I thought I was set. For years, I wore Birkenstocks—they are the exact shape of my foot—and sacrificed style for comfort. That is the essence of lesbianism anyway, right? A few years ago, I discovered Keen shoes, which are both attractive and comfortable.
But I needed shoes for this trip that would be suitable for rain, which even the cutest Keens are not. To find such shoes, we braved the mall for a shoe expedition on Sunday. I know that most women would be in seventh heaven at the possibility of hitting a mall during a big sale weekend. For MK and me, though, we thought that perhaps we had entered some circle of hell that Dante failed to mention, the one with the screaming children, the mass of humanity, the inability to find parking, except in the lane in which I was supposedly “driving.” When the clerk bites, when the couples fight, when I’m feeling poor, I simply remember my favorite mall, and then I try to find the door….
Anyway, first stop was The Walking Company. I grabbed four pairs of men’s Merrell’s, hoping to get a pair of walking shoes for under $100 in the right width. I have the misfortune of wearing a women’s size 8 ½, which is a men’s size 6 ½. Actually, only boys have feet that small. But men have feet as wide as mine. The sales clerk grabbed the shoes from my hands and told me, “We don’t carry Merrell’s in women’s sizes.” She put the shoes to the side and assumed a pitying look. I explained my difficulty—I need a shoe that will feet my EE foot in size 8 ½. “I dunno,” she said. “We’re going to Europe,” I pleaded. She said, “I’ll try to find something.”
Back she came with four boxes of shoes—three pairs did not fit at all. I think they were made for women with size 5AA feet, and the clerk brought them to me as some form of private amusement. Nothing like watching the stepsister try to shove her way into the crystal slipper.
The fourth was the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever worn. It was also the ugliest. Coming from a woman who likes Birkenstocks, that is saying something. In fact, here’s a link to the ugliest shoe on Earth. http://www.finncomfort.com/collections/prod_detail.aspx?style_sku=82015
Check out the price. Yup. $305 for something your crippled grandmother would eschew. The Walking Store was offering them at the bargain price of $285. I told the clerk that I couldn’t see paying $285 for a pair of shoes—politely refraining from saying that I wouldn’t pay $285 for a pair of shoes that I’d be embarrassed to wear in a senior citizen home—and she gathered her four boxes and harrumphed away from my cheap ass.
“Nordstrom’s?” MK asked. Sure. Why not. We were already in screaming toddler hell—why not plunge right into snotty women with too much makeup hell?
Once in the shoe section, I grabbed two pairs of shoes and thrust them at a clerk, telling her my size. A few minutes later, a gentleman with an Italian accent came back with some miniscule elf shoes in his hands. “Yoooou wanted dese?” he asked, thrusting them at me. “Size 8?”
“Size 8 ½,” I said.
“No 8 ½. Dese will fit. You try.”
So I tried. My feet spread themselves out quite nicely in my Cinderella masquerade outfit, with my toes clearly touching the ground on either side of the footbed.
“See? They fit perfectly!” my Italian friend said.
“Uh, my toes are on the ground.”
“That is how the shoe is made.”
“They don’t fit. My feet are too wide for these shoes. “ I bent down to take them off. As I hung over my feet, I asked, “Do you carry men’s sizes that are small enough in length to fit my feet?”
Mr. Italian said, “Excuse me!?”
MK, thinking that he couldn’t hear me, since I was talking to my feet, said, “She wants to know if you have men’s shoes that are small enough in length to fit her feet.”
He backed up, horrified. “I. Don’t. Sell. Men’s. Shoes.”
I looked at him. “You can’t wear men’s shoes!” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Why not?”
“They won’t fit!”
Never mind that the women’s shoes didn’t fit.
MK asked, all sincerity, “What is your concern? Is there something about men’s shoes that we should know?”
Mr. Italian brought his chin to his neck and his nose flared. “The fit! The fit! The fit!” I thought we might have been on Fantasy Island for a moment.
“What about the fit?”
“Your feet are women’s feet.”
“But my feet LOOK like small men’s feet.”
