0451471075 (N) (34 page)

Basically, I’m here wondering WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED THAT HISTORY IS THE BEST REALITY SHOW OF ALL TIME?

Or is this yet another fact everyone else knew and, as usual, I’m the last horse to cross the finish line?

Fletch and I stroll for a bit, mulling over our dinner options, deciding not
if
we should have
cacio e pepe
, which is now my favorite dish ever, but
where
. Satisfied that there’s no dearth of places to find Italian macaroni and cheese, we move on to discussing if this is the best day we’ve ever had. Fletch thinks it’s possible, but I’m not sure I can agree until I remove my sweaty girdle and voluminous eyelet cotton skirt. Then we debate if it would be weird to convert to Catholicism simply because of the magnificence of St. Peter’s Basilica. At this point, the heat or jet lag catches up to Fletch and he declares that he can’t go another step without coffee.

Unfortunately, we have no choice but to take many more steps because there’s no coffee shop to be found.

We continue shuffling down rustic cobblestone streets, in
fine spirits, but tired, hot, and desperate for something caffeinated. We keep hearing Rome referred to as the eternal city. Now that I’ve been in the city for a while, I suspect this has to do with the fact that everyone here is eternally broiling and exhausted from enjoying its many treasures.

We’re not so beat that we aren’t mesmerized at how incredibly picturesque everything is, though, and each moment we’ve spent feels like a gift as there’s so much to appreciate. For example, I love that there’s not an inch of Rome that hasn’t been embellished for the better. Even the doors are works of art.

Design is so prevalent and inspirational in Rome that all I want to do is go home and paint murals across my monotonously white ceilings and slap gold leaf on every dreary chair in my dining room. I mean, the
garbage cans
are decorative, for crying out loud!

Architecture aside, the light itself is magical. At this time of day, the sun’s no longer pounding relentlessly down, incinerating everything it touches, turning me into a human dress shield. Rather, it’s a benevolent warm glow in the sky, casting a rosy gold radiance that illuminates the ancient stucco buildings, which are all adorned with bright wooden shutters and festooned with window boxes groaning under the weight of all their fuchsia flowers.

Every inch of the narrow
strada
we’re currently on is picture-postcard–worthy, with fascinating vignettes as far as the eye can see. To our right, there’s a couple of grizzled old priests smoking, laughing, and drinking red wine at a little
iron bistro table. There’s a joke here, I think, and it begins, “Three priests walk into a bar.” What’s their story? Did they just get off work? Are they employed by the Vatican? Does that job come with dental? Are they friends with the new Pope? (I suspect yes—Francis seems kind of awesome.) Do they desperately miss Saint John Paul II or are they frankly just relieved to be done with the interim guy who was so scowl-y?

To our left, a skirt-clad, scarf-wrapped Roman mama purposefully pedals her bike with an adorably pink-cheeked toddler in the seat on the back. She has a basketful of gorgeous produce and fine bread balanced in front. (No one wears bike helmets here.
No one.
It’s like Milwaukee!) It’s all I can do not to follow her home and beg to eat whatever she’s cooking for dinner.

Please, God, let it be eggplant.

Plus, it’s jasmine season, so the blooming flowers provide a heavy perfume that blankets the city, mingling with the scent of thousands of years of sandalwood and frankincense emanating from all the old churches. Someone should bottle the fragrance of Rome in June; they’d make a fortune.

In terms of sensory overload, we’re still reeling from the perfection that is the Sistine Chapel ceiling, even if its magnificence renders everyone incapable of shutting their yaps. I still can’t believe we’re surrounded by the kind of splendor that assaults every single sense.

Still . . . the coffee thing is getting to us.

“I feel like you pulled a bait and switch,” Fletch says, as we plod down the street, two pilgrims on a quest for liquid salvation. We both heeded everyone’s advice and are wearing fine walking shoes, and thus far, no one’s turned an ankle or formed a blister.

(Sidebar: Another Roman observation? You can’t buy a pair of stilettos in this city. Impossibly high platform sandals abound, but there’s nary a spike or kitten heel to be seen. I like thinking
that I can’t manage heels because my ancestors never walked in them, even though it’s more likely due to my comorbidity of poor balance and weak core muscles.)

“How so?” I ask.

“You lured me here under the pretense that I’d spend my days swilling java, but they make it almost impossible.” He qualifies his statement. “It’s worth it, but it’s still hard.”

He’s right, too. Who knew coffee would be such a challenge in Italy? I mean, isn’t this the birthplace of the modern espresso machine? A couple of days ago, before Fletch arrived, I found a Nespresso shop by the Spanish Steps and I was so excited that I had to take a picture for Julia, who fell in love with my unit last Christmas and finally had to get one of her own.

Coffee is not easy here. In fact, coffee is so freaking hard. (One could argue that coffee is for closers.) For some reason, I assumed Rome would be an enormous Starbucks, only a million times better. My best guess was that espresso would be as free-flowing and abundant as the fountains dotting the streets. There’d be coffee places on every corner and we’d stroll around the city with our giant cups, admiring the scenery while we sipped the finest brew on Earth. And, because we’re a tiny bit smug now—like no one saw that coming—we’d be laughing about all those unenlightened saps at home drinking their stupid, subpar American coffee.

Ha, ha, ha, no.

Easy access to coffee is not the case in Italy.

At all.

