I am not indicting the entire country, or even all its men. I'm just putting them on report because they basically need to take care of two guys, and all who are like them.
The first kind of guy is actually based on one we've already met, the guy at the pastry shop. We decided, in part out of the goodness of our hearts, and in part out of the way our stomachs growled when our eyes came upon the pastry case in the shop, that we'd be paying customers. And when we got into the shop, the guy wasn't there, so we told the countermen what we wanted and went to sit outside.
Unfortunately, Mr. I-Am-God was there outside. Now, he's wearing a full designer suit and tie. He has a larger than life Roman face. He has the full shock of grey hair. I could easily have photographed him, but I didn't want to take the risk he'd break my camera.
Now, here's what he's doing: he's putting tablecloths on the outdoor tables. He's putting little heaters out in case it gets cold. He's not exactly performing rocket science. But for us, he has to come wait on us. "Cappuccino?" I say I'd prefer hot chocolate. Marjorie says she wants a cappuccino. "Large?" She nods.
The pastry was lovely. Huge, though somewhat stale, cornets filled with ricotta. Bigger than a cannoli. Lovely. Good. Better if fresh, but good.
The drinks comes. The hot chocolate is a work of art. The cappuccino has a significant amount of chocolate in it, too, making it nearly a mocha. Really good.
We finish and Mr. Self-Important makes up a bill for us. God forbid we should be able to talk to the rest of the staff. The bill: 25 euros. 40 bucks for two pastries and two drinks. I swear he was basically charging us for Sunday's breakfast and today's. Schmuck.
But what were we going to do, argue? He looked like he would have loved an excuse to have us arrested. So I handed him the money and we left.
Actually, breakfast wasn't even our first task of the day (other than packing). First, we had explored Santa Maria Maggiore, our local church. Lovely from the outside, really more lovely inside (no photos taken, though we seemed to be the only ones caring about that). It is filled with Bernini sculpture and he is in fact buried there (in a very unobtrusive tomb). On the other hand, Pope Sixtus IV is entombed there, too, in glass. Quite eery to see the body.
This is a detail of the outside of the portico, to give you a sense of the wonders inside.
From there, we walked to the station to go the Colosseum by Met.Ro., but stopped in a grocery store we found on the way. We always love grocery stores, because they give you more of a sense of how the people really live. Huge aisles for tomatoes and pasta. Not a lot of pop. Really interesting things like dates and figs in chocolate. And those huge Italian Christmas cakes, for really reasonable prices. But the most important item of all (it's coming, Amelia) was that they sold broad beans. They were very proud of that fact, apparently.
Or maybe broad beans are a sort of Italian alternative to "may contain nuts" or some other generic warning. But the sign was only in English. Perhaps only English customers (I can't imagine they would be Americans) were interested in broad beans. Who knows?
We went back to the Colosseum for the little extra time we had. Not a whole lot to report there; for those of you wondering where Harvard Stadium got some of its design ideas, look no further.
Of course, the popes had to intrude here, with a monument to the Christian martyrs. It would be like putting up a monument to Bill Buckner in Shea Stadium, I think.
More interesting was the contrast between ancient port-a-potties and modern ones.
I wish I were kidding, but when we got to Pompeii the next day, the beds in the brothels were made of stone, so why not?
We stuck our tickets into the Met.Ro. confidently to return, only to discover that while a ticket is good on the buses for 75 minutes, it is only good for one ride on the Met.Ro. So another two euros wasted. Mr. Personality was probably smiling.
The train to Torino was crowded, and it was impossible to put all our luggage into the rack in the first class carriage we had booked. The second class has large racks, but the first class compartments only have overhead storage. So, after the sixth seat was taken at the first stop, I took some of the bags into the hall and stood. First Class indeed.
We got out at Civitavecchia, on the coast, and it was blowing something crazy. You had to go down steps with your bags, and then there was no sign telling you where to go next, just two staircases out, one in either direction. Having carried the luggage this far, I wasn't going to go up the wrong staircase with it again, so Marjorie went scouting and I stayed with the bags.
