Last day in Rome

Despite my noble intentions yesterday, the second, or it may have been third time the amiable snorer woke me last night with his grunting I sincerely wished that he would choke to death in his sleep. This seemed likely – surely no one can sound like that and live; unfortunately he survived the night. So a bit washed out and grumpy today.

Came into Rome this morning and booked a four hour train ride to Firenze, which is Italian for Florence, or at least I hope it is, else I will be taking a four hour train ride to God knows where. There are a range of train options, many of them quite fast at about an hour and a half, then slower ones at three or four. I booked a four hour because it was cheaper and frankly the idea of staring out a train window for four hours appeals to me. Got a first class ticket, which was still cheaper than second on the fast trains, so hopefully it will be four hours in relative comfort. After that, wandered around for a bit, sat down in some fairly dingy square, coffee, cigar. Found some pavement booksellers and spent a while thinking about buying a huge three volume academic edition of the Divine Comedy, in Italian, complete with Dore's illustrations – was only 30EU, but I couldn't justify the weight or the space, even at that price. I bought too many books with me anyway; plan to read my way through most of them during the month in Florence and then ditch them – will put up with the weight until then. Already gave away one, The Windup Girl, which I read on the plane over (was fantastic), to some Brit who I found in my bed at midnight on my second night here, using my pillow (!). I took my pillow back without a whole lot of good humour; gave him the book the next day by way of apology for being woken up in the middle of the night by an angry skinhead... The street bookseller also had all these old racy pictures of semi naked women from the dawn of photography – they were probably illegal in their day – now seem absurdly quaint compared to posters advertising fetish shops within spitting distance of cathedrals.

Sitting at another cafe now, waiting for a call from K, then will head back to the hostel fairly early in the day, to pack, charge up the phone and laptop, and do a few more organisy things for tomorrow. So my last night at the Peter Pan hostel. Hope I have not maligned the place too much. The young chain-smoking bloke who did his best to appear ruthless when chasing away the lost dog (without fooling anyone (least of all the dog)) was friendly and helpful, and if I had not been so cheap and had booked one of the private rooms on the upper floors where the toilets have seats, instead of the basement doom (meant to write “dorm;” the Freudian typo can stay), it probably would have been quite pleasant I think. That would be my ideal hostel: squalor and chaos, with a quiet and cool room to sleep in.

The city at dusk last night was lovely – am about to wander back to the Santa Maria degli Angeli, which was such a nice space to be in that I want to do it again.

Photos: tiny cups of coffee, huge slices of bread without crusts. They eat a lot of crusty little loaves of bread here, but the more conventional sliced bread never has crusts, and is huge in comparison to home. Two of that church, outside and in – it might be the way that it incorporated older ruins in its design, rather than just levelling them, which makes it so nice, not sure. And finally some much more contemporary ruins, to give you some sense of the neighborhood of the hostel.

Cheers, B.

PS – spoke to K, which was nice, except that she lost all sense of tact and hinted at the possibility that I myself might snore.