Mark, Anita, Jim, and Al celebrating Rome

After an easy, comfortable, and almost shockingly fast train from Naples (why can’t we do that in the U.S.?) we finished our three-week Italy trip with five days in Rome to celebrate my birthday and our 39th anniversary, and to spend time with my brother Al and his wife Anita. They were in Europe to see their daughter who is doing a semester abroad in Madrid and so they tacked on a couple of days in Rome with us. I first fell in love with Rome way back in 1975 when I was stationed in Naples and would take a train up for the weekend; at the time I was so adept at navigating the city that I would take shipmates up and be the tour guide. And while the city is famously eternal, I have seen a couple of changes over these 50+ years.

The biggest change from my perspective at least is just how many more tourists there are. We came here in mid-October to avoid the intense heat of a Roman summer in this era of climate change, but I also sort of expected that in the “shoulder season” there would be perhaps somewhat fewer tourists. That was so not the case.The crowds were just unbelievable. We didn’t even try to go over to the Vatican or St. Peter’s, but the crowds around Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon were almost unbelievable. I remember – not just 50 years ago, but even in the 1990s – you could just walk into the Pantheon or sidle up to the Trevi Fountain to toss your coin in. No more. Now there are massive lines to get tickets to the Pantheon and the crowds are so thick around the Trevi Fountain that it was all but impossible to just walk through the square. And everywhere around the historic core of the city hordes of tour groups traipsing through.

Now, we’ve been to Rome enough that we didn’t need to do all of what I’ll call “entry level” tourism, but the crowds were really something.

The Largo di Torre Argentina, excavated to the level of the city around 50 BC. Julius Caesar was assassinated right about where that tree stands in the middle of the picture.

Another change that I find interesting is that while the city is eternal, the history is still emerging. One place of particular interest to me is a square called Largo di Torre Argentina. It turns out this square doesn’t have anything to da with the country, but rather derives from the ancient silver men or bankers (Argentario) who worked there. But while I remember it mostly for the colony of stray cats who live there and lounge on the old ruins, relatively recent excavations have determined that it is the site where Julius Ceasar was assassinated on the Ides of March. Pretty cool!

And then there’s the ongoing excavation and reconstruction of Trajan’s Forum, named for the early second century emperor who built it and near the original Roman Forum. I don’t have any recollection of what was here before – a street? relatively modern buildings? – but they have done significant archeological work in recent years and even started to rebuild some of the ancient architecture. It’s kind of surprising to find new 2,000-year-old ruins where they were previously invisible.

Part of the Trajan Forum. Those columns and all weren’t there when we were last in Rome.

On top of all that there were the new/old museums we discovered that were really fun. First up was the Palazzo Barberini, a Baroque palace developed in the early 17th century by Pope Urban VIII, the former Maffeo Barberini. Descendants of the Barberini family lived in the palace until 1955, but today it is part of the National Galleries of Ancient Art. There was a bunch of good stuff there, but one room in particular stood out with four original Caravaggios. It had been closed for a number of years for a major renovation which could be why we’d never encountered it before, but it was very fun to discover a new museum.

Caravaggio’s John the Baptist in the Palazzo Barberini, one of four of his works there

And interestingly it’s partnered with the Galleria Corsini, another Baroque palace across the Tiber River in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. This palace wasn’t built by a pope, merely Cardinal Corsini, but he was at least a nephew to Pope Clement XII who was himself a Corsini. All of which just really drives home the fact that through much of the last 2,000 years popes were very much regal figures who advanced their families as much as any hereditary monarchy of the time. Oh, as for the art, the interesting thing about the Galleria Corsini is that the Corsini collection is largely displayed just as it was when the Corsini family still lived there so you get the distinct flavor of just how those semi-royal families lived.

Just one of the rooms in the Palazzo Corsini

OK, one more new find for us, the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, housed in a palace built by the Pamphilj family whose most famous member was at one time Cardinal Giovan Battista Pamphilj but who later became Pope Innocent X. We’re starting to see a pattern here, right, of fabulous palaces built by popes and their families. It’s a wonder ordinary people didn’t rebel against such ostentatious displays of wealth and power among those supposedly representing Christ on earth. Oh right, there was that Reformation thing. Makes even more sense when you start spending time in the papal palaces.

At any rate this was another great exhibit of art, the masterpiece of which is a Velázques portrait of Innocent X that makes him look almost evil. And there were a couple more Caravaggios and other great works. Unusually, this palace and art collection is still in private hands. Descendants of the Pamphilj family not only still own it – believed to be the largest Roman palace in private hands – but even live in part of it. We didn’t see any of them though.

The steps up to the Galleria Doria Pamphilj

So that was all the culture stuff. One of my favorite things to do in Rome is just wander aimlessly and stop into random churches where you can sometimes find ordinary churches but other times pieces of genuine beauty, so there was some of that too.

