Time to wrap this up.  Ms. Packratty will continue to post on http://a-packrats-progress.blogspot.com/ and retire this blog.  Her next trip is probably going to be rafting in the Grand Canyon in 2013, along with a return to Italy in December 2014, when she hopes to spend a few days in Firenze and then a week in Rome - hopefully back at Via Urbana centi venti tre.

How did my third grade German teacher

end up in a Roman museum. Gorgeous, eh?

a final picture or two

Shrines like this are all over Rome.



















Confetti on the sidewalk during Carnevale

More pictures

Pebble mosaic in sidewalk. Ornamentation pops up in even the simplest things.












Major street repair in central Rome. Three guys dig up the cobblestones and find the leaky pipe. Then they replace the dirt, tap the old mortar off those cobblestones and replace them. No heavy machinery, plenty of time to stop and chat or walk around the corner for un espresso doppio.










Swiss Guard - uniform designed by Michelangelo - painter, sculptor architect and couturier. All of them tall, handsome and able to speak three or four languages. And able to wear the uniform without cracking up, obviously.


















The pope's private staircase to the Sistine Chapel
























one of the famous cats of the Colosseum






















Newlyweds at Bocca della Verita

























Sant'Eustacio on the eponymous piazza. Yes, that's a deer's head with a cross between the antlers.

a lucky shot

Vaticano

Doorways of Monti

I really liked the variety of the ironwork in the (usually) half circle transoms over doors. I may have a few more on the camera but this is a good sample.

Panificio Monti

And the charming ladies who run it.

You see these all over

Although dogs are permitted in restaurants and are often better behaved than most children.

St. Cecelia in Trastevere

This was Ms. Packratty's second-favorite church.

More pictures

Ms. Packratty missed this by two days ... that snow falling through the oculus of the Pantheon. The Pantheon and the Barberini Museum were Ms. Packratty's two favorite places in Rome proper and St. Cecelia in Trastevere the third.






In the exterior shot taken on February 17th, the temperature was close enough to 50 so gloves were not wanted, but notice the folks bundled up for arctic weather.

What's next?

Well, clearly, Ms. Packratty WILL be going back to Rome. She hopes very much to be able to spend a few days in Florence and visit a first cousin who has lived there for 40 years, but she is definitely going back to Rome.

And Ms. Packratty still has pictures to post and has not had enough time to sit down and think about it.

But her next trip, other than going to see family with her remaining annual leave, is probably going to be going down the Grand Canyon on a raft in 2013. She is hoping a dear friend will take the trip with her, but is perfectly prepared to solo it otherwise. She also plans to return to Italy in 2014. In fact, she thinks she would like to celebrate her birthday in Rome that year. This all depends on continued employment and her fibromyalgia staying in relative remission as it has for the last few years. But if that holds, Ms. Packratty believes she will be able to take some sort of serious trip every 18 months or thereabouts - not as much traveling as she would *like* but enough. She wants to go to Alaska, Hawaii and would really love to go back to Denmark, where one of the most delightful trips of her childhood took place.

A surprising turn of events

In the prior post, Ms. Packratty explained the several points of failure that she experienced with her American Express prepaid card and her great disappointment in those events. She knew she needed to call American Express and discuss those events, but was really dreading trying to work her way through the ladder of call center and supervisor, manager and blah, blah, blah.
A certain gentleman friend of hers who travels extensively for a living and uses the heck out of his AmEx was going to call on her behalf, but Ms. Packratty really believes in fighting her own battles. Then one of her clever friends pointed out that there are websites where sometimes the email addresses of high-ranking corporate executives are available.
A wee bit of Google-ing and Ms. Packratty had the address of 5 executives at AmEx. So she proofread her essay one more time and mailed it off via e-mail on the eveing of 3/6.
Was she ever amazed to receive this on the morning of 3/8:

Hello Ms. P(ackratty)

I work for Global Payment Options for Executive Consumer Relations and Mr. Chenault. I have been trying to reach you at 7**-***-****, but receive no answer.

I would like you to know that we take the issues you raised very seriously and I would like to speak with you concerning the issues. You can reach me at ***-***-**** or if you would prefer I can call you directly. Please let me know the best telephone number and time to reach you and I would be happy to call.

Sincerely,

T**** T****** | Executive Consumer Relations

American Express | Global Payment Options

Well, Ms. T and Ms. Packratty had quite a talk and discussed the various AmEx failures she experienced and Ms. T advised her that AmEx would be refunding the charges that Ms. P incurred for money changing. Color Ms. Packratty rather pleased with the effect of her essay. And the fact that if you can reach them, some people still do appear to care about their companies.

