Still thinking about Rome

I just finished reading "No Reservations," by Alice Steinbach, a Pulitzer-winning columnnist/reporter for the Baltimore Sun. She took a year off her regular life to travel Europe, spending time in Paris, London and Italy. Of course, I was most interested to read about Italy and that was the shortest section of the book.

Decent book, but what really got me was that she was indifferent to Rome.

How could anyone be indifferent to Rome? I mean, I could see how someone could hate it, and I definitely understand loving it, but to not care?

It got me thinking about how, from the minute I got into the city, I felt at home. I didn't know how to get around, where I was going or anything, but it did not matter at all. I felt safe, I felt welcome and in awe of everything.

I remember stopping to take a picture of a little street I passed that smelled like cinnamon toast, just because I liked the smell and wanted to remember that moment.

And wandering around thinking about all the layers and layers of lives that had been uncovered and those that had not yet been discovered. It was breathtaking to realize how small our lives are in the big picture, but also how we can leave something behind that, millennia from now, will make other people stop and think about us, the time we were here and what we were like.

I never realized you could fall in love with a city. Certainly not love at first sight. But I remember after I checked into my hotel, going for a walk that evening to get the lay of the land in my neighborhood, and thinking "I'm in freaking ROME!" I think that's why I could never write a decent postcard from Italy, because I was so thunderstruck, overwhelmed, in love with it.

That first night, I walked up and down the streets around my hotel, figuring out where to get a "Coke light" and where the taxi stand was and the newspaper stand and seeing Santa Maria Maggiore all lit up, watching the little cars speed past, drivers honking and gesturing at each other. I was so pleased to be able to order a creme caramel gelato (uno gelato, per favore) and sitting on the church steps and just breathing in Rome.

The city might have been dirty; I don't remember. It might have been dangerous, but I never would have known. I just kept looking up and around me, realizing the genius that built that city, seeing angels and saints in the architecture.

I've read two travel memoirs recently, and several others over the past few years, and no matter how good the writer, they can never adequately explain a city and why it so charms them. I'm the same --no words are enough or right.

But I've been thinking a lot about Italy lately. Maybe it's just that I want all good things back in my life, and Italy was the best thing I've ever had the good fortune to experience. Also, I know that of all of what I want back, Italy is the most attainable.

Or maybe I just want to take a crack at a travel memoir of my own.