Finally in Rome ... !

Brad and I just started our year-long adventure in Rome, arriving yesterday morning, Saturday, September 10. The flight we booked here included a two-week layover in the NYC area to catch up with some old friends. 

I liked the flags in the arrival hall--Ireland and Italy right there together!

We arrived in Newark airport, Friday, August 26, and stayed with Elia, an old friend from law school, who lives on the Jersey shore in the aptly named Point Pleasant Beach and who was also kind enough to meet us at the airport. 

Met some friends of Elia's on the beach Friday evening ... 

The next day, Saturday, was a perfect beach day.

Point Pleasant Beach, N.J.

Brad on the shore ... 

Bill, another old friend (from high school), met us with umbrellas, beach chairs, sandwiches from Joey Leone’s, and some bottles of wine. (Bill has a summer place with his husband Gabriel in nearby Asbury Park, of Bruce Springsteen fame.) 

My Oswego (N.Y.) Catholic High School friend, Billy Fultz, 
who's been making me laugh since 1972 ...

The surf was up, with a bit of a riptide, and the beach was steep (piled up to protect against the next Hurricane Sandy) but I plunged in anyway. 

A wave knocked me down on the way out. There was also a bit of running on the beach. Felt like a kid again! Walked off the beach and back to Elia’s to clean up for a planned dinner in Asbury Park with the group. It was on the way there that my left knee started to hurt. Needed help to walk to the restaurant from the car and the knee got pretty swollen over dinner. By Sunday morning, it was bad enough that we went to the ER. The ER doc said nothing was broken, based on an x-ray, but decided I probably tore my ACL. Gave me crutches and told me to ice it and see an orthopedist as soon as possible. Yikes—what would it mean for our time in Rome?!?! Spent the next couple of days on crutches with my knee up under bags of frozen corn looking for an in-network doctor who could see me quickly. 

Re-enactment . . .

Elia pulled some strings and got me in to see a great doctor in NYC on Wednesday morning. (Brad went up with me on the train.) The doc also got me in for an MRI that afternoon, and, finally (!), by Thursday morning, I learned I had a small fracture of the tibial plateau (too small for xray to see) plus a small meniscus tear. He expected both would heal on their own (with a little help from PT) but I’d need to stay on crutches for a total of six weeks—that means October 8 is D-Day! It will be putting a dent in what we do our first month here in Rome … 

Arriving at our house: "Auguri," said the cab driver, after he helped 
lug the bags up the steps and Brad gave him a big tip.

Via di Sant'Onofrio 24A

A year's worth of luggage outside our new home ... down the (30 or so) 
steps to the end of the street flows the Tiber!

I just haven't been in the right frame of mind for blogging. Mi dispiace—mi sono fatto male al ginocchio!

Hitting the Beach in Anzio

It turns out that Rome is only about an hour from the sea. Anticipating the future need to escape the city, especially in summer, we decided to try taking the train to Anzio, of the famous WWII landing, which is the closest seaside town to Rome. The train from Termini in central Rome takes an hour and costs less than $10 per person roundtrip.

Ancient aqueduct ruins from train outside Rome

Anzio station Madonna

The battle of Anzio was really more of a siege, with Allied forces—U. S. and Commonwealth—landing in January 1944 and then digging in for months after the Germans reinforced their defensive positions inland. The U.S. forces finally reached Rome in June (with the U.S. commander posting military police on all roads into the city to prevent British troops from getting there first). Some well-known celebrities fought here. James Arness, of Gunsmoke fame, was badly injured here and walked with a trademark limp the rest of his life. Also Audie Murphy, another actor who starred mostly in Westerns, who also was perhaps the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. It was by some accounts the bloodiest battle of the whole war. Anzio, a quiet fishing town, was almost entirely destroyed and has been rebuilt.

 

"At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them." Monument  to Sherwood Foresters 

We strolled on a very quiet Monday. The museum was closed, for example, although we met an older Italian woman from Anzio, named Carmen, who tried to get us in and who said how lucky she felt to live here. We walked along the beach in barefoot. We saw the remains of Nero’s villa (Anzio was a favorite of his apparently).

 

Very warm waters

Hanging with Nero

We also had the best meal of our trip here, starting with assorted appetizers. The first was made from two small, fresh anchovies with some mozzarella in-between, which were then battered and fried together. There was also a small chicken sausage, a grilled eggplant slice rolled around fish, and a squid ink “arancini” (an Italian croquette made with rice). Then we had a whole grilled “spigola” (sea bass)—perfectly cooked and taken off the bone tableside by our cameriere—plus a plate of grilled eggplant and zucchini. A bottle of Italian chardonnay on the side (natch) and caffe afterwards. All on a terrace overlooking the ocean. Perfetto! 

Arancini

Spigola

Ristorante Il Terzo

The train home was just as easy. We walked from Termini to Piazza Venezia to get the Tram 8 back to Monteverde. The scenery is never disappointing here!

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II and the unification of Italy (columns from the ancient Roman forum in foreground)

Caravita

Some of you know that, before I retired in November, I joined a group called Jesuit Volunteers EnCorps (JVE). It is a new program, started in Portland about five years ago, and designed for people 50 or older who are retired or semi-retired and interested in service, spirituality, and simple living. It is an outgrowth of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, and is a kind of Catholic Peace Corps (but JVE is four years older than the Peace Corps), for individuals--mostly young people--who commit to a year of service to the poor and living in communal housing with other volunteers on a very limited stipend.

JVE has been a wonderful experience for me so far and, at a meeting in February, I mentioned to a fellow member, Elizabeth Hansen, that Brad and I planned to live in Rome in the fall. That prompted her to remember friends of hers that were currently living here. She put me in touch with them, Rose and Wayne Wentz, and they were kind enough to have dinner with us last Saturday, April 2, in the restaurant in their apartment building in Piazza di Santa Maria delle Grazie near Trastevere. They shared their experience of finding a place to live in Rome and navigating the legal system. We were amazed to learn that Conor, our first son, and Andrew, their second, where classmates at Garfield High School in Seattle, graduating the same year 2007. 

They also told us about their faith community here in Rome, called Caravita, which meets for Mass every Sunday at a 17th century church near the Pantheon called Oratory of St. Francis Xavier del Caravita. We went to Mass there on Sunday, April 3 and again on Sunday, April 10. The church is beautiful, the congregation friendly, and the homilists inspiring. Not ony that, instead of coffee and donuts, they serve Prosecco and chocolates after Mass!