I visited Rome many years ago, twice in fact, and I really didn’t care for the city. My mistake, I think, was visiting during the summer. Rome is miserable then. When I scheduled this round of travel I knew I was traveling up from Tunisia, and since I was going to be passing through the city I thought I’d give it another chance.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the city feels completely different in the spring. If you’re doing tourist things you’ll be standing in lines, and in April you can actually do that without being burned to a crisp. It’s not too cold to wander the streets late at night but still not hot enough to prevent you from doing so midday. And the vibe’s just different.

Rome is one of the great walking cities in the world. I think New York beats it on secondary factors¹ but in Rome you’re constantly stumbling over Roman ruins or medieval churches or baroque piazzos. Combine that with the people watching and the cafés and the gelato shops and it’s electric.

The best time to be a tourist in Rome is first thing in the morning just after the churches open when there’s a reasonable chance you’ve beaten the rush. The best time to wander the city, though, is right at sunset during the golden hour. If you start early enough you still have time to duck into the occasional museum or church if one strikes your mood, and a good three-hour stroll affords plenty of time for an early cappuccino as well as a late dinner during the thing.

I didn’t have any plans for Rome and spent my entire Friday recovering in my room and taking care of some things I let slide while I was in Tunisia. That left Saturday and Sunday, which are crushed with tourists² so a number of things I wanted to visit, like the Vatican Museum, were sold out³. I visited a few quirky sites in the city on Saturday, like St. Valentine’s Skull⁴ and the Piccolo Museo Del Purgatorio in the Chiesa del Sacro Cuore del Suffragio.⁵ In the evening I just wandered the city, starting at the Campo di’ Fiori, wandering up past the Pantheon over to the Trevi Fountain and then ending up at the Spanish Stairs.

Sunday I slept in, then went late to the Pantheon to tour the interior.⁶ I had three hours to kill before my next tour, so I headed over to St. Peter’s Basilica and waited for over an hour to get in.⁷ It’s worth it. You can see the Pietà⁸ but the real draw is the the sheer grandeur of the place, built to both mirror and exceed the glory of Rome. It really is the most impressive church I’ve ever seen. It’s also ample evidence of the necessity of the Protestant Revolution, if you’re of that kind of philosophical bent.⁹

Afterward I had to rush over to the Galleria Borghese, a small museum housing a number of treasures. I had to buy a late entry ticket online from a reseller, but since I had never visited before I really wanted to make a point of going. The main draw is the set of Bernini sculptures. There’s easily a half-dozen major works by the sculptor, all astounding. The most famous is The Rape of Proserpina¹⁰ although I was more enamored by the Apollo and Daphne sculpture, where Daphne is just at the start of the transformation into a tree. You can see the hair turning into leaves and the feet becoming roots in a way that verges on body horror. It’s spectacular. Bernini isn’t the only draw — there’s a lot of Caravaggio as well as some other Renaissance painters — and the museum’s tucked into a park that’s a nice respite from the city if you get sick of all the stonework. It’s well worth the visit.

I was worried about sticking to a healthy diet while I was in Rome, so I avoided the problem by dropping off one entirely. For three days I ate more-or-less whatever I wanted.¹¹ I had cacio e pepe and the caprese salad at a small restaurant near my hotel the first night. For lunch the following day I had a slice of pizza bianca with zucchini, ricotta, and sun-dried tomatoes. That evening I went to a modern brewpub¹² for a vegan pulled-pork sandwich and a couple locally brewed beers: one a sour and one a gose.¹³ And for Sunday dinner I found a vegan restaurant serving Italian classics, so I got a vegan version of Bruschetto ’Nduja and Pollo alla Romano and finished with a strawberry tiramisu.¹⁴

But the real discovery of the trip was granita. I found a gelato shop just off the side of the Pantheon called Cremeria Monteforte which sells granita made from real fruit, with no artificial syrups or unnecessary ingredients, and although it’s pricey as hell it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever had. The texture is creamy with macerated bits of fruit mixed throughout. I stopped by during my evening stroll and had half cherry, half strawberry, and gave myself a punishing ice cream headache. I couldn’t stop thinking about it so I skipped lunch the following day and had half blueberry, half cherry, and a repeat of the headache. You’d think I’d have learned to pace myself. I’m still thinking about it now. I googled some recipes. I looked up grantia machines on Amazon. I may be a little obsessed.¹⁵

I’m now on my way north, back to Berlin and my last scheduled larp of the summer.¹⁶ Predictably the train ride back to the airport was a nightmare, with poorly labeled signs and long lines for broken ticket machines. I arrived 15 minutes early for the train only to wander around aimlessly trying to figure out how to buy a ticket.¹⁷ I missed it but caught the next one and despite arriving late security took virtually no time at all. I’ve just grabbed a quick lunch in the lounge and am waiting for them to post my gate.