The American Express Rant

Ms. Packratty started writing this while still on vacation and now that she has calmed down and edited it, she is about ready to send it to American Express. And Clark Howard. And a few newspapers ...

American Express advertises its prepaid card as “feels like membership”. I’m thinking not so much. Or at least a very third rate sort of membership.
Let me explain. While in the final stages of planning a long dreamed about trip to Rome, I saw their advertisement. Having pretty much given up on credit cards after a long siege of underemployment, I was thrilled at the idea of having the security and support of American Express on my trip by getting a prepaid card. I read the materials carefully and while the literature did say one could only make one free withdrawal of $200 in a week from an ATM, it did appear to allow more withdrawals for a fee per withdrawal. That was OK with me, because I really did not want to have to depend solely on cash and my Wells Fargo debit card. (BTW, Wells Fargo? So very sorry for doubting you. Really.)
Thankfully, I’ve got a streak of pessimism in my nature, because here is what happened when I arrived in Rome on February 15. Since I had prepared carefully for this trip, I had gotten 60 € in a TipPack from AAA. The exchange rate wasn’t fabulous, but the security of having some local cash in hand when I stepped off the plane was worth it (see streak of pessimism above). First, my luggage arrived promptly, customs was uninterested in me and I successfully purchased a 14€ ticket on the Leonardo Express train into the city (for what it’s worth, the Leonardo is a rare treat – smooth, quiet, clean and very fast). While I was waiting for the train, I found an ATM or bancomat for the Banco di Roma and neither machine liked my cards or was interested in speaking English, even though there was an English language option. It was before 8 a.m. local time and I decided to just try an ATM on the other end, because I needed 350€ to pay the landlord of the apartment I had rented when I arrived. Besides, I had another backup – I had a little more than $500 in US money tucked in my moneybelt (see streak of pessimism again).
Lo and behold, when I arrived at Rome’s Termini station, there were ATMs outside a branch bank with a nice sharp uniformed guard standing by. He invited me to put my luggage in the little foyer while I worked the machine. To my surprise, the American Express card, which had about $1,200 US loaded onto it, declined to give me so much as 100€, but the Wells Fargo debit card came through like a champion and let me withdraw about half of what I needed right away. A second try gave me a message that I could not make another withdrawal immediately. Knowing that I could change part of my dollars to make up the difference, I headed for the apartment where I was to meet my Italian landlord. On the way, I stopped at another bancomat and my Wells Fargo card again allowed me to withdraw cash – enough to pay the landlord and a bit more. Once I had met the landlord and unloaded my luggage, I walked back to the Termini Station, bought a weekly pass and headed for the American Express office in Piazza di Spagna.
Once there, I discovered what membership feels like – that is, the sort of membership you get with a prepaid card. What I got was someone dialing the international 800 number for me and connecting me to a partially fluent young woman somewhere on the Indian subcontinent who did not appear to know that Rome was not in the United States. She could not even look up the number of the Piazza di Spagna branch – a location that arguably has to be the most famous American Express office in the world. After putting me on hold multiple times, she informed me that although the literature did say additional withdrawals could be made with an added fee, that was not true. She also had no explanation why the card would not let me have even 100€, which is less than $200 even with fees. After extended periods on hold with increasingly dreadful hold music, she advised me that American Express would – out of the goodness of its heart – wire me $500 of my PREPAID money through Western Union. No, the American Express office I was sitting in couldn’t give me my money, I had to somehow identify a Western Union office to have it wired to. (Meanwhile, I observed a number of *real* card holders going up to the windows, brandishing their green, gold or black cards and getting helped.) It was feeling less and less like membership and more and more like a mistake.
Finally, one of the very ornamental and not very bilingual Italian young ladies swanning around the office managed to find the postal code for the Monti area where my apartment was located and a Western Union office was located. By the time I reached that location on Via Urbana, the Indian call center had gone offline and my next call was answered by a chipper young American fellow who got the money released to the Western Union office. However, he had no explanation for why the literature was in error or why my card would not work in an ATM at all.
One would think that a prepaid card where American Express already has the money and not merely an assurance of repayment would get nice service. Sadly, not so – and the absurd limits placed on the ATM withdrawal render this card considerably less useful for international travel than I had hoped. Granted, it’s worked adequately at restaurants and stores, but not being able to access those funds as cash is more than slightly annoying.
I would sincerely suggest that American Express do one of two things – either stop advertising that the prepaid card “feels like membership” OR live up to their advertising. They might also want to think long and hard about their ATM limits as well, since the traveler’s check appears to be as dead as the dodo. Furthermore, they might also want to make sure that their call center employees know what countries their offices are located in AND have a phone directory for those offices. Sadly, I can guess what they will probably do – nothing - while they lose the good will that they built up with a century of good service. Because once I have exhausted the funds on this card, it’s a pretty sure thing that I won’t be loading any more money onto it until I have some assurances that it will “feel like membership”. And even were I inclined to get a “real” credit card, my experience with American Express makes me far from thrilled with them.
Whoops, let’s revise that “working adequately. Two days before my departure while trying to ship 2 boxes of gifts home, American Express declined a 98€ charge when my card had between two and three times that amount available. I had to leave my packages, run to a bancomat and use my Wells Fargo debit card again. (Thank you, Wells Fargo, you saved my vacation more than twice over.) And of course, several rather nice places I wanted to dine at didn’t accept Amex anymore. One place said the fees were just too high compared to other cards. So there you have it. Want to have a card that’s seriously semi-useless for travel, with non-existent and/or abysmally ignorant offshore support (I guess the American part is a little misleading too) and no really completely bilingual person in the main office on a weekday in a city where at least a couple of million Americans probably visit in a year? Then definitely get an American Express prepaid. You’ll feel like something, but it won’t be membership.

