The Two Sides of ‘Aloha’

Aloha means both hello and goodbye. It is a tragedy of the Hawaiian language, but built in is the existential ideal that the best things are those that come to an end. Or, as others have put it, “What’s won is done.”

So it is with our Hawaiian getaway, but not without a couple of perfectly sunny Maui adventures. Following are a few pictures of our final Maui exploits, including our Thursday trip to the Maui Aquarium and our Friday trek down The Road to Hana, which is a small village on the opposite side of the island.

The coral reef called. It wants its face back.

A star attraction at the Maui Aquarium was a tide pool where you could touch some sea life. The starfish is like hard plastic, while the sea cucumber feels like a nylon sock filled with sand.

Tell me, are you ready for this jelly? I think not. Their stings are quite painful and may even be fatal.

On Friday we got up at the crack to get on The Road to Hana, 36 miles of impossibly windy, mostly two-lane (but some one-lane) “highway” along the green cliffs of Maui. The road is so curvy, it seems almost like a satire of itself. Literally, the steering wheel is cranked to the left or right at least 80%-90% of the time, but the views are unbeatable.

This is what happens when you don't respect The Road to Hana.

With car windows down and a 15-20 mile per hour speed limit on The Road to Hana, it is easy to hear waterfalls, some of which you can see from the road …

… and some of which, like Twin Falls, are a short hike from your car.

The jungle on The Road to Hana is sparsely dotted with local fruit stands and roadside markets with hand-lettered signs for “coconut,” “fresh pineapple,” and “banana smoothie,” the Hawaiian fast food menu.

The lady in the roadside snack shack sliced open a long sugar cane and then proceeded to cram it Fargo-style into the little hole on this cash register-like machine. The sugar cane juice is flowing from the little spout at the bottom...

…and this muddy water is the result. It has a natural sweetness cut by a sort of leafy taste. I know it doesn’t sound (or look) very good, but it was actually quite refreshing.

Another stop on The Road to Hana is an underground lava tube, which is much like a cave. It is located just off the main road, down a side street guarded by five unleashed dogs. The tube was carved by flowing lava some 900 years ago. Visitors are allowed to wander in unescorted and crunch along the cinder floor guided only by flashlight. Turn it off, and you’re in pitch darkness, with just the sound of drip, drip, drip, echo, echo, echo as water drops down from the lava-crust ceiling above you.

The entrance to the lava tube was created when a part of the tube ceiling caved in.

Continuing with the lava theme, near the end of the road is a gorgeous, but somewhat rough, volcanic black sand beach.

Pretty to look at, but nearby signs warn of man o’ war, sharp drop-offs, strong currents, and powerful surf. So no wading in for us at this beach.

The black sand looks like dirt but feels oh so fine and soft.

And here, my final aloha for you, is our last great vista on The Road (Back From) Hana.

The Road to Hana is like a View-Master of scenic panoramas. Every curve is like another click of the handle as another and another and another fantastic vista comes into focus.

Zipline: The Movie

I just loaded a Zipline movie to Facebook if you are interested.

It’s rated PG for “pretty great.”

Click to watch.

Some Hawaiilights

I just have a few moments this morning before we head out today, so this will be mostly a picture blog detailing some Hawaiilights of the last two days. (I trust that Cousin Mike will copy edit as usual…)

Tuesday morning we popped up bright and early for a 6:30 a.m. whale watching tour. Truth be told, Tators and I haven’t exactly gotten on Hawaii time yet. Due to the recent daylight savings time shift on the mainland, Chicago is now five hours ahead of Hawaii, so even as I write this at 8 a.m., it’s already 1 p.m. at home. In short, we’ve been going to bed before most people in the nursing home down the street, and probably getting up around the same time they do!

Lahaina harbor just before dawn.

The waters are calm and the sky clear. A perfect morning for a cruise.

Most of my whale pics look like little, indistinct humps on a vast blue field, but out of a hundred or so shots, I got a handful of keepers. This whale tail signifies a dive, meaning this pod won’t be back up for 15-20 minutes.

A whale flipper that I like to imagine is waving goodbye to us.

After the cruise we head back to the hotel for lunch.

Waffles with a side of bird, a Hawaiian specialty.

View from our hotel room balcony. Pretty hideous, right?

This is actually an ad for Lucky Charms.

Sunset on Tuesday from the resort beach. Taking pictures like this on Maui is like shooting fish in a barrel (though I’m sure there is a state law against the latter).

Truly…It doesn’t take Mitt Romney’s full-time family photographer to take shots like this; anyone’s cat can do it.

