Our time in London
We had a layover and plane change in London. We stayed for about an hour. All I know of England I learned at Heathrow.
I grabbed a London visitors guide, because it was there, and stared at the currency exchange station and the HSBC ads which are posters displayed in the old Burmashave style. They are displayed in a series of four. The first three posters have an image and one word, like “responsibility.” One picture is a soccer player over a ball, maybe another is of a child holding something delicate and the last one is a goldfish fish in a bowl. Each of the three posters has the word “responsibility.” The fourth poster says something like “words mean different things to different people. If you let us datamine you to death we can know what they mean to you. And by to death we mean every word. And by you we mean everyone. And by know we mean we can help you more. And by help we mean this is a little sketchy isn’t it? And by sketchy we mean we’re the world’s local bank.”
It is a brilliant campaign, but like my doctors, I prefer a bit of anonymity with my banker. Tell you what, you get the decimal plays in the right spot (or, failing that, err to the right) and I’ll make sure I don’t write bad checks. We can stop there and call that a relationship, mmmkay?
So Heathrow is nice. Two hours later we landed in Rome and walked onto the jetway, the thin, fraying, waterstained jetway thinking “This is some first impression.”
It got better.
We had to wait a faith-shakingly long time for our checked luggage. It could be in Norway by now and who would know?
The first American ad we saw was at the passport control station: Iron Man 2.
The passport guy ably demonstrated the disaffected air you’ve come to expect from government employees. Good to see that some things are universal. He sort of throws your passport back at you after stamping it on which ever page his finger opened. It’d be nice if these things were in sequence, but they stamp probably a thousand of these an hour and are as generally disdainful of the idea of long passport lines as you are, so that doesn’t happen.
We caught the train into the center of Rome, passing both attractive countryside and depressing and old apartment complexes. In the States I’d think they were some post-Nixon/Carter tenement or maybe a housing project, but it is unwise to make such leaps here. Most of these people have forgotten about that Nixon guy anyway.
On the train a woman across the aisle was listening to a blaring Kid Rock tune in her headphones. My second American pop-culture reference of the trip had to be that guy warbling on about Sweet Home Alabama.
My third was a McDonald’s, found just outside the train station where the earnestly helpful and entirely exploitive cabbies were happy to try and help us. Because we have luggage and are wearing the look of out-of-place, confused Americans he offered to take us to our hotel for only 30 Euros.
“Special price.”
Our hotel was in walking distance, even toting our plane-safety-threatening heft of luggage. We declined.
So we made our way to the Hotel Margaret which boasts, on both signage and website that they are a two star hotel. That’s oddly humorous as truth in advertising goes, but you’re in Rome, man, you’re here to see the sites, not be in the room and watching television. Or so I’m told.
Our room is small, but it holds the luggage, is clean and has a bed and corner bathroom. It will do the job.
Later we’d realize just how firm the mattress was. And then we realized the double is really two twins pushed together. After last night, though, that didn’t matter much.
Dinner was conveniently located across the street. The Yankee picked up a Rick Steves book, from which many of our trip plans have been created. She found a reference to the Ristorante da Giovanni. This is a where-the-locals eat place, which is the only way to travel in our opinion.
Ristorante di Giovanni
Steves writes, “Ristorante da Giovanni is a well-worn old-time eatery that makes no concessions to tourism or the modern world — just hard-working cooks and waiters serving standard dishes at great prices to a committed local clientele. It’s simply fun to eat in the middle of this high-energy, old-school diner.”
Giovanni has been there since 1948. The walls are homey and wood-paneled. Our waiter, a delightful, helpful and friendly old man who takes pictures with his guests, smelled of wood sealer.
The Yankee had tortellini, soup and eggplant. I had a three course meal of minestrone (in which I was a bit disappointed, oddly enough), rigatoni and roasted chicken, which was delicious. (Dinners here are served in courses, perhaps even in that McDonald’s near the train station.)
After dinner, which was late, but absolutely in keeping with the rhythm of the local culture, we stumbled sleepily across the street. We buzzed our way into the hotel, took the skinny little elevator up to the fourth floor and wrapped up the night.
Our three-day, whirlwind tour of Rome starts tomorrow!