Things that worked, things that didn't

Things that worked, things that didn’t
One of the best purchases I made for my trip was this:


Big enough to handle Euro notes and a bunch of coins, with “grabby” enough material to be secure in a front pocket.












Those who know Ms. Packratty and her tendency to carry large heavy purses will be astounded to hear that many days she carried no purse at all and that when she did the little Pacsafe 100 she purchased held her camera, maps, guidebook and notebook perfectly.

Ms. Packratty took her Dell netbook with her , although she did not manage to download any library books before she left, which she regrets not doing since she did run out of reading material before the end of her stay. While the apartment did not have Internet service, Ms. Packratty did find it handy to have the netbook to sit at the little table and write. However, given how inexpensive the Internet point down the street was, it’s pretty much a tossup whether she would bother on another trip. The bulky voltage converter she bought on Amazon and left behind in favor of space and weight for gifts was handy and did its job.
Ms. Packratty did not buy her Nikon Coolpix for this trip, but it was the perfect size for the use she did put it to. While there were a couple of times she wished for a telephoto lens, she was more interested in being where she was than of concentrating on the next picture.
Ms. Packratty did not use her MP3 player at all, not for music, not for books on tape, nada. It’s small and light though, so it wasn’t a major waste of space or weight.
Ms. Packratty’s Lucas luggage did a great job, especially considering the bangety-clatter of travelling over Roman cobblestones
Things that did not work:
First and foremost was the American Express Prepaid, which was a giant FAIL in all aspects – functionality and customer service. I don’t know which was worse. After being home almost a week, Ms. Packratty is now almost calmed down enough to call American Express and convey her utter disappointment in their product and their service. Fortunately, Ms. Packratty had planned for something to go wrong.

The only thing that was less effective and useful than the American Express was Italian deodorant. There’s a reason that Italians reek and that’s because their deodorants don’t deodorize. Ms. Packratty had elected to buy toiletries in Italy vs. packing them and dealing with possible leaks and the TSA etc. Never again. She might buy her shampoo and toothpaste over there, but she is never ever leaving her trusty can of Sure behind. Even though it was chilly, with the mileage she was putting on her pumps, Ms. Packratty was nearing Roman levels of pong after 4 days, despite twice daily washing up, and vigorous use of two different Italian deodorants. She could not locate anything like a Dial analog, either.




Being a fussy sort who bathes very frequently and can’t stand to be pong-y, the fact that Italian deodorant neither inhibited sweat nor deodorized was distressing and Ms. Packratty was quite thankful that she did not end up wearing any of her cashmere sweaters as she is afraid the pong might have been hard to wash out.
The New Balance shoes were a disappointment. While her older pair never seems to cause foot cramps from pressure, this pair did even without socks. Maybe they needed more breaking in.
More to come, including pictures.

