Sunday 27 April: Arrivederci Beth! or, Our adventures with a crooked cabbie and a big airport

Today, sadly, Beth had to return to I Stati Uniti. We have had a great time together in the Eternal City and Pompeii, and she gave me some good insight into my research, discussing Augustan artifacts and Roman religion with me. Her flight was not ridiculously early (11:15 am), so we got up and caught a cab at 7 am at Piazza Trilussa, a block away (and site of our local black market). A taxi had just picked up passengers, and offered to call another one for us. The new cab came right away, and EA and I got in. I told the driver that we were going to Stazione Trastevere, about a mile away (too far to walk with luggage) to catch the train to the airport. The driver told us that he’d take us to the station, but that since it was Sunday, the trains weren’t running. Now, I knew that this was absolute merda di toro (Google it if you don’t know Italian). No world capital closes the trains to the airport on Sunday. Besides, if you know me, you are probably familiar with the depths of my obsessive-compulsive disorder, which had caused me to check and re-check the train schedules many times during the past week. I told the driver that we were going to Stazione Trastevere, a ride of about 6 euro. He reiterated that the station was closed, and offered to take us to the airport of 60 euro. Now I was mad. The cabbie was lying, twice. First of all about the trains, and then about the price of a ride to the airport, for which the municipal government had set a fixed rate of 40 euro. Italians may bargain, cajole, and argue with you about money, but in my experience, they never try to cheat you or blatantly rip you off, or lie to your face. This proves that cheating is a characteristic that transcends nationality, and can be found everywhere. He finally took Beth and me to Stazione Trastevere, where the trains were certainly running, and Beth got a ticket to the airport for 5 euro (I have a monthly pass that includes local rail). The next day I emailed the company and registered a complaint. They were really nice, offered an apology, said that Rome and Italy were dependent on tourism and hated to see tourists treated this way, and that it is not an Italian custom to rip off foreigners. They said that they would reprimand the cabbie.

The train-ride was pleasant, the reverse of the one we had made eight days earlier when EA arrived in Rome. We were surprised to see corn (American corn, as in “my people call it maize”) planted in small patches and single lines amid flowers and shrubs as an ornamental plant. I’ve since seen it in a city park, too. We reached the airport the suggested three hours before flight time. The Leonardo da Vinci International Airport is never called this; if you use this name, people will look at you in puzzlement. It is always referred to as “Fiumicino,” meaning “the little creek,” because it’s on a little stream that forms part of the Tiber delta as it empties into the Tyrrhenian Sea. As airports go, it’s not bad: cleaner than Atlanta, better organized than De Gaulle, and superior in every way to the chaos that is Heathrow in London. EA checked in, checked her luggage, got her boarding passes, and we sat down for a final caffè before she headed to security. We said our final goodbyes, and I stood at security, waving and making faces at her until she got through and headed for her gate.

Beth arrived home safely, and we’ve been in touch by email since her return to the States. She has excellent pics, not only of Rome but of her other photography as well, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/octobrianna/, to which she is constantly adding. You should check her site out, especially if you love cats! Her blog about her trip is at http://poppyandmagpie.blogspot.com/. EA is still adding to it, and she’s found some excellent links about Rome, including the web site of the cat sanctuary in Largo Argentina.

I returned to Trastevere in the early afternoon, bought groceries, cleaned the apartment, postponed laundry, and started organizing my notes from the museums and sites we had visited over the past week for my research. Since it was Sunday, the hubbub of Trastevere was muted that night, meaning only 200 rather than 500 hundred people were partying outside, and they stopped about 2 am rather than 3:30.