Celebrating my birthday with pizza at Mariuccia, a Neapolitan pizzeria with a couple locations in Rome

And then there was all the food and family time. It was great fun to spend time with Al & Anita and experiment with all the great restaurants in the city. It has to be noted that in a city with that many tourists there are going to be a lot of mediocre-to-bad restaurants but with a little research, including the old spreadsheet of expenses we kept while we were nomads, we sussed out some good finds. The highlight for me at least was a Neapolitan pizza place where we had lunch on my birthday. I don’t eat a lot of pizza but when I splurge I want it to be worthy and this one was definitely worthy.

And so, after three-and-a-half months of what felt like almost constant travel, we’re home. We loved returning to some of our favorite haunts and discovering some new ones, but we’re decidedly happy to be home for a bit.

Mark at a very cute alley-way restaurant that was not as good as we’d hoped but not nearly as bad as some of the reviews. We looked at a bunch of places that would have mostly good reviews but then some just absolutely terrible ones. We thought it was strange.

Al, Mark, & Jim in our hotel lobby

Al and Anita at lunch just after we got to Rome. We didn’t have a lot of time to research lunch places and the quality here made clear we would have to do better.

Family dinner – the quality is definitely improving!

Speaking of new, this decidedly and appropriately understated tomb of Pope Francis certainly didn’t exist the last time we were in Rome.

Celebrating my 71st birthday

Anita got fancy for my birthday

Michaelangelo’s Moses. I’ve seen in before but I always love it.

More church grandeur

I’m a sucker for these ancient Greek pots. This was in the National Etruscan Museum, again emphasizing the Greek nature of much of ancient Italy. The museum was housed – wait, you won’t guess – in an old papal palace.

We always stop by to pay homage to Bruno, burned at the stake by the Catholic Church as a heretic, honored by the people of Rome as a hero.

Brothers!

Lunch

Farewell to Al & Anita

We got home and had literally five minutes to freshen up and head to an early dinner with friends before seeing one of them – Emily, in the black dress with the big smile – perform off Broadway in Midnight. Home at last!

Mark far above the lighthouse on the southwestern tip of the island

After four nearly perfect days in Capri we took a very quick taxi ride up to Anacapri, the somewhat higher, quieter, more relaxed community a bit west of the main town. It was supposed to be four more days of hiking, beach time, and restaurants. We’ve stayed in both Capri and Anacapri on various visits and like them both in different ways. For this stop we stayed at the Capri Palace Hotel, where we’ve stayed before, because it has both a nice pool (with great pool service in the past) and a private beach club associated with a Michelin-starred restaurant for glorious lunches. We were quite looking forward to the stay.

Alas, we had not factored in four days of rain. Not that tropical stuff you get in Southeast Asia where the weather is fine most of the day, then a big rainstorm rolls through and then it’s fine again. This was just rain and threatening clouds nearly the entire day. For four consecutive days. We could do some walks, but a several hour hike around the western end of the island was out of the question – no way you could escape the rain for that long.

The view from our room. Normally you would see clear skies and fabulous blue water. Not these four days.

So little of the beauty that we love about Capri and essentially none of the pool or beach time we were so eager for. And to be honest, we were kind of bored much of the time; there’s only so much time you can spend researching restaurants for lunch and dinner. Had we been in most any Italian city there are always museums and churches to go to. Even cafés to duck into. Not here though. Shorter walks during breaks in the weather were possible but that was about it.

I did manage one adventure that was worthwhile. On our last afternoon it looked as though there was going to be a couple hours without rain so from Anacapri I walked down to Capri (it’s a lot of steps…), hung out there for a while, and climbed back up again. And since I had already hiked from Capri to the northeastern tip of the island (and back) and from Anacapri to the southwestern tip of the island (and back), that meant that during the eight days we were there I hiked from one tip to the other – and back again. Not bad for an old man.

Stairs down, down, down from Anacapri to Capri

And that was enough. Even under clouds the island has its charms, though I can only imagine what the experience was like for the many MANY day trippers who’d heard about the beauty of Capri and seen the pictures and all that, and then come for a day in the rain. Probably not as much in love with the island as I have been for 50 years.

Next stop, Naples!

A horde of day trippers on a rain-soaked tour of Anacapri

An amazing variation on a Caprese salad at Da Emilia, a great new find for us that we went to a couple of times. And my excellent steak tartare in the background.

The empty, rain-soaked main square of Anacapri

There were occasional glimpses of blue sky, but they weren’t common and didn’t last long. This tree, quite near our hotel, has featured in many of our photos from Anacapri over the years.

Dinner at Il Solitario, another new find for us that was worth going back to

Out on the southwestern corner of the island is an odd park. It’s called the Philosopher’s Park, endowed by an old Swedish academic who loved Capri and left this land to be studded with glazed plaques and quotes from great philosophers over the last few millennia. It was surprisingly serene and I would have stayed for a good while here except it was obvious a big rainstorm was brewing.

From the edge of the Philosopher’s Park you get this view up island over the famous Fraglioni rocks

The town cemetery, another serene spot

Our beautiful and almost completely unused pool

On a walk

The view from Anacapri across the island and over to the mainland, Sorrento, and the Amalfi Coast

Everything that we love about Palermo. Narrow streets, beautiful colors, crumbling architecture, graffiti. OK, everything we love except the food, but that’ll come later.

