Fern e Mike a Roma Sept 8

Buonanotte from Roma

E mezzanotte (It’s midnight)

Just got back from dinner at a small neighborhood Umbrian restaurant about 3/4 mile from the hotel… we walked although it was still about 88 degrees and very very humid (but at least no sun bearing down on us). More on that later.

Woke up this morning with a very strange rash on my calves… ugly, dark red splotches.. didn’t itch, but was really ugly. Although Richard had gotten tickets for all of us to go to the Galleria Borghese (something I was somewhat reluctant to do anyway), I decided to hop a taxi to the International Farmacia at Piazza Barberini.. I thought I might have contracted poison ivy from the walk yesterday. (At one point we made a shortcut to get across a few street to the Parco della Musica… and we were in some scrubby green stuff. Anyway, when I got to the Farmacia, they immediately said that it was not poison ivy and not any kind of allergy. They said it was a reaction to the very hot weather and an excessive amount of walking in the heat. Gave me some kind of gel to rub on it several times a day.. and it will disappear. Well it’s not a miracle drug and it’s still pretty ugly. The gel is a yellowish color, so now my legs have a yellow tinge. I looked up the symptoms online and people have written about “golfer’s vasculitis”… so I think that’s it. Of course this is not a medical diagnosis. We’ll see how long it takes to rid myself of this.

I joined up with Richard, Elizabeth, and Mike at the Galleria — which I already knew would not be to my liking. The Villa/Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621). The Galleria Borghese includes twenty rooms on two floors. The collection includes classical antiquities of the 1st–3rd centuries, and classical and neo-classical sculpture from the 16th and 17th centuries. The decorations of the building include a lot of trompe l’oeil and frescoes. Since I’m not really a big fan of Baroque, this place was certainly not on my bucket list.. Anyway, I strolled around the place.. I would have been fine with one fresco ceiling and one beautifully painted door and one trompe l’oeil tastefully placed in a corner… But the cumulative effect of all of this stuff was just beyond my aesthetic! I’ll take the MAXXI any day over this place. But maybe there are more similarities than meet the eye.. with each being a reflection of its time.

Walked around and through the Park Borghese for a while and then I split off from the other three and headed back to the hotel to do some work.. Following that I took off for the Spanish Steps which I had not seen in many years. As might be expected on a warm (hot – mutto caldo) Sunday, the place was packed.. locals, tourists from everywhere.. young and old.. Hundreds of people — all taking photos on their phones with one hand and eating gelato with the other! It was really a great sight. The monumental stairway of 135 steps was built in the early 1700s.. and linked the Bourbon Spanish Embassy and the Trinità dei Monti church that was under the patronage of the Bourbon kings of France, both located above the steps — to the Holy See in Palazzo Monaldeschi located below. Today, it’s just a great hangout. The 1950s film Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, apparently made the Spanish Steps famous to Americans.

I walked through the streets leading to the Steps and to Piazza Spagna.. eventually finding myself back at Piazza Barberini (by chance) right by the Farmacia! There I hopped a taxi back to the hotel, and met up with everyone for dinner at this little place called Ambasciata D’Abruzzo… where we dined al fresco.. starting with a platter of raw fish (all kinds).. next pasta arrabiata followed by veal scallopine and tiramisu for dessert (Mike and I shared)… We also drank quite a bit.. white wine with the fish, red wine with the meal.. and topped off with a strange selection of after dinner drinks.. The waiter was great, and service was Italian-slow.. But that was OK.. We got driven back to the hotel. My golfer’s vasculitis is still pretty obnoxious.. I’m hoping it disappears tomorrow (highly unlikely)

Domani is our last day in Roma and last day in Italy… Onward to London on Tuesday and then off to the US. We’ve been trying to keep up with local, state, and national news.. Our room supposedly has CNN but thus far we have not found any English speaking stations on the TV.. The Italians dub everything… .from the Simpsons to Law and Order. I’ve read snippets of the NY Times.. but that’s it.

Take care..

More tomorrow..

Fern