The whole getting-coffee process is incredibly complicated, at least for the first-timer. Coffee procurement is an entire procedure and there are distinct rules. And no one tells you the rules; they expect you to know them already. For example, there are scads of cute little outdoor cafés (except, apparently, in this
ten-block radius on the wrong side of the Vatican), but you don’t usually see anyone except for tourists sitting at them because the real Italians are all inside crowded at the bar.

To order coffee in Italy, you have to master the steps. First, you go inside and you place your order with the cashier, where you’ll note that Starbuck-y tweaks such as half-caf-soy-extra-hot-skinny-shot-of-hazelnut are not even a consideration, let alone a viable option.

The cashier will grudgingly take your money, but he won’t actually hand your change back to you, instead depositing it in a small dish, even if your hand is right there and in position. I’ve yet to figure out what purpose the dish holds, but maybe in a city where the plague was an actual thing, they don’t touch people when not absolutely necessary?

After you pay, the cashier gives you a chit and you take said chit over to the baristas’ area. This separation of church and state makes sense in terms of sanitation because they don’t want the people who handle the money to also put their paws on the food and drink. (Again, plague-related?)

As Chief Watch Captain of the Health and Safety Patrol, I’d be one hundred percent behind this system, except that at any point in time, there will be eight thousand people crowded around said coffee bar, because (a) the cashier is super fast, what with throwing your change in a bowl instead of counting it back to you, (b) the baristas are in no hurry whatsoever because this is Italy and, for better or worse, they take their damn time, (c) they serve your beverage in real cups; ergo, you have to drink it inside the shop, unless you want to pay more to have your coffee outside, and (d) Italians are not big on the concept of “lines” so there’s a mass of humanity all clustered together on the floor of this very small shop, with no rhyme or reason as to traffic flow.

See? The coffee process is already unduly complicated.

Because there are dozens and dozens of other patrons
between you and the barista, you have to wait for one of them to finally acknowledge you. And as there’s no line, there’s no set way of deciding who’s first and whoever receives their coffee next is based on a completely arbitrary and capricious set of rules. I’ve found that if you give them a really big, creepy, toddler-beauty-pageant smile, they go faster, largely because it’s so off-putting.

So, when you and your chilling rictus finally get the barista’s attention, you hand him your slip, which is when you specify if you want your drink served with or without sugar, which is yet another mystery.

Is
il zucchero
a precious commodity in Italy? I suspect it may be; otherwise, why wouldn’t they let you sweeten your coffee yourself?

(Sidebar: This is also my problem with the Dunkin’ Donuts corporation. I guarantee you I know how to lighten and sugar my coffee better than the surly person behind the counter who looks at my cream consumption as both an insult and a challenge.)

(Additional sidebar: Last year I went to Dunkin’s on Memorial Day at ten a.m. to buy doughnuts and they were sold out. How do you sell out of doughnuts? The cashier suggested that I might rather have ice cream from the attached Baskin-Robbins. Hell, no, I don’t want ice cream! Not eating breakfast ice cream is the only thing that stands between me and not needing a crane to knock down a wall so that I can leave the house! I mean, breakfast cake on vacation is one thing, but breakfast ice cream? No. If it’s ten a.m. on a holiday weekend, I want crullers and bismarcks and fritters, damn it! Come on, Dunkin’ Donuts, you had ONE JOB here.)

Ahem.

Anyway.

So, you’ve finally run the order decathlon and oh, happy day, your coffee is coming! When it arrives, don’t expect a big paper traveling cup or even a standard-sized mug. Instead, your coffee
will be served in a delicate little demitasse the size of an eye bath. I’m not kidding. Even if you order something other than espresso, you get maybe six ounces, as opposed to the Starbucks Trenta, which is thirty-one ounces of pure USA! USA! USA!

Then, you’ll stand there and imbibe your thimbleful of coffee, which is the greatest possible thing you’ll ever put in your face, thus making the entire tribulation worth it. The full-bodied richness of this heady concoction commingles with the smoky undertones, somewhere between chocolate and tobacco, melting onto your tongue, without even a thought of bitterness or acidity.

As you sip, the woodsy notes become more defined, with hints of the same florals so perfuming this ancient city. The regular old milk from Italian cows is far richer and more resplendent than any heavy cream from Wisconsin’s finest and the barista was right to portion out your sugar for you, as he’s stirred in the perfect proportion, down to the very grain.

The reasons Italians make the best coffee in the universe are a subject of much debate—some say it’s because they hand-pump the espresso shots, while others argue it’s the roasting process, which allows the beans to caramelize. Perhaps it is the minerals in the water that turn an average breakfast beverage into alchemy. Others will insist that half the battle is the scenery surrounding the coffee shop. My guess is it’s all these factors combined.

One could argue that the Italian cup of coffee is proof that God exists.

I won’t disagree.

Anyway, your impulse will be to savor this nectar of the gods, this potable ambrosia, to take each sip and hold it in your mouth while it warms your soft palate, allowing the rich goodness to penetrate every taste bud and fill your sinus cavities with delectable, aromatic steam.

Instead, you’ll have to swill it down as quickly as humanly possible in order to make way for the hordes of impatient Italians behind you, who are all staring holes in your back, you slow-sipping- doughnut-munching-Rockport-wearing-fanny-pack-having-sugar-hoarding-spaghetti-cutting-American-motherfucker.

Mind you, you could have this same exact experience outside at a table, without all the dirty looks and elbows to the kidneys and plague fears, except the waiter has chased a pretty girl from Singapore down the street in order to flirt with her and it’s going to be next week before he even acknowledges your existence, let alone takes your order.