Roma, ti amo! An Italian photo journal
some words + the random snaps that didn't make the Insta cut
You may be as shocked to hear this as I was to live it, but speaking the language of the country you’re visiting doesn’t always make the trip better. Logistically, sure. It helps to know how to ask the taxi driver where I can get the best corny souvenir t-shirts. To call the hotel owner’s cell phone, breathlessly seeking an oven to reheat midday pizza from the special place we waited 30 minutes in line to get.
But a new flavor of disorientation lingers on your tongue. Things change when you return somewhere you’d once traveled wide-eyed and ignorant now possessing the main skill that excluded you from the local culture. Especially when it’s in your blood. The reality of being caught between two very different worlds encroaches with every conversation. You don’t just feel romantic pangs of “I could live here;” you realize, almost tragically, “I could thrive here.”
I knew I would enjoy Rome because I’m a human being with a pulse and a love of pasta (which is really no different than a pulse for me), but I didn’t know I could be so charmed by a city. Cities are as agitating as they are exciting. They swallow you whole and all you hear from the depths of their gut is the buzz of restless streets—a couple fighting here, a business deal there. Cities are places where modernity flexes its new and best in the face of little towns who can’t keep pace. People like me go to cities and even live in them for six years and still manage to complain that they miss air that doesn’t stink.
And maybe the air stunk in Rome, but I was too in love to notice.
I’m a cancer and thus nostalgic to the point of delusion, so it’s no surprise that I crave old things. And everything in Rome is ancient. The ruins of an empire are obvious enough. But the cobblestone streets without sidewalks and the homes with weathered shutters and the simple way of living felt like stepping into a past from my recurring daydreams. I am drinking €1 espresso and reading the paper, the day’s most complex decision looming: where should I eat carbonara tonight?
Scurrying about town with my fiancé was as enchanting as it sounds. You learn that drinking a Peroni and eating a slice of pizza in the street is even better than the romantic sit-down dinners because you don’t even have the time or sense to think about how much you love them, you just do. Rome is presence.
Forget whatever notion you have of presence and “staying off your phone” and yadda yadda yadda. I document everything. It’s how I savor experiences, really, to make quick art of them, and save thinking about how it’ll come together for when I get home. What else do writers do but turn over rocks in search of life? My world, carefully constructed in active pursuit of beauty and wonder.
I thought I’d share here some of the misfit pictures I took that I didn’t post anywhere, but mean a lot to me, alongside some of the running note in my phone I’d maintained throughout the trip. Hopefully it makes you feel transported even a little bit.
The view from our hotel balcony never got old. Not that anything can get old in five days’ time, but you feel me. Everything is colorful and sun-kissed and crushed against each other so each little juxtaposition feels especially powerful.
7 AM. Piazza Navona. It’s just us and some blue collar guys getting dolci e cafe, a hectic scene of “grazie mille”s and “buona giornata”s. I point to the donut with cream filling and ask for “una ciambella con crema.” The barista giggles and corrects me: “bomba.” One of my favorite things about Italy is the self-awareness. She wasn’t laughing because the American girl screwed up the pastry name. She was laughing because she knows it’s ridiculous that it’s called a fucking bomba. She even lowers her voice and rounds the letters emphatically to offer a sort of “it’s not you, it’s us” cue.
Five days in Rome and I’ve had like, 50 oz of water, max. I’m committed to a liquid rotation of cappuccinos, beers drank in the street with some kind of panino in the other hand, and Aperol Spritzes. The cappuccinos are caffeinated, by the way. I mention this because I quit caffeine in June 2021, but I couldn’t fathom compromising coffee in one of the world’s destinations where you specifically do not compromise coffee.
I want to know the kind of spiritual devotion that drives one to kneel in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican is its own country which makes sense once you’re in it. I come back to the hotel and talk to the owner about how emozionata I was in the Sistine Chapel. Maybe that’s because I got my period the second I stepped in there. Divine feminine, indeed.
Everyone in Rome is so beautiful that you actually don’t feel insecure. It’s like, there’s beauty that makes you contemplate your own and feel inferior, and then there’s Roman beauty, which is more like art: awe-inspiring, something to behold and appreciate. The hottest girl in the world is in front of you ordering three flavors of gelato, swinging waist-length hair as she pays.
We spent the night hunting for a restaurant. I’m wearing this sheer black shirt that ties in the front, held together tenuously by two tiny strings, sheer black bra mostly exposed. We sit down at a place because I’m craving bolognese and there are a lot of people outside so that must mean it’s good, right? Beneath the harsh, yellow light, I felt my skin crawl. I grabbed Andrew and tried to tell the host that my shirt ripped and I had to leave. I just wanted to leave, though my shirt really did rip. The manager chased us down the street to pay for the unopened bottle of water. Afterward, we walked around for a good two hours searching for somewhere to eat. When we finally found the spot, perfectly nestled in the tiniest alley, I asked the hostess how long for a table. She said a half hour and I debated for a minute and then she said something else that I thought I understood and clearly didn’t, because there we were 30 minutes later, hostess seating other people who came after us, sans reservations. I start crying and storm off. Andrew is chasing me down because “all we have to do is tell her and she’ll seat us!” but at this point, I am too ashamed of my miscommunication. My blood sugar is tanked and I want to go home. We wind up at some mozzarella bar (that exists) and drink an entire bottle of wine. I don’t sleep a wink.
The bushes in the gardens at the Roman Forum are labyrinthine. I fall out of step with the rest of my tour group to take them in.
Sitting at the airport, Andrew and I laugh that there’s a smoking room. A guy sitting across from me rolls his own cigarette and heads in. Pleasures are not vices here. Just because something is bad for you doesn’t mean it is to be avoided. It’s merely a sign that life is short so you might as well lay back, prop your feet up on your suitcase, and roll a cigarette in the airport.
Con tanto amore,
The future Lupos