The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com
Last month I spent three glorious days touring Rome, Italy’s capital and a locale that can arguably be called the largest open-air museum in the world. Before my arrival there, I reserved a room in a four-star establishment called the Donna Laura Palace Hotel, which is located in the lovely and quiet Prati district, on the western bank of the Tiber River. Unfortunately, I don’t have many photos of the hotel, but I do have this one. It shows the lobby and was taken the morning I was leaving Italy and while I was waiting for the driver to take me to the Fiumicino Airport for my return flight to Cairo.
On my first evening in the city, as I was sitting and having a drink up at the hotel’s rooftop bar and restaurant, I met Chris, an American graduate student in his late twenties who was, like me, doing the tourist thing in this beautiful part of the Italian Peninsula. We hit it off right away and ended up spending the following day seeing a good chunk of the city together. Chris can be seen in the following picture. In it, he is photographing some watercolor paintings being sold by one of the many talented artists who call Rome home. (I ended up buying one of the fellow’s pieces and now have it framed and hanging on my wall.) By the way, this photo was taken not more than a stone’s throw away from the Colosseum and the Arco di Constantino.
Knowing that I would be traveling to the Eternal City, a friend, someone who’d been to Rome himself, gave me some advice before my trip. He said, “Don’t worry about buying a guidebook. All you need to do is take off, in any direction, and wander. It won’t take you more than five minutes to stumble upon some beautiful spot, often the sort of place overlooked by the travel experts.” I took his advice and discovered that he was right. As a matter of fact, the following picture, of the Piazza del Popolo, was taken as Chris and I were vagabonding about. When we discovered this lovely square, neither one of us had a guidebook in hand nor were we carrying a city map.
On my second day in the city, I set my sights on the Vatican. I had a vague idea about the direction I needed to go in, but that was it. I wanted to wander until I found it and expected to see many interesting places along the way. In fact, I found a lovely sidewalk café after walking twenty or so minutes in a generally westerly direction from the Donna Laura. Because it was such a warm morning and the place seemed so inviting, I decided to stop there and have a cool drink. The picture I’ve included was taken while I was sitting at one of its tables.
I eventually did find the Piazza San Pietro and was blown away by it. I probably spent more than an hour just taking pictures of the place, including the one immediately following this paragraph. The size and grandeur of the square and basilica were overwhelming and certainly did give a sense of the power of the Roman Catholic Church.
So far, I can see that I’ve provided no definitive photographic evidence to prove that I was even truly in Rome, so I’ve decided to throw this one in, of me standing in front of some statuary at the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II.
OK, so what can I say in conclusion that will provide you with a sense of what Rome is like? After carefully thinking about this question, I realize that no words can do the city justice. It has to be seen to be believed, and even then, you might doubt the veracity of what your eyes have beheld.
