We are back from Italy! Amazing that we went, amazing that we are back. Among the amazing things: that we left Rome on a splendid sunny day with no coats required, and arrived (delayed flight) at the end of a major snowstorm and single digit Farenheit temperatures. Quick memories: Thinking at the Colosseum about gladiators, "We Who Are About To Die Salute You,"
and all the Medicis and the Borgias and the Augustuses and Constantines -- so many dead. Rome in the sun but also the Parthenon roof next to our hotel just before dawn, deep deep blue, white sudden explosions of gulls between me and Orion's belt: deep salmon bricks, deep blue sky, chips of white flung agains. Also: tiny pink roses in bloom near the circus maximus. Sound of music below, rising from "our" piazza. At the Capitoline museum the beautiful brass lupa with the little bambini from a thousand years later. An Escher exhibit, very popular locally, and one I'd love to see at my leisure in NYC. High point: almost back to the hotel at 4:30, we stopped at a cafe and sat outside (in the third week of January!) and the waiter was friendly, we took his picture, and I got up my courage and said, "Somos americanos ma non votamo per il Bush!" And the waiter shook my hand and each of our hands! Very satisfying. I tried it again on the cab to the airport, and again got a delighted reaction, the cabbie saying that the Italian president and Bush are like that (fingers pressed together)-- "due putti!"
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