A long travel day and a sad, sad homecoming

In the air. OK, I am officially disgusted with most of my fellow passengers. Gum-chewing, whiny, talking about getting “some good American food”. Dear God in heaven, The airport snack bar was an Italian Autogrill with about 24 different fresh sandwiches, any sort of coffee drink, six kinds of cornetti, plus Danish, plus fresh-squeezed blood orange juice etc. etc. etc. For about $6 I had a fresh cornetto, a caffee latte lungo and a glass of that aforementioned blood orange juice. What more could you want? A Big Mac with a half a cup of corn syrup and a spoonful of MSG, I guess?
Ms. Packratty slept poorly Friday night, worried about the alarm and waking up because she didn’t have any backup and she was already tired when she set off for the airport. It was very sad to pack the last few things and drag my suitcase down to the front entry before making a final check and grabbing my purse and carry-on. It was well before dawn on Via Urbana and the cobblestones were a bit damp and the air smelled of old stone. I bumped my suitcase down the block, past the little workshops, the coffee bars, the storefront where classes in mosaic are taught, the restaurants, Only one shop was open, the coffee bar closest to the metro and only 2 other people on the platform.
The metro took only a minute or two to reach the Termini station where the lighting was brighter and shops were already opening for the day at 6:15. I found binario venti quattro and heaved my suitcase onto the third car of the Leonardo Express and within 5 minutes, the glossy train pulled out of the station and started speeding to the southeast and Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino airport.
At the airport after a trip that felt as though the train was running on glass, a transportation comedy began that was to be echoed 15 hours later in Atlanta. First the international passengers for Terminal 5 had to go to Terminal 3, where our boarding passes were inspected and we were ushered over to a bus and driven to another large building. Once there, we were handed plastic bags and told to put all electronic devices in the bag and some very cheerless sorts inspected our boarding passes and checked our passports (for the first time). Then we were sent to another large room where we waited to deposit our checked bags and then put back on the bus and driven to the actual gate area we were to depart from. At the gate, our passports were inspected for a second time and then we sat and waited. The departure area for a flight carrying about 200 people had fewer than 75 seats and since they expect you to get to the airport 2-3 hours before a flight, it was a miserable and uncomfortable wait, especially after I visited the ladies and lost my seat and had to either stand or sit on the marble floor.
Finally they started boarding and in typically illogical fashion, the airlines board the forward sections first and then the back sections, leaving the back sections to squeeze and stumble past the earlier boarders. Coupled with people bringing on suitcases as carryons that are over 20 inches high, boarding is like something in a circus act - an act, though, that one is an involuntary participant in. And before they let us on the plane, they inspected passports a third time.
Once on the plane we sat, despite an announcement that we would be leaving on time, we didn’t take off until 40 minutes after the published 9:40 a.m. departure. Delightfully, Ms. Packratty also drew an aisle seat directly behind the inevitable jerk. The guy with the sound-cancelling headphones and the Steve Jobs imitation buzz cut who conspicuously read his International Herald Tribune during the safety announcements, who jacked his seat back immediately on reaching altitude and then kept bouncing up and down in his seat so that Ms. Packratty’s water was in danger of spilling if she set it down on her tray and didn’t stop until she finally started kneeing the back of the seat every time he bounced the chairback up and down. The same jerk also opened the overhead bin and rummaged in his enormous backpack a total of seven times during the 11 + hour flight and turned on his cellphone the instant the plane landed despite the pilots announcement that electronics and cameras should not be used until customs and immigration had been cleared. Ms. Packratty was relieved to hear his weasel-faced wife whining about having to change planes before they got home because she really didn’t like the idea that they lived in the same city =- and she only wishes they came from another country. To her absolute delight, the two of them were shortstopped by an immigration officer as they used their smartphones while waiting in line to clear immigration. Apparently it was absolutely imperative that Mrs. Jerk update her Facebook status.
So we unloaded and cleared immigration, picked up checked baggage and then trudged over to customs. Ms. Packratty’s total customs inspection was “Got any food?” She replied, “Some risotto mix, a bottle of booze and some chocolates.” And she was waved through. After customs, the baggage went back on another conveyor and we passengers were herded onto buses that took us on to the main terminal and baggage claim, where, after about 20 minutes, bags came tumbling back out.
Checked bag recovered, Ms. Packratty bungee corded her carryon to the suitcase, shouldered her bag and headed to MARTA where she hopped on the train and rode it up to Lindbergh station where she cabbed back to the office and retrieved her car. It was very odd to be driving after 10+ days and her Buick felt like a limo after riding in an Italian taxi or two.
Sadly, her homecoming turned out to be extra difficult. Ms. Packratty got home, and carried her handbag up to the door, unlocked the door and found her ancient cat, Delilah Fuzzybutt, curled up on the front landing, obviously dead within the last 8-12 hours. Delilah was over 18 years old and had had a pretty good run of it, but coming home to bury a four-footer who had shared bed and board for nearly two decades was really difficult. One of Ms. Packratty’s very nice neighbors helped dig a grave behind an azalea patch and Ms. Packratty rummaged up a paver from an old path project to place over the grave until the lure to scavengers is past. And then she went home, washed her face, called her parents and went to bed and had a good cry.

Ciao, Roma!

