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Looks are deceiving from the Borromini Perspective

The architect/artist Francesco Borromini designed this colonnade in 1653 to make Cardinal Bernardino Spada's courtyard look bigger.

On the first floor of the Palazzo Spada, in a small, quiet courtyard, is the real thing. I stared at it for 30 minutes before I finally figured it out. It’s a colonnade, an open-air hallway lined with columns that looks at first glance about 25 meters long. In actuality, when you get closer it’s about 8 ½. How? Why?
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Playa del Carmen’s erotic Reina Roja Hotel “awakens your senses” among other body parts

The Erotica Room is one of six theme rooms of the Reina Roja.

I had a travel experience that will never make “Lonely Planet” or the Los Angeles Times. Penthouse? Almost. That’s why I’m writing this here. The famous literary magazine (Hey, it does have fine writing, too!) loved the tale I told of a trip I took to a hotel that specialized in erotica. You’ve heard of hotels that cater to families and pets and football fans. Welcome to Playa del Carmen where the Reina Roja Hotel caters to sexual deviants. Sadomasochism. Pool-side sex. Lighting out of a brothel. The Reina Roja, while also functioning as a regular hotel, invites anyone to explore their sexual fantasies — or find fantasies you never knew existed or never thought were legal outside Nevada.
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Saving Bolt: A near-dead kitten atop a gutter becomes highlight of a Greek holiday

We found Bolt near death atop a rain gutter. Photo by Marina Pascucci

“Andiamo.” (Let’s go.)
I said that when Marina started walking over to pick it up. I wasn’t worried about her catching a disease from a dead animal. I just didn’t want to break down after watching a dead kitten lay limp in the palm of her hand.
But women have maternal instincts. She broke from my hand and bent over. When she picked it up, a remarkable thing happened. It moved. It moved its tiny, little arms and legs, one of which looked deformed, horribly bent under its scrawny body. It was as skinny as a baby bird in an oil slick. Its elongated neck was as out of proportion as E.T’s. The way his ears dwarfed his tiny head made him look like a bat. I could put my thumb and middle finger around his torso.
And he was near death.
He didn’t meow. His eyes were fused shut from mucous. He didn’t fight to break from our hands. He just moved his three tiny workable legs and his head up and from side to side, straining to see who was helping him. He didn’t need to mew. We knew what he wanted to say.
“Please save me.”
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Skiathos: Greek gods’ gift to Hades-like August travel

Skiathos is only 90 minutes from Rome and 90 miles north of Athens. Photo by Marina Pascucci

Traveling in Greece gave me my definition of freedom: Freedom is deciding what Greek island you want to go to on your way to a boat dock. You can do that in Greece. I didn’t do that on this trip. I took one look at my hotel in Skiathos and had a hard time imagining sleeping anywhere else. Besides, traveling to Greece in August is problematic. It’s bulging with backpackers, partiers, lovers, historians, sun worshippers and shoppers. Zeus would not approve.
But, unlike Greece’s beauty, Zeus is just a myth.
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A new soccer season beckons and Rome’s fans still disgrace the city

Olympic Stadium's Curva Sud was barely half full for last May's crucial match with Napoli.

This city has the worst soccer fans in Europe.

For a tip of the fan base’s melting iceberg, consider Roma opens its Serie A, or national league, season Saturday at home against Udinese. Roma is picked as the best bet to stop Juventus’ string of five straight titles. It’s the last season for Francesco Totti, the native son who will spend his 25th season wearing the Roma jersey and is the most popular figure in Rome since Augustus. Yet 72,000-seat Olympic Stadium Saturday will not sell out. They are frantically selling individual seats in Curva Sud, which is usually filled cheek to cheek three hours before kickoff. As of Tuesday they had sold only 17,000 season tickets, a shocking number considering the passion I see in this city rivals that of the Denver Broncos’ in my old stomping grounds.
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Think Trump would be disaster? Ask Italy after Bunga Bunga Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi giving the Italian gesture for cheating.

Silvio Berlusconi was Italy’s prime minister three times for nine years, from 1994-95, 2001-06 and 2008-11. He had all the trappings of Donald Trump before he took office — and proceeded to run the entire Italian peninsula into the Mediterranean. I wanted to write this as a warning to all the racist, fascist, sexist, uneducated, angry white men who will vote for Trump what could lay ahead.
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Trastevere: From a violent, fiery past to Rome’s giant souvenir stand

Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere is the heart of the Trastevere neighborhood.

