Ciao, Leonardo
Viterbo, 8/2/06 11:08 PM
Italy has been a whirlwind of sensations that have me turned topsy turvy. From the first descent over the Roman landscape I was struck with the sensation that nothing had changed in the preceding two thousand years. There were still small farms dotting the landscape between the hills and the Mediterranean and by and large they seemed to be growing grapes and olives. The only difference of course is the motorcars on the roads, although the roads themselves may have been paved on top of Roman ones.
Rome's Fiumicino airport is also known as Leonardo da Vinci International, which is a pity since it is in fact the worst airport ever devised. It seemed much more likely to be based on plans made in crayon on construction paper by his slow brother, Charlie. The place seemed to be retrofitted with many of the amenities we take for granted, and in some cases was missing them altogether. A good example is air conditioning; on this sweltering Roman day, there was no A/C and the building seemed hotter than the outside was. The good Doctor was there to greet me, enveloped in a cloud of scent that threatened to suffocate the poor girl.
We were eventually collected by the groom, Matteo, and then off to the airport across town to pick up more guests. I tried to keep it interesting and ply the wit that has you fine folks coming back again and again, but was far too tired and eventually fell asleep soon after we got on the road for Viterbo. I only awoke once we were on the outskirts of town driving past large villas and well manicured wrought-iron fences.
The hotel where I'm staying is in the old part of the city, the imaginatively named "Centro". The old city is your typical walled casbah like many older European towns, dimpled with small piazzas and fountains of varying sizes, connected by narrow cobble-stoned streets. The hotel itself is about eighty meters away from a very large square, Piazza di Caduti. I checked in and went up to my room a discovered that it had a small balcony, overlooking the narrow Via Cairoli.
Follow the cobbled street down to the square and you see a medieval sanctuary and in front of it an artificial beach soccer arena where the local youth play with their family, friends and neighbors to egg them on. There's a surprising number of them on hand, and it strikes me that this may be a big attraction during the summer evenings. The flower of the local youth stands around and eat gelato as the games are played and all seems to be well in bella Italia.