Ms. Packratty does not know how to describe her dinner at Urbana 47. Thanks to the generosity of her parents who added to her savings and told her to have fun, Ms. Packratty has eaten at several amazing and famous restaurants. She has also eaten porchetta sliced onto a plain roll from a street market and boiled eggs for breakfast and nothing she has eaten in Roma from pizza bianco to the monster prawns at La Rosetta has disappointed. But Urbana 47 was in a whole different league. First of all, the restaurant is very modern with a touch of 1950s retro and a glossy, immaculate open kitchen. The restaurant is, I am told, unique in that every ingredient is sourced within the province of Lazio and is very much seasonal, as well.
Entering, Ms. Packratty was seated at a group table with an excellent view of the kitchen and present with a menu. The possibility was to have two dishes and a dolce, or sweet, or three or four main dishes for the ambitious eater. Having been daunted by what a typical Roman appears to eat at lunch, let alone dinner (pranzo and cena for those interested), Ms. Packratty opted for the 2 dishes and dolce. Her pasta choice was a mix of two pastas, one white, one green, with sautéed guanciale and artichokes all bound together with a local cheese similar to parmesan, but produced in Lazio. Before this particular plate of gustatory heaven arrived, her waitress brought a tiny gratin dish containing a puree of carrots with a small dollop of cream containing some of that aged cheese. Pureed carrot, you say? This in no way resembled baby food. It was more like a few spoons containing the essence of the best barely cooked carrots you ever tasted in your life and the contrast of the cheese and cream against the earthy carrot was astonishing.
After this opener, the pasta arrived and Ms. Packratty almost swooned in bliss – it was creamy but al dente, green but also savory. American chefs who think they have to play crazy tricks with food and mix cuisines need to come eat a plate or two in Rome and stop putting hot peppers and cilantro in everything and calling it fusion. Fusion is when tastes blend happily as compared to the head on train wreck of most American food from McDs to the most expensive restaurants.
The purity and freshness of the ingredients is no small part of the equation and Ms. Packratty believes there is simply no excuse for the dismal quality of most American food, starting with things like bread, eggs, milk and butter. We have some of the best farmland in the world and we’re using most of it in factory farming and way too much producing corn syrup and soybeans – we could be eating food as good as the Italian food – not an imitation, but our own cuisine made from fresh and honest ingredients instead of the swill that fills our supermarkets and restaurants.
Ms. Packratty’s second dish was a nod to Lent and a chance to experience the Roman love of cod. Yes, cod. Apparently since the days of the empire, Rome has imported cod, mainly dried, but the hundreds of thousands of tons, something that continues today. There are a couple of restaurants in Rome’s old ghetto that specialize in baccala or cod, although Ms. Packratty did not get a chance to try them this trip. Since her parents come from an area with no small tradition of cod eating, Ms. Packratty selected a fish pie made with potatoes. Now, Ms. Packratty’s mother, in her day and especially when Ms. Packratty’s beloved grandfather was alive, would occasionally make a wonderful fish chowder with potatoes, salt pork, a very little onion, some form of flavorsome white fish and milk. Well, Urbana 47’s dish was that chowder, minus the milk, served in wedges and dressed with bagna cauda, a traditional fish sauce. (So traditional that cultural archeologists have determined that the Romans built huge factories for producing fish sauce in thousand amphorae quantities on the southern coast of the Mediterranean.) Apparently making fermented fish sauce was not the least offensive process possible and the Romans had their own equivalent of NIMBY yuppies who didn’t want a fish sauce factory stinking up their beachfront even though they bought the stuff in hundred gallon jugs. So this potato and fish combination was delightfully familiar and yet completely different at the same time.
The common table had filled up with a group of five and a couple of other solo diners and Ms. Packratty found herself being questioned about her experiences in Rome by a man of about 50 of a very Roman type – he clearly was well-to-do and he got a little snobby at one point, which Ms. Packratty rather enjoyed. Mr. Snobby is apparently part of a family business doing construction and proceeded to tell Ms. Packratty about the difficulties of building anything in the environs of Rome – as soon as they lift the first shovel, they are likely to find something that requires bringing the archaeologists in – he commented that there was probably enough buried to keep all the archaeologists busy for the next 1000 years studying what they could find from the last 3000 years. To which Ms. Packratty replied that the rest of the world’s fascination with Rome’s older bits had certainly served the city and the country rather well. At this, he finally laughed and leaned back and said, “Well, without you Americans we would have lost so much both in the war and afterward from neglect.” At this point, he ordered espressos for both of us and then my dolce came. To say it was a mocha cream over sponge cake is to make the barest possibly description, but it is almost impossible to describe how complex the flavors were in this small, simple cup of perfection. Ms. Packratty has pretty much eschewed sweets in Rome, with the exception of a couple of cups of insanely good gelato (Grom marrons glace), but this coffee and chocolate combination was extravagantly good.
M\s. Packratty thanked Mr. Snobby for the espresso and made her goodbyes while he was chatting up the owner and walked back up to centi venti tre to start this entry as well as drink half a bottle of mineral water to help make sure she does not miss the alarm at 5 a.m. She has packed almost everything except her current garb, her nightshirt and the clothes she will wear tomorrow, this computer and a book. When the alarm goes off, she will need to shower, make a breakfast, clean out the remains in the fridge and pack the last things. Then drag her suitcase down the hill to the Cavour Metro to take the train to Termini, She has her ticket already purchased for the Leonardo Express and her boarding pass ready and is just terribly miserable at the thought of leaving. However, leaving means the possibility of returning and Ms. Packratty hopes to do just that. She has already told her adorable niece that she will take her to Rome when she completes college which means at the most that she will be back in 6 years – all she can think about is what fun it would be to trot Miss Adorable around this city and show her all the things that Ms. Packratty has already seen and perhaps even more.
Perhaps Ms. Packratty could have pushed a little harder and gone to a couple more museums, but she thinks that by spending some of her time walking around and experiencing the city that she did not really waste any of her time. The only thing she regrets is not being able to reach the historian at the exhibition hall. Perhaps she can try a letter and see if she gets anywhere with that. Taking the buses and Metro and even once one of the streetcars and experiencing the crazy crush of the market at Porto Portese, being crammed into the Metro like an anchovy, the old stone and weathered stucco and the incredible little terraces jammed with greenery, the cold air in the morning and the smell of chestnuts roasting on almost every street corner and the clear pure water running from hundreds of fountains and nasone all filled out the experiences of looking at the art and architecture. Can’t wait to come back. Ciao, Roma!