On Wednesday morning, we are off for high adventure with Flyin’ Hawaiian Zipline up in the mountains overlooking Maui. This is basically where they strap you into a harness and connect you to a little trolley that flies along a skinny wire at speeds reaching 55 miles per hour hundreds of feet above the cliffs and ravines. And oh, by the way, you pay to do this.

There were seven ziplines in all (plus a practice line), which stretched across the mountainside, with maybe a minute or two of hiking between each one. It sounds a little crazy, but it was super fun!

Equipped and ready to fly. What you can’t see is the diaper I’m wearing.

Off Tators goes! Bye, Tators!

Aside from offering quite a rush, the ziplines also afford spectacular views. That little light brown square on the green cliff to the right is where this zipline ends (the lines dip down and then curve back up, so as to slow you down before you reach the other side).

I also took a couple of movies from my camera during the zip. I’ll try to figure out how to post those separately. We had a pretty small zip tour of just seven people plus three guides who assist you at each end. A family on our tour is from a Chicago suburb, and the wife works about two blocks from me, passing my building every day on her commute. It’s a pretty small world after all, I guess.

Sons of Beaches

Our search for the perfect beach on Oahu takes us first to the Windward (or east) side of the island. Out of Honolulu, we take Interstate H1 (yes, Interstate–I know it doesn’t make any sense) to H3, which turns you up through the verdant green Ko’Olau Mountains, then through a long, winding tunnel before spitting you out upon a gorgeous vista overlooking what I think is Kane’ohe Bay.

Even if we don’t find the best swimming spot, this view is already worth the effort.

As you wind down the mountain, what strikes you most is green, verdant green. Every bit of space on this island is covered in an emerald carpet.

Winding down the mountains toward Kane’ohe and the Windward side of Oahu.

Our first beach stop is closed for Portuguese man o’ war. Ocean life that may cause cardiac arrest is definitely not the makings of a perfect beach.

A few more miles downshore is no sandy beachfront, but a whale watching outpost with a great view of the coast line.

High on a craggy outcropping, we heard several tourists moaning suggestively–over a whale sighting.

A short drive away, the coastline becomes otherworldly, with a mix of lava rock black, taupe, and cerulean. It could be the coast line of another planet altogether.

Just add a red monkey riding an elephant with long, skinny, twig-like legs, and this could be a Salvador Dali painting.

The color palette of the Windward side of Oahu is a vivid and interesting mix of blues, greens, taupe, and black.

“It’s nice,” Tators says. “But it’s not quite a beach.”

On this day, the Windward side is not going to give us the perfect beach. We settle instead for a Waikiki beach, which is not a bad compromise, all things considered.

Sunday has us setting out once more, this time up the center of the island through Wahiawa to the North Shore. Again the weather looks to conspire against us, but we are undeterred. Bouts of rain are quickly followed by intense bursts of sunshine, and following a suggestion in the guidebook, we make our way along the coast to Turtle Bay, a resort with a little-hyped public access beach.

After a brief rain shower, the sun smiles on this crescent-shaped gem of a beach that is protected by a large sea wall. Off in the distance you see the famous North Shore waves (which have given other shoreline spots nicknames such as “Breakneck Beach”), but inside the sea wall is a gentle, sequestered pool of ocean where I snorkel for the first time ever. It is a great spot and the best beach yet.

As the afternoon wears on and we travel farther along the coast, the weather darkens into a thick gray as the clouds swoop in from the mountaintops, lending an eerie and beauty to the landscape.

Oahu’s North Shore has both scenes of brilliant land…

…and sea, made all the more mysterious by a slate gray mist.

This is a good time to enjoy Hawaii’s beauty from inside the car. Though the drive back to the hotel is a memorable one, it is nice to arrive in a sun-kissed Waikiki once more. One last walk along its beachfront ends Sunday night with a quiet, seaside reflection on a lava-rock wall while a band plays Hawaiian-themed music behind us (lots of slide guitar strikes the perfect chord).

If life’s a beach, this one will do just fine.

A pillar of late-afternoon Waikiki sunlight splashes across our hotel room.

Hawaii Blog: Now with Pictures!

So I realize I have some catching up to do. I didn’t count on how hard it would be to write a blog post without pictures. When you encounter a place of beauty that is as wholly unfamiliar as Hawaii, it seems almost criminal to try to capture it with words alone. But now I don’t have to. A quick step at the local island Best Buy for a memory card reader, and I’m back in business.