Last week I learned a lot about Trastevere’s history going way past the ‘70s. It goes back to before the birth of Christ, to the height of the Roman Empire. Back then Trastevere was a neighborhood of slaves, violence and graft. I went with Rome Explorers, a wonderful, learned Meetup group dedicated to the history and nature of Rome and beyond. Leading the group again was Massimiliano “Max” Francia (guideromax@virgilio.it), Rome’s ubur guide whose library of Roman history could fill the Colosseum.
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What I miss about U.S. — and what I do to compensate in Rome

College football Saturdays, such as here at Folsom Field in Boulder, Colo., is the one thing I miss most about the U.S.

People ask me that all the time. What do you miss? They are little things, not big things. I never knew happiness until I woke up with a cappuccino on my terrace looking out at the Tiber River with birds chirping and then deciding what pizzeria I want to eat at that night.
But some things America can provide that Italy can not. However, I have learned to compensate.
So for those dreaming of a life in the bella paese, here’s a list of things that occasionally cross my mind, like the train passing your window every day back home and you always took for granted.
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A weekend in Spain: Confessions of a Marriott whore

The pool at the Denia Marriott, located on the peninsula across the Gulf of Valencia from Ibiza.

We settled on Denia, a town in Spain I’d never heard of which, if you’re seeking a path less beaten, is always a good sign. A map showed it’s on Spain’s famed Costa Bianca, on the point of a peninsula just across the Gulf of Valencia from hip Ibiza. On its website, the Marriott’s swimming pool looked like something out of a Las Vegas architect’s sexual fantasy. We were sold. I bought two more nights for a Wednesday through Saturday stay. It was the perfect extended weekend in a sexy part of the world.
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Talking to Michigan State sports journalism students brings back memories, advice for a new age

Me with my new friends who are spending a month in Paris and Rome learning about sports media.

Tuesday I spoke to a group of sports journalist students from Michigan State University. Twenty-two students are traveling for a month to Paris and Rome with weekend jaunts around Europe in between. We met in the Palazzo del Banco di Santo Spirito, built in the 1600s to house the Vatican Bank. Just a Frisbee throw from Piazza Navona, the Baroque palace with the four columns bordering the front door is now home to study abroad offices, language programs and the Belize Embassy. It sure beat sitting in a featureless, plaster box at University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
I’ve spoken to journalism classes at numerous colleges. I can usually tell the quality of students by the quality of questions. Michigan State’s students get it. They asked how Italy has changed me. They asked what was the most memorable sports event I ever covered in the U.S. They asked what I thought of the direction of writing in American journalism.
At UNLV, they asked me what Mike Tyson is like.
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Nice another in a long list of great weekend getaways from Rome

It cost only 138 euros to fly Marina and I an hour and 15 minutes to Nice for her birthday.

EasyJet is the greatest boon to European travel since the sidewalk crepe stand.
Which is why celebrating birthdays in Europe is so special. In March I spent my birthday in Sicily. This past weekend I took my girlfriend to Nice for her birthday. I’d pat myself on the back and say I’m not a cheap boyfriend but, in fact, the round trip tickets for two of us was all of 138 euros. That’s 69 each. Sixty-nine euros on a U.S. airline sometimes won’t even pay for your stored luggage.
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Police ride around Rome a glimpse inside a non-violent city — but watch your wallet

Gerardo Mastrangelo and Gian Cristian Salimbene before their Saturday night shift.

Salimbene and Mastrangelo were going to further impress upon me the safety of my adopted city. I’ve always been fascinated by the soft underbelly of touristy towns. What’s it like behind the back-lit monuments, art galleries and romantic piazzas? Where’s the graft? The violence? The danger?
Growing up in America, you can find that in any city. Every metropolitan area in the U.S. has neighborhoods where guns are rampant and murder is common. For the last 10 years, Detroit, a city of 700,000 people, has averaged 345 murders. Oakland, Calif., (pop. 404,000) has averaged 106, Baltimore (pop. 622,000) 234. From 1990-2014 I lived in Denver. It averaged about 150 murders a year.
Rome, with a population of 2.6 million, has averaged 35. Two years ago it had only 27.
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