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My waiter literally winces in pain when I order, much as I winced when tasting his subpar prosciutto. I find out later that cappuccino’s considered a breakfast drink and if you insist on having afternoon/evening coffee instead of wine—like a savage—then ordering a macchiato is de rigueur.

Listen, if I wanted to be scolded and dismissed and condescended to in English, I’d have just gone to Paris.

Equal parts discouraged and aggravated, I pay my bill and head to the cab stand. I tell the driver where I want to go.
Of course
his English is better than my Italian. However, he immediately recognizes me as having Sicilian ancestry, so we chat as he takes
me back to the hotel. I relay my dinner experience and he cracks up.

“Ugh, terrible place. For tourists,” he tells me. “Your thumb rule is
‘if monument, then no you want.’
Do not eat anywhere looking at anything pretty. They cut the corners and they charge too much money. How much you pay for dog’s dinner?”

“About forty euro?” I say. I still can’t grasp the conversion rate, so this could be twenty bucks American or sixty. (Their Wi-Fi didn’t work, so I couldn’t look it up.)

He snorts. “Is the robbery of the highway, as you Americans say. Beautiful dinner is sixteen euro, eighteen euro maybe.
I ladri.
Crooks. You go back, get refund.”

“I’m probably not going to do that,” I admit.

“Next, you go to neighborhood, maybe Trastevere or Testaccio. Still tourists, but food is better. I promise.”

“Well, thank God,” I reply. “Because finding and then punching Julia Roberts really shouldn’t be on my bucket list.”

18.

U
GLY
A
MERICANS

Rome redeems herself at breakfast.

Big-time.

I’m spending the morning at the Galleria Borghese and need to be properly fueled, so I head to the restaurant downstairs in the hope of some decent bread and maybe some fruit. The moment I take in the buffet spread, I feel like Charlie Bucket upon seeing the Chocolate Room for the first time. There’s a towering display of gorgeous fruits and fresh juices right as I walk in. Then I spot a yogurt bar with a dozen varieties of European flavors, surrounded by heaping bowls of nuts and seeds and granolas for toppings.

The breakfast offerings are arranged in stations, and with each bend and curve in the room, I find new nooks of nirvana. Although the Italians aren’t huge on eggs for breakfast, they are tremendous proponents of breakfast meats, with platters groaning under the weight of the salumi like sopresatta, bresaola, mortadella, and prosciutto. Ten kinds of braided, seeded, and swirled breads spill from baskets, buffeted by muffins, scones, and croissants, with every type of jam and curd imaginable offered
alongside. Across from the Bread Barge, there’s a whole array of buffalo mozzarellas, including its milkier, even more delectable cousin burrata, alongside fresh ricotta.

Oh, my God—cheese for breakfast? Is that even
legal
?

And, wait, what is this? A whole section of the room filled with plate after plate of fifteen kinds of breakfast cake?

When I look back at the end of my life, I will least regret the day I ate cake with breakfast in Rome.

I do concentrate more on the meats and cheeses, however, because they are brilliant. Each bite of mortadella (a pistachio-studded type of bologna) is an aria, hitting every high note in the opera of my mouth. The tomatoes taste like they were picked five minutes ago and the multigrain roll I choose is so dense with the flavors of barley and malt and honey that to mask it with butter or jelly would be a travesty.

Classmates kept telling me to order the
spremuto
(fresh-squeezed) orange juice, so I pour myself a glass. I take a sip and it’s the naturally sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. I’m not sure if I can use words alone to describe the spectacular-ness of this experience—I think I need hand gestures, too. When Fletch arrives tomorrow, this is the first place I’m bringing him.

I’d literally stay here and graze until the staff has to roll me out like Violet Beauregard, but it’s time for my first real excursion.
Before I left for Rome, I was warned about the extensive lines to Roman attractions, so I preordered all my tickets and I’m due at the gallery by nine o’clock.

(Sidebar: If you ever come to Rome,
please
buy your tickets early/with the skip-the-line option, as it’s the difference between three hours in the Vatican Museum and three hours
waiting
to get into the Vatican Museum in the punishing sun.)

I decide that today’s an Immersion Day and I pledge to speak only Italian, which was why there was some confusion at breakfast when the host asked me for my room number and I told him I was well, thank you.

Hey, the Roman language wasn’t built in a day.

After a quick cab ride, I arrive at the Galleria. After I check in, the employees confiscate all bags, including purses. I immediately comply, not even thinking to place my wallet in my pocket, because I’m a dumbass. For all my safety concerns, for all my posturing and learning to spew insults, apparently all anyone in this country has to do to get my purse is hand me a chit.

(Sidebar: The purse thing turned out fine. Also, I don’t understand why everyone was so rabid about my being safe with my belongings. Rome’s no different from any other city: Don’t be stupid, have situational awareness, and you’ll be okay.)

The museum’s breathtaking, with massive portraits displayed in rooms illuminated by windows three stories tall. The ceilings are covered in trompe l’oeil clouds and angels, with a plethora of statues between the pictures. The statues are simply amazing due to the level of detail, right down to the veins running through forearms. Seems like the one area that gave sculptors difficulty was the hands, though. They’re all huge and out of proportion with the rest of the statues’ bodies.

Or is it possible all the ladies had man-hands back then?