When I last left you on Friday morning, we had spent just one day here. The weather is spotty, but we still get some beach-combing in–including, as promised–a photo op with local marine life.

Talk about crabby.

Our first dip in the Pacific is a brief one, as a very light mist comes on again, off again, but the water is warm, and even the rain is more refreshing than unpleasant.

In the last three days, I’ve gotten sand in places I didn’t even know existed.

Friday is even gloomier, with a thick layer of clouds not unlike frosting atop the verdant green mountain range encircling Honolulu. We drive out to Pearl Harbor, but we are in for some more disappointment as the USS Arizona memorial is closed due to weather.

A simple white corridor strides the wreckage of the USS Arizona, which lies below the surface. We aren’t able to visit the memorial, but it still strikes a contemplative presence even from afar.

The Bowfin submarine and USS Missouri are both open, however, and the sub especially is an interesting exhibit. An audio tour is narrated by actual crew members and speaks to such details as the heat aboard the vessel as it dove below the listed depth range amid battle–the crew necessarily silent while their sweat actually made the floor treacherously slick! And just how close are the quarters? I was ready to throttle the tourists in front of us after the first two minutes. I honestly don’t know how those guys made it for weeks at a time.

The Bowfin was called the “Pearl Harbor Avenger” because of its nine successful post-attack patrols.

The USS Missouri–The Mighty Mo.

We end Friday by frittering away two and a half happy hours at the Trump Hotel bar (aided by sparkling wine and cheese), blissfully situated amid the palm-tree tops now swaying gently in a cool island breeze. And on the walk home, we stop for one more look down the beach.

Last sparkles on a Friday night: View from a Waikiki beach.

Up next: In a separate post, I’ll detail our far-flung search for the perfect beach.

Some Trouble in Paradise

Let me get the bad news out of the way first. I’m afraid I left my camera’s USB cord at home, so I currently have no way of uploading pictures to the blog. And I have a few nice shots today from Waikiki–some sandy shoes on the beach, a violet bird of paradise, misty cliffs in the distance from Diamond Head. I will diligently search for a stand-in cord and hope to get some pics up soon.

It’s a misty but warm 75 degrees in Hawaii. Locals say the weather has been spotty over the last week as the tradewinds haven’t been doing their job to keep low-pressure systems moving along. The forecast isn’t what we’d hope for paradise, but we’ll take it as it comes. It’s hard to complain when seared Ahi tuna caught just that morning is melting in your mouth.

The day starts with a nice stroll along the beach and out a long rocky pier where crabs pose for pictures before quickly sidestepping into the crevasses. You’ll see them later! We get a bit of beach lounging in the late morning, but it starts to spit rain, so we poke around the shopping area, have a great lunch (aforementioned tuna), and take a brief afternoon nap. I can tell this is going to be one of those vacations that is a patchwork of strolling, napping, and sipping, with a few activities (zipline, whale-watching boat, Pearl Harbor) tucked in, and after Sabbatical, which was a very different kind of trip, I think that’s just fine.

In the mid-afternoon we try to go to Diamondhead (an inactive volacano), but the path down to it is closed for repairs. (I guess I didn’t get all the bad news out of the way first, did I…). We take a little spin around the island, and stop back at the hotel to get ready for dinner. Having had seafood for lunch, we opted for a small French restaurant in Chinatown, of all places, that was a network of small dining rooms connected by outdoor patios, which themselves where sheltered by clusters of umbrella-clad, candle-lit tables. It was a cozy spot, and our waiter wrote down several of his favorite restaurants and beaches in neat script on the back of a business card.

This would not be a bad ending to a pretty good day, but I’m afraid the fates hold one last nasty surprise for us. Despite me paying $8 for 10 hours of parking in a local private lot (and believe me, I remember feeding–and refeeding–a five and three very limp dollar bills into the machine), the card that spits out has the mendacity to claim I’d only paid $4 for one hour. Of course I didn’t even think to check the receipt–on to the dashboard it went (per the machine’s instructions), and off to the auto pound for our poor Mustang. D’oh!

Luckily it is a short cab ride away, but the auto pound is certainly not on most tourists’ must-see list (funny–no mention of its rustic, chain-linked beauty in the guidebook). I’ll never forget the four glowing eyes of … two island critters is all I can think to call them … that dart away under the shell of a hollowed-out car as the tow truck’s headlights scan them briefly like two matted castaways. No electricity back here–he has to shine a flashlight on the forms as I sign them in the midnight mist.

