Rome: DAY 27 SUNDAYS AND ELEVATORS

TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY

SUNDAYS AND ELEVATORS

October 10

For some reason unknown to me, Sundays are not my best day.  I think it started in college when I know that I had not done the work and Monday was coming.  In Europe on Sunday everything that can be closed is closed.  The gym is closed, our favorite bar is closed, and the Academy is closed.  What to do, what to do?  My spirits after 5 days of rain have not lifted but at least the sun is shinning.  We start the day hanging out, slowly moving.  Our phone rings and we answer.  It is Dana Prescott, the Director of Arts at the Academy, inviting us over for lunch.  Yes, we are available even on short notice.  I run to the scooter to go to the market and get a bottle of wine, yea for the scooter and yea for no rain.  Dana and Don live on the first floor of a building owned by the Academy and across the street.  The apartment is lovely and warm with a 5 acre backyard that overlooks Rome.  We sit on the terrace meeting some of their friends and drinking wine before lunch.  Lunch is great, a really big meal of Stew, lentils, fruit, cheese, salads and some cold pasta.  There is a writer who was formerly at the Academy, Mike Menshaw.  He is very clever and quick and back for a few months in Rome writing another book.  His wife Linda equally interesting and very knowledgeable about Rome gives us some great tips on looking around.  Dana’s husband Don is a lawyer who has lived in Rome for over 20 years.  All of his clients are Americans with either estate issues in Italy or business issues in Italy that he helps them resolve.  From the look and feel of it things are going well.  There are a couple of other book writers and designers and an architect from the University of Washington who brings 30 of their students to Rome every year for 3 months. Our Sunday starts well.

After lunch we decide to take the motor scooter out for a ride.  We were going to go the EUR, a city that Mussolini designed as the new Italian city.  It is not too far, but we instead opt to go to Ara Pacis.  This is an old Roman square that Richard Meier has been hired to rebuild with an Auditorium and monumental outdoor plaza.  Meier has been at it for over 6 years and the project is not finished.  There was a good article in the New Yorker magazine about the process just a couple of months ago.  It is an easy ride and worth the visit.  Meier is using the same travertine marble blocks that he used at the Getty and the surfaces are elegant.  Because it is not finished we cannot go inside, but the exterior is handsome and showy.  It should be done in just a couple of years when they get done arguing and excavating old Rome.  There is a sort of famous place for food next-door call Gusto.  They have a cookbook and cooking equipment store, a restaurant, wine bar, Enoteca and a tapis place all in the same building. It’s all very modern and Italian design looking.

We are intent on discovering the real Roman places and we have been advised that Rome does its own shopping not on the Via Condotti but on a street called Cola de Reinzo.  It is sort of on the way home. Wow, what an explosion of people and not a tourist in sight.  It is a real street scene, sometimes called the Passagiata.  Lots of people on the street, hundreds of shops, all open. Cafes, bars, even the Supermarket is open.  It is five minutes from St Peters and 10 minutes from our place.  Now I know where to go when I run out of Scotch on Sunday.  Did I mention that Scotch is cheap, but they sell it in these small 70ML bottles? We continue to keep the lights burning in Edinburgh.  Home safe and we cook in our communal kitchen.  Sunday Sunday

We have rented a car for our voyage to Fabriano. It is all about the paper.  I finally found the Avis office near our place after 3 tries.  We will go there Friday for the weekend staying in Assisi and returning Sunday.  Assisi is the town in which St Francis was born.  The church was recently reopened after years of rebuilding from a huge earthquake and has frescoes from Cimabue and Giotto that are amazing.

I am getting in my gym routine and it feels good to be back.  Aside from still fighting it out about where I am going, I am beginning to feel comfortable in the hood. 

Last night I finally received some handmade paper from the Studio in Sonoma.  We ended up with a crowd in our studio before dinner looking at paper and the print catalog.  It was fun showing my stuff.  One of the fellows, Jacob had his prof to dinner and that is the same guy we met last week. Roger.  His wife came with him and Kim thought she was very interesting.  They are both writing books that they hope will keep them in Rome for the foreseeable future.  After dinner, we overloaded the elevator, which stopped between floors.  Several people said they were claustrophobic and Kim was one of them. We got out in about 10 minutes, but it was not a fun experience.  Kim said she dreamed about it, but it didn’t seem too bad to me.  For us this was one of our quietest days since our arrival.  It is hard to believe we have already been here for a month; we must make the most of our time at the Academy.  Time to buckle down.