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Retired in Rome Journal: Testaccio gastro tour a bite of Rome’s tasty and disgusting past

Roberto Persiani holding black truffles in E Volpetti. Yes, those are priced at 890 euros a kilo.

Back 2,000 years ago, Rome had 1 million people. Another city in Europe didn’t reach that mark until London — in the 1850s. But the Romans living in Testaccio weren’t wearing togas and drinking wine in gold goblets near the Roman Forum. Since well before Spartacus first laid down his hammer and picked up his sword instead (See: Slave Revolts That End Badly), Testaccio has been the living quarters of the working class.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Thermal baths of Viterbo means floating in the wake of Michelangelo

These thermal pools have been around since the 3rd century and attracted sitting popes.

The Terme dei Papi are thermal baths located in the charming walled city of Viterbo, about 40 miles north of Rome. Actually, the baths were once on the beaten path. The difference is those beating that path were the likes of Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri (who wrote about them in his “Divine Comedy”) and, as the term “Papi” indicates, many sitting popes. They’ve been around since the 3rd century, just after the height of the Roman Empire.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Pickpockets have turned Rome into a city of thieves

Pickpocketing in Rome has a thousand stories. In actuality, you have at least 300 a day. According to Bob Arno, the self-proclaimed “Pickpocket King” who has gone from thief to victims advocate, that’s the number that is allegedly reported to police in Rome. According to the Huffington Post, Rome has the second most pickpocket incidents in the world, just behind Barcelona and just ahead of Prague.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Losing 10 pounds in Italy isn’t as hard as you think

I'm not a great cook, but I'm a good cook in Rome. Fresh pasta and sweet tomatoes can make simple meals delicious.

The lifestyle in Rome, however, has built-in safeguards. Like Romans, I walk everywhere. When I lived in Centro Storico, I didn’t need public transportation for two months. Rome is one of the world’s great walking cities and I would walk four to six miles a day. Even when I wasn’t going anywhere, I’d just wander.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Mussolini’s Bunker a 2.4-mile maze of dark history and mystery

The German command post inside Mussolini's bunker. The Germans took it over after Mussolini ran out of power.

I’ve had a weird fascination with Benito Mussolini ever since I read about him during my first stint here from 2001-03. He was fierce nationalist who tried to make his country a player on the world stage. He had some leadership qualities that any general in the U.S. could admire. The son of a socialist blacksmith in the small Emilia-Romagna town of Dovia di Predappio, Mussolini fought against growing communist factions and did a lot of good in his early years. He helped nationalize a language in a country fractured by dialects and millenium-long regional rivalries. He turned the swamps outside of Rome into commerce centers and charming, livable villages. And, as his legacy still states, he got the trains to run on time. He did nothing with the bus system, which still sucks, but that’s Rome’s problem now. His problem was he had this weird crush on Adolph Hitler, which, obviously, became the ultimate fatal attraction.

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Retired in Rome Journal: “On assignment in Nice” has a tasty ring to it

Nice is the fifth-largest city in France but the second-most visited.

It’s called a mille-feulle. A mille-feuille is a French tradition that dates back to the late 17th century. Also called a Napoleon, mille-feuille means “thousand leaves” in French. It’s vanilla cream in between pastry cream and sandwiched between a sugar-coated crust. Covered in fresh chantilly, France’s orgasmic whipped cream, it was absolute heaven. I never felt so good waddling out of a cafe.

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Retired in Rome Journal: A room with a view — my new penthouse apartment

My 350-square-foot terrace overlooking the Tiber River. OK, so it's not the Seine ...

I have found a new home, a new home in Rome. My dream apartment pales in comparison to what I eventually found. What do you do when reality surpasses your dreams? Here’s what I did: I got out of bed, opened my glass door and walked out on to a 350-square-foot terrace overlooking the Tiber. At my penthouse balcony five floors up, I could see joggers chugging up Lungotevere, the long street that snakes up the river from Centro Storico in the heart of the city to Rome’s gritty southern edge. If I cut down a couple of trees, I could see St. Peter’s Basilica. I asked my new landlady where I could find a chainsaw in Rome.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Amalfi Coast the great escape for expat problems

The balcony at my AirBnB in Praiano, a little speck on the Amalfi Coast.

I’ve been to the Amalfi twice before. How much do I love it? A framed oil painting of Positano, my favorite town in Italy, hung above my TV in Denver for 11 years. Whenever I got stressed, I would lay on my couch and stare at the multi-layered rows of bed & breakfasts, pensions and villas that cascade down a steep hill toward the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea. I could be devastated by a diagnosis of brain cancer, the ax murder of a sibling or a pending trip to Nebraska and stare at that painting. I’d smell the sweet fragrance of lemon trees from the Amalfi. Suddenly, life is sweet again.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Dinner on a piazza went from a no-no to a yes-yes thanks to Obika’ and its smoked bufala mozzarella

Twenty-year-aged Parma ham and smoked bufala mozzarella at Obika', in the heart of pulsating Campo dei Fiori.

I know Obika’. In 2006 I wrote about it in A Moveable Feast, the traveling food column I wrote for The Denver Post for eight years. Obika’ comes from the Neapolitan word “obica,” meaning, “We are here.” However, the Neapolitan alphabet has no “k.” The Neapolitan owner, Silvio Ursini, is a Bvlgari jewelry exec who started Obika’ in 2004 due to two obsessions: mozzarella and Japanese culture. He switched the “c” to a “k” to give it a Japanese bent and an accent on the end just to be hip.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Trip to Roman barber not such a hair-raising experience

Gildo: "The best barber in Rome," according to my friend, Alessandro.

The problem is Roman men don’t do barbers. They either live at home and have their mothers cut their hair as short as when they were 10 years old or they never cut it and let it hang down the back of their necks. Lots of guys walk around here looking like Fabio. You ladies wonder how Roman men can have such long, flowing, jet-black locks? There are no barbers.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Roman Forum tour is a path worth beating

The remains of Nero's palace high atop Palatine Hill

If you’ve never been to the Forum, you must let your imagination wander. It’s a series of temples missing half their Ionian columns, halves of buildings and scattered blocks of marble everywhere. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you came across a training camp for vandals. But if you close your eyes — particularly after a bottle of Chianti — and let your mind drift, you can imagine beautiful Romans in bright white togas, strolling down marble lanes between palaces, basilicas and temples.

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