So dear reader, I will not say we’ve gotten our trip’s wrinkles out of the way early, because that is just tempting fate. But what doesn’t kill our trip must make it stronger, right? I guess we shall see. Today we are off to Pearl Harbor, which should be a sobering but thought-provoking journey of its own.

Until next time, mahalo (that is, thank you) for reading!

Mele Kalikimaka

Gentle reader,

I realized I left you in Rome about six months ago. I’m terribly embarrassed. Rome was not atop my must-revisit destinations, but I suppose there are worse places to be stranded.

But what’s past is past. I’m happy to be with you again today–though for a much shorter trip this time. We are off to Hawaii tomorrow (well, technically later today), and there is nothing I like more than traveling with you. You see, I’ve grown quite close to you over these many miles. I think we travel well together, don’t you? It’s important to find companions you can travel well with. In my mind, there are people you can work with, there are people you can socialize with, there are people you can live with…and then there are people you can travel with. And you, you are topnotch travel companion material. Just like me, you know that flurry-stomach feeling before a trip, the excitement of a place unseen, the distinct memories to be made, all the details yet to unfold. Is not anticipation the sweetest of all emotions?

All I imagine of Hawaii is green upon green upon green, all I know of the old language is this Christmas song–which I have been forbidden to sing since it is apparently out of season (but I will still whisper it under my breath). What do I want to know about the place? Not much more, really. I will like us to take it as it is. So let’s be on with it. Let’s get a good night’s sleep, answer a few lingering work e-mails tomorrow morning, and then slowly melt into island time. I’ll see you soon!

Yes We Vatican

Today is our last in the EU. It’s been a fantastic journey–the longest journey of my life (so far), in fact, and I have enjoyed documenting it and sharing it with you in this blog.

On our last full day in Rome, we spend the morning in Vatican City to take in some of the famous sites (including St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel, where they have professional shushers–people whose job it is to walk around and shush loudly).

And, since Vatican City is actually it’s own sovereign nation, we can add another country to our travelogue. (Like Monaco, there is no passport control in and out of Vatican City, and much to Tate’s chagrin, no passport stamp. To make it up to him, I offer to stamp his passport with Dora the Explorer stamps in his choice of colors, which he not-so-politely declines.)

St. Peter’s Square and Basilica (in the background) was a quiet refuge in the middle of Rome.

Vatican Guards…on casual Fridays, the pants can be 10% less puffy.

Inside St. Peter’s Basilica: Just a cozy little cottage on a modest piece of Vatican land.

Hall of Maps in the Vatican Museum. No pictures allowed in the Sistine Chapel, just plenty of loud shushing.

Tate and I have had an amazing time, eaten some fantastic food, seen breathtaking sites and charming countryside, and been delighted (and at time frustrated) by the quirks and intricacies of the many cultures of Europe.

We’ve also learned a lot about traveling smarter. For one thing, I discovered some advice on packing: Before filling the suitcase, lay out on your bed only the clothes you absolutely need for the trip. Then put half of them back in the closet. I would have thought that advice was a bit extreme, but after lugging our bags from Glasgow to Rome, it’s totally true you don’t need nearly as much crap as you think you do.

It was a great experience to be on a trip this long (an experience of a lifetime), but we’re looking forward to returning to the States for a few key reasons, including:

English: True, Italy is very English-friendly. Just about every single person we’ve encountered is fluent or nearly fluent in English, and they don’t seem to mind to speaking it–which is a good thing, because Tate and I know about six words of Italian between us. But it’s the little things. That restaurant with the Italian-only menu that may have been amazing, but you pass on for the one next door that has the English menu, too.

Television: TV, oh TV, how I’ve missed you and all of your blissful channels of vapid English-language programming. Sure, it wasn’t that long ago we were in the UK, but even so, UK has only a handful of channels with a heavy emphasis on antique shopping reality shows. In France, we didn’t turn the TV on once (well, to be fair, we actually didn’t know how to turn it on, as it was connected to a mysterious string of satellite and decoder boxes). And here in Rome there is BBC and CNN, which is fine for a quick update, but I need me some Family Guy, Judge Judy, and Futurama goodness.

Plentiful Internet: In the U.S., WiFi is free at every Starbucks. Even when I’m not in Starbucks, sometimes my phone will automatically connect to a Starbucks hotspot, like at the Clark and Lake L station, which is close to a Starbucks. Internet is all around your home. It’s at work. We have unlimited data plans. We’re always connected, and for better or worse, we’re used to it. Here in Europe, we are on a data plan, with a set amount of MBs, and hotels are more stingy with the WiFi. Some charge for it, while others allow connection for one device only at a time. And the speed is less than stellar. In Monte Carlo, of all places, we were dealing with dial-up type speeds. Just like the never-ending cup of coffee, I’m looking forward to my never-ending cup of data.

