The Cantankerous Mezzler that is Italy

I have a bone to pick with this one (Italy). Son of a gun. Presents me with such beauties and wonders which make my heart well up and spill over into puddles of joy and fancy and riding merriment, really it does, really it is, plump with the redness of ten tomatoes and streams of blood oranges and deep dark choc brown, and really the sun is often gorgeous, and the endless glutenous gluttony is not quite yet too much (though I would love some sourdough) but, Italy, one thing - sort out your damn roads! 

Worst I've seen. They make Elbe (the bike) cry not good tears and my butt hurt, sods. Other than that, you're a peach, dear Italy.

I left Bologna feeling like a cherry, and en route to Rome, stumbled into some quite magnificent architectures! Like this one (below), in Florence, where I was hosted by a go-get-'em, no-nonsense fun-haver, who took me out and plied me with delicious pizzas and birra and recoiled when I chose kiwi flavour ice cream (afraid of fruit), but smiled when I also chose pistachio. An evening with pleasant company! 

Then I stayed with shining stars, G&M, near Montefalco. I was given a verbal tour (a flavour paints a thousand pictures) of Perugia's winescape and woke up with one of those gentle hangovers which you don't regret because you learned a great deal on the way there. Vegetables roasted before being lasagned - terrific. Heck, these two shined so bright I landed myself back here, dog sitting, listening to Italian pop while I write. 

South of here there is a giant Roman aqueduct which sits all serene and elephantine bridging a chasm in the land. What an architecture! Old, too.

And look at this one. So many pillars. How did they make them? Maybe they grew. The Vatican is in fact not synonymous with the Holy See. C for yourselves. It is, however, according to this blog, etymologically derived from the words vatic and anus. 

'VATIC- "Characteristic of a prophet; oracular" From Latin: vts, seer -ANUS "The opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste is eliminated from the body" From Latin: nus, ring, anus'

True stuff. Believe us. 

It was here that I saw the Pope deliver his Sunday address. The square was chockablock with worshippers and the curious. Habits and white collars by the coachload. Sunglasses and DSLRs by the bus. I am no less convinced that he looks like Jonathan Pryce. 

Another architecture. Saw ads for Gladiator, the Musical. Russell Crowe rendered into a slick, shining baritone. Lord help us. 

Trying to think of a word which captures just how big this building is, but nothing springs to mind. Anyway, it's really big, and, yeah.

Look and here is a picture of the inside of an architecture, just to prove that they're not just pretty faces; they also have pretty innards. To be fair to the Catholics, they made some grandiose stuff (though this is baroque, a tour guide indirectly told me). The cathedral in Padova, which I visited last trip, is colossally cool. And this here basilica is right ornate.

Here's a big mother jutting out of the landscape, surrounded by onlookers. If I didn't like it I'd slur it by calling it the pantseon, but actually I do dig it. Old.

Obviously I can't resist grand emotional gestures captured in stone for all the world to see.

And belligerent marble babies, too. Aren't they cute and indignant! Someone's really ruffled their feathers, like, yeah OK mum, I'll carry this stupid thing if I HAVE to, but not before I TRIP UP TIMMY.

So that's outsides and insides. It's easy to get caught up with the ancient bits though, I felt. Rome has so much on so many pedestals, and the pedestals are so tall that they dwarf the 'regular' buildings. Maybe there's something we can all learn there, huh. Take a look around and what do you see? I see the kind of windows I'd like to look out of at eleven o'clock in the morning, coffee in one hand, wine in the other, smell of dolmades drifting off the sideboard, Buena Vista Social Club ringing through the floorboards.

And some windows I wouldn't much like to live behind, but which are thought-provoking anyway.

These are directly opposite the pantheon, where a street seller was having a bloody good time flogging shawls to diners - we exchanged eyes a number of times, I shared in his glory - but everyone was looking the other way, at the overstated. But I liked the understated, the unsung. 

The unsung of Rome danced between trees and collected itself in the morning dew, ready to shake off the heat of the day. It hovered just above the throng's eyeline, just below the stamp of feet, just around the corner out of sight. It was in a backstreet pizzeria, in the garlic oil splashed on a pizza rosso, and in the folds of an old man's newspaper, crinkling in the shade, nestled between cobbles. It was in the blink of an eye.

It was in the smile which played over the faces of the people in the downpour. The people who smile when sodden, those are the ones. It brings out the truth in people, a solid rain. Wet cheeks.

Well done, marathon runners of Rome. Well done to the English couple who accidentally left their bag of fruit, biscuits and Powerade after talking with me. And to the Italian dude who refused my banana after throwing up a deep wet watery post-run puke behind me, sat on the grass in front of the colossus. Sirs, dames, all, well done indeed. 

Whose tomatoes? Al's tomatoes. 

Much love to Margherita, host in Rome after a truly wet day, whose dream trip is just around the corner and whose welcome brought a wide smile. Ready to roll now, ready to flonk, down and out, south to Naples. Hoddle.