
Now about Italian wine. I’d look it up if I could get on the internet and maybe I will sometime. But suffice to say that the wine in Italy does not contain the preservatives required for wine sold in the U.S.. Consequently, a glass at lunch and on you go, not missing a beat. What a simple way to live.
Yesterday my daughter and I walked all over Rome, from Rome Termini (the railway station), to the Coliseum, Forum and the Victor Emmanuel Monument, to Camp de Fiori, the Pantheon and Trevi Fountains, and ending up at St. Peter’s Square. Along the way we enjoyed a salad and wine but we didn’t miss a beat. (Thankfully the bus strike that morning ended sometime during the day so we hopped on Bus 64 back to our hotel near the station.)
Of course it’s not simple walking in Rome—people, cars, buses, motorcycles, among winding streets and enormous boulevards. The secret is to go with the human traffic. Stop to defer to your map, but never to another pedestrian or car; that only fouls up the system; just keep walking. We discovered that the best way to cross the street is to follow closely behind a group of people, preferable Italian, for they are fearless.
I’ll be posting this when I get home. Tomorrow I’ll be walking in my neighborhood. No winding streets; a school bus or two, perhaps a motorcycle, cars; no boulevards and no groups of Italians to follow. I’ll just look left and right and defer to the traffic.