People Getting a Move On: There is something very charming and distinctive about lingering over an espresso at a café, and it’s a very fine thing to stop and smell the coffee now and then (for example, on vacation). And I admire and enjoy that different cultures have different ways of going about these things. But at heart, I’m an American, and in my everyday working life (and sometimes on the weekends, too), I just want to get my coffee on the way to the next thing. I typically don’t want coffee to be a 90-minute thing that’s devoted to just coffee. I want coffee and to check the Internet, or coffee on the way to Trader Joe’s, or coffee and the rest of the movie I fell asleep during the night before. I want to do this and that at the same time, or at least do this while I’m on my way to that.

We’re off to New York tomorrow at noon. When you hear from me next, I’ll likely have a Starbucks in hand.

On a Chance Photo

A leisurely day today. We do a bit of shopping in the Rome stores, but the big bit of excitement is when someone we pass on the street calls out my name!

Indeed, it is a co-worker a mine, also on her vacation. And guess what’s even weirder? She also went to London. And Paris. And Florence. And she and her husband are heading to Barcelona next. How wild is that?

Anyway, today you get to suffer a special treat. You get a two-for-one: a poetry lesson and a newly minted poem from me. I have been meaning to do more creative writing on this trip, but I’ve had so much fun with Stippulations that I’ve been pouring most of my energies into it.

But today, being the lazy day it is, gives me the chance to flex the poetry.

Today’s poem is a type called ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is basically a poem about a piece of art–for example, a painting or a sculpture. Homer’s Shield of Achilles and Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn are two of the more classic examples of ekphrasis, with perhaps a more accessible example being Auden’s Musee des Beaux Arts, which describes The Fall of Icarus by Bruegel.

In college, I researched ekphrasis, digging into some of the technical aspects of the verse type. You can talk about what it means to make art about other art, and get philosophical about it. But I was more interested in the execution of ekphrasis. How would someone actually go about writing an ekphrastic poem: What tools did they use?

I identified two modes of ekphrasis in the poems I studied, what I called ekphrastic description and ekphrastic narrative. Ekphrastic description is how the poet describes the physical aspects of the painting or sculpture–for instance, the brushstrokes or the horizon line or the colors of paint or the quality of the raw material (the plaster, the marble, etc.). Ekphrastic description may also talk about the imagined act of making the art–for instance, how the artist was applying the paint.

Ekphrastic narrative, on the other hand, is the poet’s story, which is derived from the painting. It is more about the poet’s interpretation of the artwork, or the storyline that the art suggests.

A poem’s ekphrastic description, then, is about the physical properties of the work of art itself and its creation. Ekphrastic narrative, on the other hand, is about what the art might represent.

Why this type of poem? Well, I’ve taken–and seen–so many pictures on this trip, I have a lot of raw material to work with. Today, in a somewhat self-centered move, I’ve got a poem about a picture I myself took.

I like coupling a poem with a picture, because it gives you a reference point, something to consult if the poem goes a bit astray (as poems are wont to do!). The poem, meanwhile, gives you a way of seeing the picture that you may not have considered before, like hearing your friend’s take on a famous painting. It’s the dialogue between them that charges both.

The picture I chose is one that I snapped with my iPhone on the train from Barcelona to Nice along the Mediterranean coastline. The train car was only half full, and I crossed the aisle to snap some pictures out the window on the other side. There were some fantastic views, but every time I’d take a pic, it seemed, I would get a telephone pole or half a fence or just a blurry mess.

The pic below came out looking–to me, anyway–somewhat like an old painting, due to its blurred quality and the train window acting as a hazy filter on the photo itself. I also liked how the lines lead the eye from the bottom to the top in a zigzag pattern, from what looks like a path at the bottom, up along the line of the brush, then across the horizon line where the water meets the sky, then up a faint, dotted cloud line in the sky.

None of this, of course, was intentionally captured in any way by me. Really, none of the pictures snapped on a fast-moving train could be said to be taken purposefully. It’s like a spin of roulette. You snap pictures like putting chips down and hope that one of them pays off.

Funny thing is, this crude phone photo is one of my favorite pictures of the trip. All my pics are sentimental and important to me as they catalog my vacation, but this one speaks to me on a more universal and emotional level for some reason. That’s what I was trying to understand by writing the poem. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

On a Chance Photo

A chance photo
is grainy, rushed,
uncalibrated.
Painted? Spotted
through a dirty window.
Blurred from velocity.