He surveyed my wide, blunt toes, the squat ball of my foot. “No, they look like women’s feet. They are women’s feet.”
“They’re wide like men’s feet.”
“Your feet are not wide.” He looked again. “No, your feet are not wide.” I have waited almost 50 years to hear anyone say that to me. But somehow, as I was contemplating 15 miles a day in shoes too narrow, the words didn’t sound as good as I had once dreamed they would. It was kind of like being told that I was a skinny little thing after a bout with malaria.
He was clearly disgusted with me, and my unwillingness to subject myself to foot torture. He began to look determined. “I will get you shoes that fit. I will go get them now.” He walked away, muttering. Apparently threatening to purchase men’s shoes is enough to send a Nordstrom women’s shoe clerk into a wide shoe frenzy.
Soon he was back with two pairs of shoes, both of which appeared to be made for pygmies with Lilliputian feet. I squeezed one onto my big toe, wincing, and then handed it back to him. “Won’t fit,” I said.
He did some Italian version of a snort, turning away. If he could have washed his hands in the air, he would have. “Uh, thank you,” I said, and he gestured toward the men’s shoe department, across an aisle. “There is the men’s shoes. That is where you can buy men’s shoes,” he said, walking away.
Well, allrighty then. I am hoping this doesn’t mean that the Italians in Italy will treat me with the same sort of disdain. It is not my fault that my feet look like cement blocks shoved onto the ends of my legs. But I will have you know that the men’s shoe department at Nordstrom supplied me with a nice pair of North Face Sno Cat shoes, waterproof for Venice floods and Roman rains, in size men’s 7EE. $58, out the door. And Richard, the non-Italian salesman in men’s shoes, told me that I wasn’t imagining it—my feet are wide. Told you, Italiano Man.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Packing in Underwear Layers, For The Benefit of The Pope
Eight days till takeoff. I have an intense fear of flying, so the plane crash in Denver a few days ago really cheered me up. No one died, and only severe injuries were reported when the plane skidded off the runway and caught on fire. I don’t mind little blackened bits so much—hell, I’m clumsy enough that letting me near a barbeque usually results in the fresh scent of human flesh burning--- but I am hoping that any plane crash that occurs will have the sense to let me see Europe first. Let me go down in flames after I’ve seen Nero’s home.
For the last three weeks, I’ve moaned about the cold of Italy and Paris—it snowed in Paris last week—and there have been different responses from different people. Most people tell me to dress in layers, as if that was an idea that had never crossed my mind as a viable strategy to fight the cold. Others have told me that silk long johns are a wonderful way to stay toasty. Yup, we know that from going to Paris a few years ago. No one has told me the truth, which is that we’re going to be damn cold sometimes, but it will all be worth it for the chance to glimpse a few thousand representations of that guy with his hands nailed to a cross. As far as I know, though, Jerusalem wasn’t cold at Easter-time, so I’m thinking that Jesus at least felt warm while he was tortured to death.
And he wasn’t on a death plane filled with screaming babies and the invigorating scent of burning upholstery. Not that I have a chip on my shoulder about Jesus and all the religious art we’re about to see. Or should I say a splinter in my eye?
I thought it was especially nice of the Holy See to recently vote in support of the UN Resolution against the imprisonment, torture and execution of gay people, although he said he did it with reluctance. Yeah, only reluctantly oppose the execution of homosexuals, but let’s protect the right of child molesters to live and even hide within your working ranks.
The Vatican's vote for the resolution did make me feel better about patronizing their little fiefdom, though, until I also read that the Pope gave an address yesterday in which he said that saving people from homosexuality was just as important as saving the rainforest. According to Pope Benedict, the human race is about to self-destruct—I suppose from our vast under-population of the planet. My friend Benny—as I like to call him—warned that gender theory blurred the distinction between men and women and could thus lead to the “self-destruction” of the human race. Yeah, I can see that happening any day now. If we stopped procreating right this very minute, we would probably only have 75 billion people too many on this planet in fifty years, instead of 100 billion. Those rascally fags and dykes are trying to sneak human annihilation into the mix by refusing to reproduce, the bastards. Next thing you know, they’ll be going to work on their bikes as an underhanded way of ruining the oil industry.