Sadly, sadly Friday came and went

Ms. Packratty had a busy day Friday. She went to the Museo Nazionale Romano and Crypti Balbi and finished the rest of her shopping, including springing (thanks to her parents) for a really pretty pair of earrings in an Etruscan style with rubies, sapphires and pearl drops. Small, expensive and Roman.

Again, there was much walking, a excursion to UPIM, one of the Roman department stores; the grocery, where I purchased the mirto requested by friend Muir, who was stationed in Sardinia some years back, etc. Bought myself a great fake designer purse too.

And came back and packed most of my things.

One thing I realized on the train coming home from the second museum is that for nearly ten days, I have not seen a male with his pants falling off his arse and how very little I missed it. As in not at all. Completely not at all. And NO RAP or hiphop "music" either. Along with bread that tastes like bread and other aspects of terrific food, the absence of rap and pants off arses has been a real visual and auditory holiday.

If her lottery scratch off had won the 500.000€ prize, she'd have been coming home only long enough to collect Charlie and Delilah

Heading back to the apartment to get my code so I can print my boarding pass, nip up to the Tabbacheria and buy a couple of folks some Italian ciggies and then have dinner. Up at 5 a.m. is going to hurt, but at least Ms. Packratty will have the consolation of good coffee and the Leonardo Express to help ease some of the pain.

