And then she goes all cliche on you...

This is for my Aunt Jackie, who thinks I’m being too cynical in my look at Rome this time. Please excuse the melodrama and hackneyed expressions; I’m going for The Mood here.:)
The pix above are to show what Rome looks like through a truthful lens, and what Rome looks like in the dreamy lens of hindsight. Beautiful either way, no?! The third is Tom holding onto Clare for dear life on the tour bus and we rocked and rolled and she refused to sit down.
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Today seemed like the first day of fall in Rome. The heat of the day took on a bit of a sweet smile; a breeze blew strong and hard through the canyons of the streets, cooling the blazing buildings down to a lukewarm haze. The humidity seemed to break. After a ridiculous season of humidity in L.A., we were expecting something different from Rome, but it was close and warm from the moment our plane touched down. Today was the rent between the seasons, welcome and foreboding at once.

Fall is kind in Italy. The streets lose their sweltering baked facades, much like bread perfects after it’s lost most of its moisture and takes on an earthier texture. The shutters on windows are finally thrown open all day to accept the peachy light, and laundry seems to drink up the sweetness that the breeze brings with it over the Janiculum hill. Today as we strolled by the Tiber’s edge, the river swelled and churned with murky turgidity, but the sycamores that are forced into graceful arches over the riverwalk were beginning to lose their leaves. Leaves as big as dinner plates. Leaves crunched under our feet as we strolled, swerving around ruts and pits in the asphalt that the roots create.

We jumped on a tour bus, pulled Clare momentarily into her seat and took off for a tour of Roman traffic. We were on a “Christian Churches of Rome” tour bus but we saw more motorcades, diesel fuel, and construction than anything. I was getting slightly seasick from the rock and roll of stop and go traffic when we stopped in front of the Vatican to pick up tourists. The driver killed the engine to wait and we saw thousands of people massed to hear the Pope’s Wednesday address. The speakers were loud enough that we could see it some 250 yards away, and bright movie screens broadcasted live video feed out to the people far away from the dais. The crowds looked like rainbow confetti moving and swaying and praying in the mild morning sun.

After photographing San Giovanni in Laterno we came back to Trastevere for lunch and the requisite afternoon nap. Laundry fluttered from overhead lines and the music of vendors on the streets lilted up to bounce off the ocher walls of the medieval buildings. We scooped up some sliced beef with potatoes, twirly pasta with marinated peppers, spinach soaked in butter and broth, and tiny slices of fresh tomato pizza to “apporta via” back to our little apartmento. It “only” cost us about $20 for that little lunch of loveliness. No wonder the Italians are so thin.

After lunch we retired to our beds, Clare in her “Italy bed” (Phil and Ted’s T2, a godsend) and Tom and I to our four-poster that could sleep four. The afternoon breeze was so strong it blew open the windows and billowed out the embroidered curtains. The crimson and lemon gauze that drapes the bed filtered the afternoon sun, as we finished our respective novels and dozed in the early-dying light of what is the Roman Fall.