When I landed in Rome I was vaguely worried I was going to get denied entry because I’ve only got until the 6^th before I run out of days in Schengen, but the passport gates were automated. Now I’ll be worried I’ll have some hassle getting out of Berlin, since I’ll only have a single day remaining when I leave. Remind me later not to predicate my ease of travel on the good spirits of Germany’s border security.

My plan at the start of the year was to return to Portugal and wait out my visa, which would have avoided this issue. With it still being delayed — they’re about halfway done processing applications from the month prior to mine — I decided better to get stuck outside the Schengen area than inside, especially since I’ll start getting days back in July. On an optimistic timeline¹⁸ I’d get approved by the end of May and get my residency card by the start of the autumn.

I already miss Rome. There was so much more I wanted to do. I couldn’t live there long term, I don’t think, but I could see myself staying for 2-3 months, long enough to visit every museum and every ruin and every gelato stand along the Via del Corso. But I’d grow fat and happy and indolent, just like the Church did, and then I’d know it’d be time to leave.

Next: Berlin (BER) to Edinburgh (EDI)
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Footnotes

¹ Fewer pickpockets and better public transit. It’s hard to understate how knowing there’s a subway nearby frees you to wander without worrying how you’ll get home. Rome has 73 stations. NYC has 472.

² Even worse on the last Sunday of the month, when entry to some of the museums is free.

³ I’d already seen much of the big name items way back when, so this wasn’t as disappointing as it could have been.

⁴ It’s in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, a lovely Romanesque church dating from around the turn of the first millennium. There were at least three Valentines kicking around in Roman times and it’s not entirely clear whose skull this is. Also at least 10 churches around the world claim to have relics of St. Valentine. Buy hey, this one comes with flowers!

⁵ The museum has a small collection of items with various handprint-shaped burn marks on them, ostensibly from souls burning in purgatory reaching out to the living. I, personally, did not find the evidence especially convincing.

⁶ I had stupidly bought a tour of it, mostly because the “skip-the-line” tickets were sold out, and when I turned up on time for it discovered the place where you’re supposed to pick up the ticket was a 10-minute hike from the church. So by the time I rushed over there and the time I got back and got inside I had no way of locating the tour group. And while it’s more than worth getting inside and gawking at all the architecture it’s really not worth the tour unless you get an exceptional guide; I would have been far better off just waiting in the line. Or, you know, going on a weekday.

⁷ The last time I waited in line that long to see something, I think it was the Ratatouille ride at Walt Disney World.

For a church located in Rome, I’d have thought they’d have arranged some shade or some water or some places to sit by now for a line that can stretch to two hours, especially since a lot of the crowd is older. But apparently not.

⁸ Sadly behind bulletproof glass.

⁹ Walking through such a ostentatious display of riches and power I realized Martin Luther had done the exact same thing, and their thoughts back then regarding the Church probably mirrored my thoughts now regarding wealth in general. I’d nail a list of theses to the door of the IMF but I think Marx beat me to it.

¹⁰ It’s the one where Pluto’s hand presses into the leg of Proserpina in a way that seems impossible to achieve in marble.

¹¹ Within reason. I mean, I wanted to stop at every gelato stand and half the pasticcerie I passed.

¹² Open Baladin, which has a staggering list of different beers in different styles, with over forty on draft and most of them brewed themselves.

¹³ They were tragically out of the Italian Grape Ale.

¹⁴ It was good, but what I really wanted was to score a reservation at one of the fancier restaurants. Despite Rome’s reputation as being meat-centric, a number of restaurant have started offering vegetarian tasting menus, and if I was indulging myself I wanted to do it right. Alas, most of them were closed on Sunday or already booked solid. Yet another reason to plan ahead next time.

¹⁵ If you’re curious, grantia comes in all sorts of textures, and I am not a fan of the “slurpee” texture which is runny, nor of the grainy texture you get if you freeze it and scrape it with a fork to break it up.

This was closer to a smoothie, but still had those solid bits of mashed fruit and the pleasant crunch of the ice. All I can really say is to go to Rome and head to the Pantheon and duck around the corner to Cremeria Monteforte and try it yourself.

¹⁶ I finally pulled the trigger and dropped out of The Continental. I just didn’t have the time on my visa.

¹⁷ The trick, it turns out, is that there are two competing train companies whose ticket machines look nearly identical and there’s zero indication which one you’re supposed to use to get tickets to the airport.

¹⁸ Which, yes, is dumb, but hear me out.