Wednesday & Thursday

Ms. Packratty does not want to leave. In all fairness, she knew this would happen, but it is still sad to know that she has less than 36 hours before her plane takes off.
Wednesday, she got up nice and early and made a fast breakfast before setting off for the Cavour Metro station. From there, she went to Termini and bought a 3 day BIT ticket for trains and buses, her 1 week ticket having expired at midnight Tuesday. Off to the Ottaviano Metro stop and from there about three quarters of a mile hike to the plaza in front of St. Peter’s, where she joined a long long line of people waiting to get cleared by the Swiss Guards and enter the audience hall. Let me tell you, it was not an intimate experience. There appeared to be about 5,000 people jammed into the very modern audience hall. The Pope arrived more or less on time and gave a lengthy address in Italian, of which Ms. Packratty caught about every 20th word. He then gave greetings to the throng in a short address in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German and Polish. Whatever else one might say about the incumbent, he certainly is a gifted linguist. The Papacy must be as wearing as the presidency though – Ratzinger looks 20 years older than he did at his election. I left the audience hall and purchased some small religious articles that had been blessed that I had been asked to bring back, then headed back to the Metro.
Fun Roman fact for the day – those bright Swiss guard uniforms? Designed by Michelangelo. Unchanged to the present day.
I did find a shop selling “popeners” - bottle openers adorned with an image of the Pope on one side and St. Peter’s on the other. I then took the subway to Piazza Spagna stop and made a serious tactical error in map reading – I walked about a mile plus to the Gallery Borghese. I was disappointed to see a sign up saying that all tickets for Wednesday were sold, but went in to see if I could purchase for Thursday only to find that there were indeed tickets available – apparently several groups had not shown up for their reservation to my good fortune.
The Gallery Borghese is almost too much eye candy. Unlike the Barberini, which I would like to visit many more times, the Borghese was amazing, but I did not find myself wishing I could come back. Possibly, because unlike the Barberini where there are chairs and benches in most of the rooms so that one can sit and really look at pieces, the Borghese is focused on moving people through and out. The chairs are all roped off and in only one room did they have long ottomans that one could sit on and look up to admire the ceilings. The other exceedingly annoying thing was a group of about 12 young male Germans who were sniggering at anything even slightly suggestive. I was behind them and had spoken briefly with a lady from Verona who had lovely English when they reached the room with the statues of the hermaphrodites. Even with my very limited German, it was clear that the boys ahead of us were making very, very nasty comments. The lady I had been speaking snapped at them in German which shut them up for a while, at least and then I was able to turn right while they went left and avoid them for the rest of the visit.
Leaving the museum, Ms. Packratty was really hungry, so she stopped at the museum restaurant for a panini and a mineral water and to rest her sad, tired feet.
Note about feet – Ms. Packratty wears a European 41 and the only shoes she has found in her size have been high heel platform shoes that look like hookerwear and make her toes ache just to look at. She finally spotted a pair of gorgeous flats, but there is no way in this lifetime that she is paying 450€ for a pair of flats. Besides, even those pinched a little and Ms. Packratty knows perfectly well what happens to uncomfortable shoes – they languish unworn in the back of the closet. She has also noted in the museums that “Morton’s foot” - wide at the ball with a longer second toe – was endemic among the various artist’s models, if not the general population – both ancient and Renaissance. Apparently not so much now, or else a lot of Roman are wearing shoes that don’t fit.
After the Borghese, she caught a cab back to Piazza Repubblica and got all the way into the bowels of the station only to have the next train come in and empty out with a message on the station loudspeakers that the track between Repubblica and Termini was closed. She climbed back out of the station and found the nearest bus stop and went back to Termini, stopping to check on what time the first Leonardo Express to the airport leaves – around 520 a.m. At this point it was about 430 p.m. and Ms. Packratty felt as though she was walking on glass, so she went back to Via Urbana and took a nap before her dinner at Cavour 313, an enoteca that had been recommended to her. Along with 2 glasses of a Brunello that was as close to wine perfection as she has ever had, she also had a cheese and salumi sampler and an arugula salad with shaved gran padano cheese dressed with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. She followed that with a lasagna that was about as far from the ragu-smothered American version as you can get. There was tomato, but not tomato sauce, a limited amount of very good ricotta and the meat was like a diced meat that had been broiled with a little olive oil before being added to the pasta. Unfortunately, this meal was the first in Rome to disagree with the Packratty digestion and she spent a good chunk of the night sitting up waiting for the distress to be over and hence, got a late start on Thursday.
One of the first orders of business was to go down to Mailboxes Etc. near the Cavour Metro and ship back most of her purchases. American non-Express once again screwed up and refused to let Ms. Packratty pay the shipping bill so she had to go to an ATM and get more cash, even though her available balance was nearly 3 times the amount she was trying to charge in Euro. Ms. Packratty will definitely be having a very definitive discussion with American Express when she returns and doesn’t have to pay 15 cents a minute to talk to them.
Shipping accomplished, Ms. Packratty set off to explore around the via Nazionale. Something was definitely going on in the government center because she spotted or heard 4 or 5 motorcades as she walked. There are the regular Rome police, then the carabinieri who wear very fancy uniforms with capes and carry submachine guns on guard duty – very swank. Then there are the financial police (see earlier comments about the Italian national sport of tax evasion) and in various parts of Rome you will also spot Army and Navy uniforms. Got to love a police force that drives Alfa Romeos …
Thursday night, Ms. Packratty dined at La Rosetta, which is noted for its seafood. She had a pair of prawns that had ambitions of becoming lobsters, served on a bed of insanely good risotto and a secondi that reminded her of her mother’s Lobster Newburg along with a half bottle of a slightly fizzy Frascati. Friday night, she intends to try Urbana 47 just down the block, which is famous for serving food sourced only in the Lazio region.
Friday she hopes to visit two of the National museums near her apartment and then take the 118 bus down the Via Appia Antica, although she doubts that she will have the opportunity to take any of the catacomb tours. Although she has done much of what she wanted to, including plenty of time just spent walking around experiencing the city, the list of things she wants to visit next time is now twice as long. And, as mentioned before, Ms. Packratty would like to spend about a week at the Vatican Museums alone. It's very entertaining just walking up and down Via Urbana and Via Panisperna and looking at all the little shops and businesses, which range from a couple of very blue collar metal and woodworking shops through high end glass and jewelry, an undertaker, various frutterias and alimentari, 4-5 coffee shops and Paneficio Monti, whose incredible breads I will miss terribly.
It is rather too bad that the Romans have not revived their public baths – after a week of using a tiny shower and with very beaten-up feet and legs, Ms. Packratty would love a swill in a really hot bath or three. As her bus has gone by the ruins of various baths, she has considered that a truly unfortunate thing – although I suppose most people wouldn’t behave well enough for something like that to be possible. She does suppose that someone who set up foot massage locations like the ones in New York’s Chinatown near some of the major tourist sites might be wildly successful.

