Helping with the memory reconstruction

Here's my mom's comment about stuff we did that I forgot about. Most importantly, I forgot about the trip down to Porta Portese, a huge flea market that sets up shop every Sunday morning in Trastevere, and our lunch Monday at the Jewish Ghetto. Anyway, here it is:

Oh, Jamie, you were such a wonderful, wonderful host---but I was counting on a daily account of our days, as my feeble brain is losing that short-term recall thing. (Not having an internet connection in the apartment was the problem with last week's posts, as Jamie stayed there with us. Although John Cabot University was only six minutes away, most days he didn't have a spare thirty minutes to get there to post--it was mid-term week, and he was packing in the tour time.)


We'll have to sit down and reconstruct our days. So---

It was just incredibly perfecto to get out of our car from the airport at the corner near the apartment on a sunny Sunday morning, after our lovely travel day that included lunch with Bentley Andrews in Reston during our layover at Dulles, look down via Luciano Manara, and see mia Giacomo striding up the street! Such a sight for a mamma!

And you are right---that is one gay apartment--not that there's anything wrong with that, as long as the male figure does not offend, because it was a huge decorating motif. And the Blessed Mother. We strongly suspected that going in, and it has a major upside---we had shampoo, conditioner, nice soap, an iron, the washer, laundry racks---and three different ways to make coffee! Lots of books, comfortable sofas, and the three vases of flowers that Vincenzo offered to arrange and Dad accepted.
I've never slept in a bed that had so many pillows--and this from the mother whose sons have at least four pillows on their beds. He has one sumptuous bedroom--fabric covered walls, draperies pooled on the floor, Venetian mirror,canopied bed---.
Once I unplugged the frangrance things in the sockets all over the apartmento, it was all OK by me. He could use better lighting for eyebrow tweezing, but that's about it.

OK, after the apartment orientation from Monica (our "guardian angel", who is Vincenzo's assistant in his business) and Sabina, who translated for Monica, we freshened up and hit the streets for our private tour of the Romans' Rome. Staying in Trastavere was absolutely the right thing for us. Besides allowing Jamie to be just minutes from school, it showed us a slice of life we are far removed from in Charlotte--anywhere in this country, actually. On the block our apartment sits on was the bakery that is in the basement of our building, a fishmonger, a fruit store, a shop that sells high-end candies, teas, coffees, honey, and other dry goods, an optician, a fresh fruit and vegetable shop, a tobaccharia, a pet store, an Italian-equivalent of Williams-Sonoma, and ten other shops. The neighborhood--the city!--is block after block after block of the same, with a place to get prepared food in every third shop! If I hadn't seen people leaving the supermakato one evening with bags in their hands, I'd have wondered if Romans ever eat in.

As Jamie has alluded to (Death March Day One),we walked everywhere we went all week, except one Metro ride and one taxi ride to the Termini on the day we went to Pomei. Shortly after we hit the street Sunday morning we were in the middle of a huge flea market a few blocks from our apartment--the famous Potre Portese. It's like a lower-end Metrolina, mainly clothes-based as far as I could see, with the street jammed with smokers, stretching for blocks along a street that parallels VIale Trastavere, the main street that leads away from the river through the neighborhood. I do think there are some areas where the furniture is sold that we overlooked, but the smoking was really bothering us there, so we worked our way down a side street and crossed the river to the Ghetto, one of Jamie's favorite areas.
And I can see why--it reminded me of the North End of Boston, or at least the North End 28(!!!) years ago, when people would sit on the stoops and hang, and kids played in the street. Since it was Sunday, much the same was going on there, with three generations of families enjoying the gorgeous fall day. We had lunch at a tratorria, where we ate some of the classic Jewish appetizers--fried artichokes, fried salt cod, and a fried stuffed zucchini blossom. (Certain theme here, with the frying. Makes what were cheap foods more palatable---and they were fabulous.) Had more food too--and sorry that I do not recall what. It was very good though. Some days Jamie comes over for lunch, as there is a bakery there that is a find--had a wonderful fruit-bread type thing, and a great little chocolate biscotti.
(Seeing where Jamie's food obession genes come from? How else would we peasants have survived those famines, if we hadn't packed it one when we could????)
More later.

lam