Let’s start with the ugly and then go to the bad, so we can end with the good.

As there is no direct flight from New York to Palermo, we flew on Swiss Air through Zurich. We had a pretty tight layover and then our flight was maybe 30 minutes late so we just barely made our connecting flight. Sadly, though, our luggage didn’t, even though the plane sat at the gate for something close to 30 minutes before pushing back. As we were walking towards baggage claim we each got a text from Swiss Air that our bags would be on the next flight that evening and, if we would just fill out this online form, they would deliver them to our hotel. Great, we don’t even have to wait for the bags. Easy peasy, right?

Yeah, not so much. Basically we didn’t hear from them for a couple days. I’ll spare all the details but basically because Mt. Etna was stirring things up on the other side of Sicily, all the Sicilian flights were routed through Palermo and the airport was unbelievably chaotic. When we started to hear from others just how bad it was I realized the only way we were going to get those bags was to go to the airport ourselves. And I needed my bag more than I normally would; somehow I’d lost my eyeglasses on the flight to Zurich and I needed the spare pair that I’d packed.

Hordes of people desperately trying to get to security to board their flights. It was pure chaos that I somehow had to get through.

Ultimately it took me two trips to the airport to find the bags, the first being just this dystopian experience of hundreds of people crushed together in some scrum trying to get to their flights. And because it was an International airport where you go through customs before leaving the airport, the bags were behind security. After struggling with forms and police and Italian bureaucracy, I had no choice but to give up; there was no way I was getting through that mess. I decided to try the again the next morning, thinking maybe if I got there early enough it wouldn’t be so bad. Boy, was that the right call. Getting there before 8:00 AM, I breezed through security and found the bags in just a couple minutes. There were hundreds of lost bags just lined up all over the arrival hall; it’s hard to imagine that Swiss Air ever would have gotten them to us on their own.

Our hotel was beautiful, but too far from the city. And a big construction project right next to the hotel didn’t help.

OK, it was a hellish experience, and being without clothes and toiletries isn’t fun, but eventually we had everything. The next problem – The Bad – was that the hotel we’d booked was a lot further out of town than we’d thought. As in, over an hour’s walk to the historic center, and much of that through an unattractive port area. That meant every time wanted to go in for lunch or dinner or to tour around we’d spend 20 minutes on each end in the hotel shuttle or an Uber. Now, the hotel was really nice and had beautiful grounds and good food, but we’d come to Palermo, well, to see Palermo. Oh, and if you did want to just hang out at the pool with a great view of the sea – which I certainly wanted in the morning – there was a major harbor renovation project immediately adjacent to the hotel. Sometimes it was bearable, but sometimes it wasn’t.

The good news, though, is that once we got all that sorted – got the luggage, come to terms with time wasted in cars and shuttles – Palermo was great. Just wandering around the historic center with its narrow streets and gritty charm packed full of character. Graffiti everywhere, clothes hanging from second and third story balconies, scooters zooming back and forth. We visited the cathedral, a museum, and a couple interesting churches, found great places to eat, and just leaned into the start of three weeks in Southern Italy.

Mark atop the Cathedral

It’s worth emphasizing that “southern” adjective. We have long preferred the south to the north: better food and more vibrant culture. But it’s been several years since we’ve been down here, in large part because summer weather in Italy is so brutal these days. So finally here we are in late September and October and so far at least the weather has been cooperating brilliantly. Next stop, an overnight boat to Naples and a quick connection over to Capri. That should be good.

Just a normal streetscape in Palermo

Scooters and narrow streets

Speaking of colorful, narrow streets

The streets are even more colorful than I am

Eating and drinking happens out in the streets too. We stopped here for a drink before dinner and ordered a double, because Europeans pour their drinks so small. Not here, though – this was huge. We went back.

More outdoor dining

We spent time in the Cathedral, a church or two, and a couple smaller chapels

Sicily is famous for the stucco sculptures in the churches and chapels

Definitely not into minimalism

Since Sicily was the crossroads of the Mediterranean that everyone conquered at one time or another, there is a lot of variation in the art and architecture. Here the Church of St. Mary is covered in gorgeous 12th century Byzantine mosaics.

Mark was into this Jesus with … contemporary jewelry

The Palazzo Abatellis is Palermo’s premier art museum, and this Annunciata is considered the star. It was so modern looking I thought it was placed just as a counterpoint to the older stuff, but indeed it’s a 15th century Renaissance painting.

The other star of the show is a 15th century fresco, Triumph of Death. In this closeup a lot of people have been mowed down by arrows.

One more piece from the museum

And there were other joys in Palermo. I spent a few hours in the Botanical Gardens that included this massive ficus tree, named Italy’s Tree of the Year in 2023. Pretty impressive.

Not all of Palermo was this green but there were a few spots

A harbor with a lot of sailboats

The view from breakfast. If you ignored the construction noise and the distance from the city center it was a great place.

And finally, a guy selling drinks out of a mobile orange. You gotta love Palermo, right?