Falling in Love with Rome
08/06/2009

I went for a run today in the centre of Rome. I choose not to go running in Villa Borghese.
The decision to diverge from my usual running haunt stems mainly from the fact that since I stepped off the plane last week I have been feeling more then a little homesick. Leaving the airport I was even tempted to turn to the nearest flight desk and ask how much it would cost to fly back to Canada the next day, but I didn't.

I took a deep breath of the fresh air coming in the automatic doors and wove my way past all those waiting for family and friends. Halfway to the exit I was stopped by a taxi driver in a blue dress shirt. Would I like a taxi? He asked in fluent Italian, the melodic sound of Italian speech was still familiar to my ears after only two weeks away. Well yes I would, I do need to get all the way into the center of Rome. I hesitated though contemplating for a moment. There are three options, turn back and get on the next plain home, wait in the line for a taxi or pay the extra fifteen euros and have this gentlemen take my bags and help me into a cab? This time, rather then a deep breath, I sighed.

I wasn't going home and the line for the public taxies would only tempt me more. He looked at me waiting for an answer. Yes, thank you I replied in my broken Italian handing over my luggage and telling him where I wanted to go I followed him out the doors to his waiting car.
I looked around me as we excited, the Tom Hanks movie, Terminal, always comes to mind when I am in an airport. People coming going and bustling about, some on their journey home, some geared up and ready for a vacation, some like me, in limbo. Today, I am arriving, It is about 10 degrees warmer here then in Canada, even at 7:30 in the morning. The air is full of what I can only term as the smell of Italy in the summer. I remember the scent from the first time I exited an airport last June 11th in Florence. It is a ripe combination of honeysuckle, habitation, sea air and exhaust fumes. Sometimes it mixes with the scent of the outlying farms, good home cooking, wine, city filth, and leather. Its undercurrent always remains the same, like the history of Rome, it is sophisticated and complex; a perfume that even having lived her for almost a year I still cannot get enough of.

This morning on my half hour run, that scent, the same one that made me smile, despite my longing for home, while entering the taxi in front of Rome Fiumicino hit me again. I ran along the side streets from Piazza Fiume towards the Pantheon. My feet pounded on the cobblestone streets and I bounced lightly dodging the occasional pedestrian in an effort to keep my pace steady. I jogged without my i-pod this morning so that I could hear the sound of the city waking up. It was already 12am by the time I left the house, but Rome wakes up slowly, especially on a Saturday. I ran up a hilly side street, past the small family run restaurants tucked into the first floor of adjoined buildings, Tabachi shops selling, cigarettes, cigars, gum, stamps, phone cards and other miscellaneous items and the odd clothing boutique. I turned to my right and into a shady side street and there it was off to my left. A set of old cobblestone steps warn with use and slanting downwards creating more of a ramp then a set of stairs. They were wide with, buildings crowding in on either side, sunlight streaming down them and hitting the red bicycle propped against the Naples yellow wall beside a clay pot of pink flowers. They only lead to the a street running parallel, but they might as well have led to heaven.

Besides the obvious reasons for coming to Rome, the major historic sites, such as the Coliseum, the Pantheon, The Vatican and etc. it is these out of the way moments of beauty that make Rome special and give the city that sense of self. Rome just is, it doesn't make any apologies for its complexities, or the like the steps I just mentioned, its simplicities. And usually it doesn't take much to find these moments in Rome, you can be pretty much anywhere in the city, take a couple turns off the beaten path and you are there. Of course the argument is that this is the case for many cities around the world. I do not disagree. Maybe it is simply that for me, and for many like me, I connected with this city in particular. I fell in love with the things that make Rome unique: the restaurants, the double parking, the zooming motorbikes, the hanging baskets, the cobblestone, the confusing streets, the tourist shops, the history and the life that Rome exudes. And that is it. Even on the most dismal day, Rome's sense of self is not lost or diminished, it is simply enhanced, it's character is built into the walls of the hotel you will make home for a couple days or a couple weeks. It is in the streets you will walk and the people you will meet. It is in the air you will breath. Rome will fill you up and make you feel whole. For me it is the answer to so many unanswered questions.
This morning I have fallen in love with the Eternal City all over again. For the would be traveler I highly recommend getting a little bit lost and taking a look behind the crowds, Rome will open your eyes in ways you may never have expected.