been in rome

So, I have been in Rome, Italy, for 10 days. Of course it was absolute amazing. We did work through Rome on our feet. I don´t think you get a town unless your legs are hurting, so I wandered about, with my husband and alone, in sunshine and in the evening. At every corner you stumble over history: a fountain, a statue, a marble column or one of the uncountable fountains. You must walk through the narrow streets, smell the pasta cooking and go into one (or more) of the tiny delicatessen shops, filled to bursting with loads of cheese, and all sorts of smoked meat. Every street seems to have it´s own church, palazzo and little square. You can get lost on marble stairs and find yourself in a ruin two thousends years old, or drink a cappuccino at a little cafe where there is no place for a street left.

Then, of course you can visit the famous places, walk in the steps of Julius Caesar, visit the Pope in the Vatikan and sit in a church and listen to priests chanting. There is a church which bears my name, Basilika of Sabina in the Via Sabina, with an ingraved door 1700 years old and an ancient orange garden from where you have a view over the hills of Rome, in another church (st. Clements) you can go down centuries: one stairway down and you are in the year 1000, one further stair and you huddle with the first christians in tiny rooms, sit with them on ancient benches in narrow underground passages.

Further you can visit the museums, the Vatikan museum where you have to wait in a row of hundreds of visitors for at least one hour –if not longer-, the museum of the Capitolino and see the statues and paintings you have read about in books: paintings from Rafael, vases from the ancient greeks, the paintings from Michelangelo...

Yes, we did all this and much more and walked up and down the Spanish Steps where I bought a beautiful pair of shoes... and elsewhere, later a handbag and another one because I couldn´t decide which one I wanted more...

We walked over the bridge of angels and met monks in their middle age dresses with a backpack, talking in cellphones, school classes, settling on a piazza like a flock of birds.

And I did learn: the Pieta is not only a great and touching masterpiece from Michelangelo but the idea of Maria suffering her sons death, so you find pietas all around, a very beautiful fresco in “Trinita des Monti” church from a pupil of Michelangelo.

Yes, I am home again. But I can not let it go yet.