Oh, my aching feet.

Ms. Packratty overdid it Tuesday in a big way. First off, she walked around the neighborhood after breakfast until it was time for the Barberini Museum to open. She took the bus from the corner of Via Urbana and Via Panisperna to Via del Tritone and then hiked to the Barberini. OK, she had an art overdose and is seriously cranky at the fact that the bookstore did not have a single volume overview of the collection. She thinks she could happily visit it every month for a year without it all soaking in.
From the Barberini, she walked over in the direction of the Pantheon, stopping for an espresso doppio at Tazzo de Oro. The Pantheon was very crowded and people had to be reminded (!) that it is a church and that they shouldn’t be eating, drinking and yakking on their cell phones. Once again, the Japanese and the Germans won hands down for rudeness. From the Pantheon, Ms. Packratty snared a cab and took it across the Tiber to Santa Maria de Trastevere, one of the basilica churches of Rome. It was very gaudy and jammed with tourists and not terribly serene.
From there, Ms. Packratty consulted the map and crossed over to St. Cecelia’s. She arrived while the church was closed so that the Cistercian nuns could sing their afternoon office and it was hauntingly beautiful to sit outside and knit while waiting for the service to be complete. Apparently knitting is strictly an old lady thing in Rome because everywhere that Ms. Packratty has KIPed (KIP being Knitted In Public) she has been asked what she is doing and then why. Interesting to try to explain to a fashionable Roman that Ms. Packratty knits because it is good for her and produces something unique, because it appears that the fashionable Roman woman wants nothing so much as to have exactly the same name brands on body and feet as every other fashionable Roman woman. Making an effort to be unique seems to frighten them. But then, looking at the tatty and or cheap hats and scarves they are wearing in the winter cold is enough to convince Ms. Packratty that they really need to take up knitting here in a big way.
Santa Cecelia was a beautiful church – austere compared to Santa Maria. Interestingly, there were quartered pomegranates in bronze scattered around the church – a curiously pagan motif given the piety of the patron saint. Once the church service was over and the nuns - almost all elderly – had filed away to their adjoining cloisters, Ms. Packratty purchased admission to the excavations under the church, which included a very old chapel that looked almost Byzantine in its décor, as well as what appeared to be the remains of a residence.
From St. Cecelia, she walked down to the Tiber and risked life and limb crossing the road that runs along the western bank, then crossed over below the Isola Tiburtina, where the city’s largest maternity hospital is located. Then she caught the bus back to the Barberini Metro stop and walked up the very long hill to Santa Susanna, where she picked up her ticket for the papal audience on Wednesday morning. Then she splurged on another cab because her feet were about to drop off at the ankles and returned safely to Via Urbana centi venti tre, where she nipped into the salumeria and bought some prosciutto and then to Panificio Monti for a couple of slices of rustic bread. A bit of provolone dolce added to the prosciutto and bread and a glass of a really pleasant Montepulciano d’Abruzzo made for dinner.

One observation – Romans must be the world’s most frustrated gardeners. There are plants, including olive and citrus trees, growing on the most improbable balconies and terraces and, at this season, pots of cyclamens blooming everywhere. It definitely serves to soften what could otherwise be far too hard a cityscape. The Roman preference for shades of ochre is apparently persistent across the millennia – the same shades seen on modern buildings around the city is seen in the excavations under the Vatican on the tombs buried since the third century AD.
Ms. Packratty has even found a television channel that transcends language – the pet channel. Last night as she was reading, there was a lengthy program devoted to the piccolo (small) terriers. Europeans no longer dock the tails of the various breeds and it was surprising to see how flimsy the tails of some of the terrier breeds look. Apparently Italians like the same things about terriers as Americans, because the narrator was clearly extolling their courage and pugnacity as well as their energy and happy dispositions.

Wednesday, there is the aforementioned papal audience and then Ms. Packratty plans to go to the Borghese Gallery and possibly follow up with taking the 118 bus down the Via Appia. It is hard to believe she has been here not quite a week – it feels as though she could happily spend the next decade getting to know this city and taking in all of the art and architecture. Sadly, she has not won the lottery and will just have to return home and start saving her pennies again.