My other obsession has involved the carry on luggage that MK insists we must pack our entire wardrobe into. When we were in Paris, we stayed in one hotel, and so the idea of two suitcases and two carry on pieces of luggage, while ridiculous, was manageable. This trip, we’ll be hauling ourselves and our clothes/shoes/toiletries/gee gaws to four cities. It’s not unreasonable to expect to be overwhelmed if we are hauling the 50 pound versions of Godzilla everywhere we go.
But. We’re supposed to dress in layers. I’m not sure where those layers are supposed to be packed. I’ve thought of shipping clothes to myself, but we’d still end up having to drag them from Rome to Florence to Venice to Paris. One friend suggested bringing my most ragged, pathetic underwear with me, and then discarding it as I go—thus lightening the load. Because underwear weighs so much. And, frankly, it’s not as if I have an entire drawer filled with silky, special panties. Most of my underwear is ragged and pathetic. That’s what underwear is for.
Oh well. I suppose I could always use it as a hat to keep my head warm.
For the last three weeks, I’ve moaned about the cold of Italy and Paris—it snowed in Paris last week—and there have been different responses from different people. Most people tell me to dress in layers, as if that was an idea that had never crossed my mind as a viable strategy to fight the cold. Others have told me that silk long johns are a wonderful way to stay toasty. Yup, we know that from going to Paris a few years ago. No one has told me the truth, which is that we’re going to be damn cold sometimes, but it will all be worth it for the chance to glimpse a few thousand representations of that guy with his hands nailed to a cross. As far as I know, though, Jerusalem wasn’t cold at Easter-time, so I’m thinking that Jesus at least felt warm while he was tortured to death.
And he wasn’t on a death plane filled with screaming babies and the invigorating scent of burning upholstery. Not that I have a chip on my shoulder about Jesus and all the religious art we’re about to see. Or should I say a splinter in my eye?
I thought it was especially nice of the Holy See to recently vote in support of the UN Resolution against the imprisonment, torture and execution of gay people, although he said he did it with reluctance. Yeah, only reluctantly oppose the execution of homosexuals, but let’s protect the right of child molesters to live and even hide within your working ranks.
The Vatican's vote for the resolution did make me feel better about patronizing their little fiefdom, though, until I also read that the Pope gave an address yesterday in which he said that saving people from homosexuality was just as important as saving the rainforest. According to Pope Benedict, the human race is about to self-destruct—I suppose from our vast under-population of the planet. My friend Benny—as I like to call him—warned that gender theory blurred the distinction between men and women and could thus lead to the “self-destruction” of the human race. Yeah, I can see that happening any day now. If we stopped procreating right this very minute, we would probably only have 75 billion people too many on this planet in fifty years, instead of 100 billion. Those rascally fags and dykes are trying to sneak human annihilation into the mix by refusing to reproduce, the bastards. Next thing you know, they’ll be going to work on their bikes as an underhanded way of ruining the oil industry.
My other obsession has involved the carry on luggage that MK insists we must pack our entire wardrobe into. When we were in Paris, we stayed in one hotel, and so the idea of two suitcases and two carry on pieces of luggage, while ridiculous, was manageable. This trip, we’ll be hauling ourselves and our clothes/shoes/toiletries/gee gaws to four cities. It’s not unreasonable to expect to be overwhelmed if we are hauling the 50 pound versions of Godzilla everywhere we go.
But. We’re supposed to dress in layers. I’m not sure where those layers are supposed to be packed. I’ve thought of shipping clothes to myself, but we’d still end up having to drag them from Rome to Florence to Venice to Paris. One friend suggested bringing my most ragged, pathetic underwear with me, and then discarding it as I go—thus lightening the load. Because underwear weighs so much. And, frankly, it’s not as if I have an entire drawer filled with silky, special panties. Most of my underwear is ragged and pathetic. That’s what underwear is for.
Oh well. I suppose I could always use it as a hat to keep my head warm.
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