I’m awed to be standing in the presence of all this history. But
I’m reminded of my friend who’s a high-up in a museum in Chicago, where she’s responsible for keeping the art safe. She once even worked on a film set where her job was to prevent the actors from bringing beverages or pens within fifty feet of the paintings. (FYI, she and Hugh Grant in a fight.) So while I stroll from room to room, I imagine the hair on the back of my friend’s neck rising from an ocean away as visitors put their grubby fingers on everything.

Every damn thing.

To be clear, this is not an
interactive exhibit
. All the statues I pass have something broken on them, which I imagine is because no one here’s being told to keep their mitts to themselves. Please explain to me why it’s okay for patrons to run around with Sharpies and sketchbooks and water bottles and I’m not allowed to carry a tiny handbag. How, exactly, would I steal a Caravaggio painting that’s two stories tall? I mean, (a) I’m honest, and (b) even if I weren’t, I don’t speak the kind of Italian I’d need to get myself out of Roman jail.

I learn that being drawn or sculpted nude was among the highest honors in the 1600s. Only the wealthiest citizens and most important politicians were allowed to be captured in the buff. Judging from the naked ladies, gravity was not a factor, so, good for them. And maybe big hands on the statues were a sign of virility/fertility?

Because I’m clearly a Philistine, the art isn’t what moves me most. Instead, I’m entranced by the walls’ faux finishes and the gilding on the furniture, so essentially I’m the kid who cares less about the expensive toy and more about the big cardboard box it came in.

After a few hours in the museum, I head to the snack bar to order an iced cappuccino and I sit outside in the sun to drink it. There’s a lion-headed fountain with a basin to the left of me and
people keep filling their water bottles from it. This city seems to have a one-to-one ratio of fountains to citizens because they are
everywhere
. The thing is? I can’t tell which ones are for drinking and which ones have been shat in by pigeons for the last three hundred years, so for now, I’m buying my water.

I hop in a cab and in my best accent ask to go to the Campo de’ Fiore, an open-air market, where I haggle for scarves to bring home to my friends. By “haggle,” I mean “pay full price” because I’m clearly not just the worst negotiator in America, but also in Europe. Still, I conducted the transaction entirely in Italian, so this feels like a win.

Rome quiets down between two and five p.m., with many shops closing. How does this make any sort of business sense? However, as it’s very hot and I’ve completed my day’s itinerary, I decide to spend some time at the pool.

My plans for Italian immersion are shot when I discover that the only people up on the roof are either from New York or Texas. One of the Texan women has an actual paw print from her now-dead dog tattooed on her shoulder. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I didn’t know this was an option when Maisy was still alive.

The New Yorkers at the pool are mad at the father of one of the Texas clans, as he’d earlier admonished them for using profanity in front of his sixteen-year-old daughter. The New Yorkers’ stance is, she’s sixteen and these are not the first f-bombs she’s heard, and if they are, then the family should probably subscribe to HBO. So, every time the Texas dad turns his back, the New Yorkers flip him off and mouth, “We hate him.” I don’t think the New Yorkers give a shit whether or not they’re being good American ambassadors, so the whole scene’s actually pretty funny.

The view from the top of the hotel is spectacular, with vistas of tiled roofs and little courtyards in every direction. Building restrictions prohibit historical sites from being blocked, so there
are no skyscrapers in this part of the city. Save for the satellite dishes and tiny cars, the view can’t be much different from when this outdoor deck was part of an actual palace.

Unlike a
Bachelor
contestant, I actually am here to make friends, so I talk with the other Americans. When I ask the other (temporary) ex-pats where they’ve been eating, one of the women says her family’s had dinner at the Scottish pub around the corner for the past few nights, a statement that seems so illogical all I can do is smile and nod.

Why would . . .

How could . . .

Does not compute.

The New Yorkers said they saw a sign for an American breakfast yesterday, so they went inside to order and were served twelve partially cooked scrambled eggs, which then caused the wife to barf.

None of them seems terribly intent on experiencing what Rome has to offer. They’re all more well-traveled than I am; is this all old hat to them? They’re spending all day at the pool and their nights trying to find food that’s familiar, so really, they may as well be in Vegas. Personally, I didn’t want to take a vacation so much as I wanted to experience Rome, so I eventually excuse myself; even though the pool is lovely and the company affable, I have homemade pasta to find and Italian to
parlo
.

•   •   •

“So, the Pantheon is over there and the gelato shop’s back that way. Which would you rather hit first?” I ask. Fletch arrived this morning in high spirits, despite not being able to sleep on the plane either.

So far, I’ve taken him for breakfast and coffee and a brief detour to Testaccio instead of Sant’Eustachio, as the Senegalese cabbie spoke neither Italian nor English, which reminds me of the time at home when the taxi driver had never heard of Wrigley Field. Anyway, now we’re trying to determine what to do next as
we loiter in the piazza halfway between the grand Corinthian columns of the Pantheon and the less historic palm trees on the sign for the gelato shop.

“Well,” Fletch says, “the Pantheon’s been standing for thousands of years, so it can probably wait a few more minutes while we eat gelato.”

The Pantheon does, indeed, wait for us. The ancient Roman temple is amazing and guess what—it’s free! What a gift that is for anyone with an interest in history, religion, or architecture.

We take our time to explore, gawping up at the oculus—a central opening up at the top that floods the room with light. We learn that the oculus is the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa in the time before Christ. We’re floored by what Man could accomplish long before benefit of machine.