A moment later, I heard American voices, and a nice couple from Tallahassee, George and Shirley, were wondering the same thing. I suggested we all wait together for Marjorie to come back from figuring out where to go. They seemed a nice couple and even more confused than us.
Marjorie came back with the news that she had found no official information, but there was (wait for it) a sign for a McDonald's saying it was across from the cruise terminal and 800 meters away. George and Shirley were older than us, but they too were up for walking with their bags. So walk we did.
Into the fiercest gale you can imagine. At one point my jacket blew up over my head. At another point, we could see jetsam heading into our faces. At yet another, we made no direct progress though we were walking forward with all our might.
It was exhilarating.
There was a choice to make suddenly would we have to climb another flight of stairs, or would the cruise terminal be on ground level. We crossed a street and someone scouted ahead, reporting back with the good news that the terminal didn't involve more stair climbing. We walked through a gate, and across the street was a shuttle bus. With the name Star Princess on it. And the word "free."
If only our troubles were over.
We handed our bags to the bus driver, and climbed aboard. The bus seemed to be the only thing moving in the port, having to go around a large number of other vehicles, including full buses. Finally, it arrived at the embarkation point.
It was at this point we encountered someone to make Mr. Smiley seem positively benigh. Mr. Smiley, after all, took only our money. This guy took our bags.
It's not what you think.
He spoke no English, and he kept trying to put the bags on a trolley while we kept explaining that we hadn't tagged the bags yet, and needed an extra tag because we only had three, etc. Since he spoke no English, this didn't work. It was still blowing up a storm, the guy kept wanting to move the bags, Marjorie kept searching to find our room number and other information in the envelope with all the cruise stuff, and eventually he left with the bags, which were all tagged.
He also left with the envelope.
This fact was not, of course, apparent yet. First, we had to go into the terminal, walk through a metal detector with our hang luggage, and run into the first of about five different cute Italian women (the equivalent of Israeli security officers in Ben-Gurion, but without the training or the English), who asked us if we had our boarding passes.
That's when it hit us. Or rather hit Marjorie, who was in charge of such documentation. The stevedore had the boarding passes.
Now, let us be grateful for a number of things. First, only the Princess Lines stuff was in that envelope. Second, the most important, irreplaceable documents for this trip, the airline tickets from Philadelphia to Rome (remember: paper tickets, last of a breed) were already used. Third, I had the passports in a passport holder around my neck, both passports.
But finding out the boarding passes were gone was a terrible feeling. I tried as best I could to calm Marjorie down as we carefully searched every item in her bag, but they weren't there. Or in my bag. What the guy was going to do with them, I have no idea. He clearly wasn't getting on the ship, and I don't think they have any identifying information of any value. But gone they were.
Princess Lines was fine about it. They handed us a form to fill out, and that was that. After all, they had all the relevant material in their computers, and our keys were already printed with our names.
Then you wait and wait. We had number 19 to get on the ship, and they were slowing the embarkation process because of the wind. They were calling no. 11 when we got there. But people kept arriving with numbers like 6 and 10, only to find out they had recycled numbers, and we were going in strict order, those cute Italian women.
I don't understand why it is so hard for Italians to speak English without adding extra syllables. I'm sure the Italian Anti-Defamation League will not like this, but it's true. All those stereotypes about how Italians speak English, the fact is that so many of them add at least one syllable to the end of each word, even if there is no vowel at the end. Very hard to understand.
No. 19 was called at last. Our cabin, B311, is forward on the starboard side. Our neighbors four cabins down have a nice Christmas decoration on their door, just off the elevator lobby, and we use that as a landmark to know which side of the ship to go to. The room is tiny but warm, the bed is very comfortable, and our bags all did arrive quickly (but not the envelope, probably know being used to fund Vladimir Putin's campaign chest).
Our cabin steward, Cristian, is from Rumania. He told me, as he was helping me open the door coming back from bringing Marjorie some iced tea, that he was "the best." He has, of course, big shoes to fill.
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