Walking Rome Alone
For me, Rome began with rain and tears. I arrived at the airport in the morning, and wanted to take public transport to my hostel to save money. A bus to Termini station, a train to the Colosseum, and a 40 minute walk left to go. It was cold and raining. I didn’t have an umbrella, but I did have a 28 kg suitcase and an 8 kg carry-on. All the things I owned cut into my palms and shoulders with each step. I regretted carrying anything at all. It made it so much harder to be alone. After about half an hour, I began to cry. I looked around and watched the Colosseum sitting at the end of Via de Fori Imperiali. I couldn’t believe I was right there and it was so beautiful. Rome would always be like that, beautiful and indifferent to my misery. I thought to myself, nothing bad has happened. Just push through.
The day that I visited Vatican City is very memorable to me. Each morning, I started walking outside, and took any direction that felt right. I walked and walked, and suddenly I turned and saw the great Vatican City Dome on the horizon. I wanted to hop and grab onto someone’s arm and gasp ‘Wow, wouldja look at that.’ But no one else was there, so I did the little hop on my own, drew my scarf around my mouth, and went to Vatican City.
I walked around the Vatican museum like I usually do in museums—slowly and carefully, hoping that some of its importance would soak in, because I really understood none of it. Then I got to Raphael’s rooms. I can’t even say what is different about Raphael’s paintings. But I got it, when I saw The School of Athens. I looked up—and at that point, the painting wasn’t iconic or recognizable to me—and thought, hey, that’s a good one. It was an open square in Athens where Plato, Socrates, Ptolemy, Pythagoras and the like had come together. Lounging about, debating, teaching, testing out various instruments. I thought, that’s such a good idea. I kept repeating it over and over in my head: That’s such a good idea! After about the fourth or fifth repetition, I started tearing up. Because it was such a good idea.
After spending half the day in the Vatican City museum, I bought a huge gelato, and sat in the middle of Piazza del Risorgimento outside the city gates. I was planning to go straight ahead into St Peter’s Basilica. But as I was passing the square, I noticed that all the people sitting in the square were on their own. Some were waiting for the bus, but most were just sitting around, staring pensively ahead, eating, using their smartphones, or reading. It made me wonder what they were all up to, but I knew that asking would really ruin the point. If they felt as I did, that they just wanted to enjoy being on their own. I pulled out my copy of The Town and the City and started reading, and eating my giant gelato. It was a very beautiful place to be, in this wide-open square before Vatican City as the sun was setting, with a bunch of lonesome strangers. I was thinking about how far I was from home, from people I knew, none of them knew what I was doing, how incredible it is that I made all this way on my own, all that stuff.
Then it started to rain very heavily. I ducked into a cafe. It had plastic blinds at the entrance. The cafe bar ran along the room’s edges, and the middle of it was all empty—no tables or chairs or anything. I got a cup of espresso and stood watching the rain fall outside. About seven other people were in there, doing the same thing. We had all run in, hair wet and shivering from the cold, so forsaken by Rome, and nursing little cups of espresso. The espresso was incredible. Holding the cup close to warm my face, that was when I loved Rome the most. Rome’s indifference made it so much more beautiful.
Thank you for reading and commenting. Please enter the Gratitude Travel Writing competition and tell your story.
