Arrividerci, Roma

I’m writing this post Tuesday night, on the flight back from Rome. Among the things I lost in my camera bag were my two newest issues of The New Yorker, which I’d planned to read on the plane! So now I have nothing to do but write. I guess I could have bought another magazine, but never mind...

Today (Tuesday) was a busy day! After the nightmare of our Monday afternoon and evening, followed by a mostly sleepless night for me, I was determined to make it up to Dave by doing some sightseeing with him and enjoying Rome. We got up and out around 9 a.m. and went to the Trevi Fountain (above), which he had never seen. In fact, he’d never seen Rome at all, so anyplace we went was somewhere new.

We then walked from Trevi to the Pantheon, and then to the Piazza Navona, where we stopped for coffee. We sat and watched a couple of guys clean the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers in the middle of the plaza, sweeping up the loose coins and ridding it of algae and stains.

I thought we might also check out the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, but Dave decided he’d seen enough and was ready to return to the hotel. To be fair, it was rapidly becoming hot as blazes and sweat was running down our backs. Also a thunderstorm was brewing overhead, but it never quite materialized, at least not where we were.

I tried my best not to think or talk about the camera kerfuffle but I wasn’t very successful, and as we sat in the Piazza Navona I felt a strong compulsion to search for it again. I was still getting a signal saying my AirPods were on that street near the back of the Termini train station, and I was convinced they were in that trash bin — perhaps still inside my camera bag. If Dave was just going to rest in the hotel, what was stopping me?

So I told him that was my plan. He tried to talk me out of it — he was worried about my safety, both from any criminal element and from environmental dangers like broken glass. But I had to be able to tell myself I’d done all that I could, and so far, I still didn’t have that feeling.

Sticker art on a street near the Pantheon

We took a taxi back to the hotel, where Dave got out, and then I rode on to the street with the bins. I began digging through them again, and this time — without Dave telling me to stop every three seconds — I really focused on the task. I pulled bag after bag out of the bin and got down deep enough that I’m sure I would have found the camera bag, had it been there. I might not have found the AirPods alone, because they’re small and I couldn’t get them to make noise like they’re supposed to do when lost. (Every time I tried my phone just said that function was “off,” whatever that means.)

At one point three workers in neon orange pants and maroon shirts, perhaps garbage men, came up and one started yelling at me. I showed him my phone and explained what I was trying to do. He didn’t seem to speak English but he understood, and he and his pals walked away and came back a few minutes later with a rake. They pitched in and helped me! Together we excavated that bin thoroughly, to no avail. I looked in the adjacent recycling bins too, but they were much emptier — apparently Romans, at least in that neighborhood, aren’t big on recycling.

I also checked out the nearby parking lot again, and I did get a signal showing that I was practically on top of the AirPods while standing next to this white Land Rover, which was parked off by itself (and is apparently parked there all the time, given that it's on Google Street View). It seemed very possible they could be in that car but I couldn’t see them through the windows or underneath it, so what could I do? I felt out of options.

Perhaps I could have gone back to the Carabinieri with my scant evidence, but even if they took me seriously, what would they have done? Called the Land Rover owner, who would in all likelihood have told them to piss off and get a search warrant, and then moved the bag? All with me leaving the country in hours?

After more than an hour digging through rubbish and then loading it back into the bin, and surveying parked cars in the hot sun, I finally, finally felt I had done all I could do. I had to accept defeat. If the bag was there, it wasn't accessible to me. So close and yet so far.

I walked back to the hotel and took a long, welcome shower.

(Not your typical Roman vacation, I know!)

We had to be out of our hotel room by 1 p.m. but our transfer to the airport wasn’t due until 5:30 p.m. So we decided to spend the afternoon in the Galleria Borghese, which we knew would be air conditioned. We stored our bags at the hotel, took a taxi to the museum and settled into the cafe for a leisurely lunch. To give you an idea of the temperature, this is what the dogs looked like in the surrounding park, limp in the shade of trees full of chirring cicadas.

We began exploring the museum at 3 p.m. and it is a very grand place. Unlike the sights we saw in the morning, the galleria was new to me. Not really my kind of art, for the most part, but I did appreciate the Caravaggios and this stunning sculpture by Bernini of Apollo and Daphne, from 1622. Certainly better than rooting around in a garbage bin!

Finally, we headed to the airport and arrived in plenty of time for our 9:20 p.m. flight. (Why so late? What were our tour organizers thinking?) I was sad as we took off, knowing my camera bag wasn’t at my feet as always.

Oh — but there is one more happy side note. Remember my fear that the bag had my address on it? Well, I realized the luggage tag provided by the tour company did NOT use our address — just my phone number. So the fear that someone will arrange to burgle our house with my lost keys is now moot.

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And now, Wednesday morning, here I am at home. We’ve arrived back just in time to cope with a new hosepipe ban (aka a garden watering ban) imposed by Thames Water because of the UK's extended period of hot, dry weather. So we’ll be schlepping watering cans from the house. Welcome to England! At least the temperature is cooler than Rome, and the garden and plants seem to have survived our absence.