Kleins in Italy

Yesterday was another big day of touring here in Rome, this time across the river at the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. Kate showered us with more information than our brains could possibly hold and while it was all excellent, I won’t belabor it here. I think the highlight of the day for me was the Sistine Chapel. Sadly, we couldn’t take pictures there, but since the crowds were light, we lingered for quite a while. Benches along the sides of the chapel provided a perfect place to really stare up at that ceiling and feast your eyes on Michelangelo’s masterpiece. In contrast to the quiet and more intimate Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s is a vast, echoing space of nearly indescribable proportions. It is the largest church in the world as far as interior square footage is concerned and we rambled around for a few hours taking in centuries worth of priceless art.

After spending the morning at the Vatican, we taxied to the nearby Trastevere neighborhood for lunch. This is the gritty, working class part of Rome and I had googled up a restaurant called Nannerella that looked good. The driver dropped us off in a narrow, crowded piazza and pointed in the general direction of the restaurant, then backed out. As we headed that way, I could see a busy outdoor cafe, crowded with locals. It looked promising but as we got closer, the place had more of a frat party vibe than a restaurant. David was delighted and promptly sat down among the heathen while I went inside to see if this was actually the place. Using my best Italian, I asked, “Nannerella?” The bartender looked vaguely confused and then waved back in the direction we had just come from.

David was sad to leave his beer chugging brethren, but we were both starving at that point and he didn’t put up much resistance. We wandered briefly around the piazza but finally gave up on the elusive Nanneralla and settled into a new search for anything that looked good. There were almost too many choices and as we stood looking uncertainly at a menu board in front of one of the cafes, we were buttonholed by a comical young Indian waiter who lured us in with the promise of a table for two and a glass of Prosecco.

The lunch that followed was a complete comedy show as we watched our waiter Harry drum up business, hit on every girl in sight and do anything other than actually serve us. At some point, we had to remind him we had ordered pasta. Adding to the entertainment, our table was situated right next to a major pedestrian thoroughfare. A constant stream of backpack- laden people headed in one direction, while the people coming from the other direction had (and I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s true) lollipops! Not everyone had them, but a head scratching number of them did. Periodically, someone would come by with a dog and without fail the animal would stop and pee at a spot on the alley wall directly across from our table. Within moments of one particular baptism, a girl walked by and dropped her AirPods. The case and earbuds sprayed in all directions and, yep, you guessed it…one of the earbuds landed squarely in the puddle. Maybe it was the Prosecco, but at this point we were dying laughing at this crazy, backpack-wearing, lollipop-licking, dog pee-stepping parade.

Curiosity got the better of us and we paid Harry and left. We tried to follow the crowd of people and see where on earth they were going, or at the very least where they got those lollipops?! Strangely they all seemed to have disappeared down the narrow alleyways off of the piazza and we never did solve the mystery.

Instead, we made our way back across the beautiful Tiber River and into the Jewish Ghetto neighborhood. Here, the entire Jewish population of Rome was forced into a few square blocks in the years leading up to their eventual deportation to Auschwitz in October, 1943. There is a still a small community of Jews living here and we enjoyed walking through the area and stopped for our first gelato of the trip. It was late afternoon by now and we were tired, but the weather was so nice we decided to walk the last mile and a half back to the hotel. I’m glad we did because there were so many things to see along the way but by the time we got back we were completely spent. After a hot bath to soak the weary bones, neither one of us had enough energy to go back out for dinner. We cashed it in early to rest up for our start to Florence in the morning.