Look again: This time,
let’s say the sea is not
your subconscious,
but just the sea.
The horizon a curve
and not the edge.

Let’s say the clouds
are a dotted line,
and the brush
is where the secrets
of the earth begin
to chirp at twilight.

Let’s say I never saw this
with my own eyes,
only in a digital frame.
Let’s say I never
even meant
for it to happen.

But since it’s here,
let’s imagine what else
is beyond the thatch,
reclined in a lounger,
hidden zeros and ones
deep in the source code.

What else was reading
a French novel
on the rocky beach
in the late afternoon,
now face down,
warm spine facing up?

What else is napping
there now in the last
few flickers of daylight
by the whispering surf,
dreaming, just vaguely,
of a nearby passing train?

Rome, If You Want To

It’s our first full day in the Italian capital: Time to roam Rome.

The day starts in the mid-90s at the Colosseum, which both Tate and I expect, for some reason, to be much bigger. Nonetheless, I find the ruins are still haunting, given the sadistic and downright sick “games” that went on here (some of them involving gladiators and wild animals went on for weeks at a time). The place could seat 50,000 in its prime (for comparison, about 80,000 fans can watch the massacres at Notre Dame stadium).

A colossal tourist attraction: Some wild “entertainment” went down at the Colosseum.

Our next stop is Palatine Hill, also known as Palatino, which was once covered with the palaces of patrician families and early emperors but is now a park of ruins (and continues to be a working archeological site).

According to myth, city founders Romulus and Remus, were saved by the she-wolf on this hill. According to archeology, people have lived in the area since 1000 BC.

I can’t advise visiting Palatine Hill in August, amid the 100 degree heat. It also seems that there isn’t much of a guided tour here.

But I can absolutely recommend that all visitors look into the “Tate Tour” of Palatine Hill.

I took the Tate Tour today, and unlike tours that leave you wondering where the money went, the Tate Tour of Palatine Hill offers visitors a unique experience in the most ancient part of the city that just can’t be beat.

Not convinced? Consider these features, all included as part of the Tate Tour:

• Tate, who will carry the Palatine Hill map for you.
• Tate’s distinctive pronunciation of Palatine Hill’s many historical sites.
• Colorful and frequent commentary about the weather.
• Immediate notification when more information about a particular site is unavailable.
• The ability to ask follow-up questions (note: Tate cannot guarantee that any questions will be answered or even acknowledged).
• Expert and accurate predictions on when travel up a flight of stairs “ain’t gonna happen.”
• Very direct and detailed feedback about what exactly you can kiss in the event that you might have a complaint.

The house of Augustus on Palatine Hill is one of the more intact structures.

The Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum adjacent to Palatine Hill housed Rome’s public law courts.

After a late afternoon nap (for me) and some vigorous research on TripAdvisor, we zero in on a little gem of a restaurant for dinner called Casa Coppelle, a bit off the more highly trafficked Piazza Navona.

We get a great corner table and watch the bustle with a bottle of prosecco. Fantastic fresh pasta and homemade desserts along with espresso that (almost) puts hair on my chest (one day I know I’ll have a chest hair) make this place a Rome highlight amid a lot of overpriced and underwhelming tourist pits. TripAdvisor comes through again…it’s a great resource for hotel and restaurant recommendations if you haven’t used it before.

Closing time: We were among the last to leave Casa Coppelle Saturday night. One of the best meals of the trip and absolutely the best value.

The evening ends with a long stroll back to the hotel through Piazza Navona and past the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. Rome is a very touristy place, so you sometimes wonder if you’re really getting the feel of the city (especially in August when most Romans are away on holiday), and some sites, like Trevi, have a strange Vegas-y feel to them (perhaps the Romans were a bit over the top?).

But there is a certain charm in a city where you can walk through a piazza and see a ceiling fresco through a second story window, or turn a corner and–bam!–the Parthenon. I just wish it wasn’t so…discovered.

All I want is an amazing, historical place with great restaurants, modern hotels, charming streets, and a sense that it’s totally undiscovered and unspoiled.

In other words, I just want it all, and I want it all for myself. Surely that’s not asking too much, right?

Life imitates artifice?: Something about Trevi Fountain reminds me of Vegas. Could it be that Vegas’ take on Rome is more Roman than Rome?

I caught a glimpse of this ceiling fresco through a window on Piazza Navona.