Here is my annual Jan. 11 list of all the reasons I love Rome. I hope it all inspires you to visit and reminds my fellow Rome residents to appreciate all that we have here. It’s a magical place, and it’s nearly 3,000 years old. It’s not going away. Neither am I.
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Those views changed on this trip. Stockholm will never make the cover of Budget Travel magazine or the to-do lists of hygiene-challenged backpackers. It will, however, continue to be a world leader in progressive thinking and healthy living. I couldn’t think of a better place to end the last year on earth before Donald Trump blows it up after Xi Jinping flips him off on Twitter.
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If you’re a fan of Jude Law and Diane Keaton, if you’re a fan of Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty”), if you’re a fan of twisting sacred institutions such as the Catholic Church, do not miss this series. Sorrentino, a native of Naples, turns the church inside out. As the real, modern Catholic Church makes major strides toward the modern world under current Pope Francis, Sorrentino’s pope wants the church to revert practically back to the Inquisition. Basically, Law plays the first pope who is a complete, 100 percent dick.
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I will be delivering lots of presents Saturday night. I will mostly sprinkle them around Rome but also have a special delivery to New York. Does Trump Tower have a chimney or does Donald Trump let his Mexican house cleaners in through the lobby door? Here’s my list of gifts for all those who were naughty and nice in 2016. Guess who was the most naughty.
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Soccer attendance in Rome, and all over Italy, is dropping faster than Italy’s government. Nearly all the teams are playing in front of half-empty stadiums. League officials have termed it “embarrassing.” Players are meeting with fan groups to settle qualms.
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Prime minister Matteo Renzi’s resignation Monday following Sunday’s runaway defeat of his referendum has left Italy’s political future wildly up in the air. In Italian politics, that’s a little like saying the Ganges River is more filthy than usual. However, it’s true. Italy may be another domino that falls in the European Union, which is starting to reveal cracks like a windshield of a car driving through a war zone.
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Welcome to life in Budapest. It’s where thermal baths are part of the lifestyle, not just a luxury taken on weekend getaways as Marina and I recently took. Budapest has had a brutal, violent past. However, it is lucky in one regard. It sits atop a geological fault where nearly 8 million gallons of water, in varying degrees of sensually warm temperatures, pour from 123 thermal and 400 mineral springs.
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Our Thanksgiving meal, our first venture into full-scale American hospitality, was just short of an apocalypse. I used the word “short” because I heard no documented reports of botulism. We learned that life as an ex-pat isn’t always like “Under a Tuscan Sun.” Frances Mayes never mentioned anything about cleaning up day-old chicory off a floor.
First, putting on a Thanksgiving affair in Rome is an ordeal nothing short of packing for relocation to Mercury.
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Being an extra is like being a bird. You do nothing for hours and then must provide a few moments of window dressing before flying away without being noticed. Sometimes you are. Take the cardinal whose cell phone went off twice during one of Law’s speeches. Or the cardinal who wouldn’t stop talking after “ACTION!”
Or me blowing a scene with one turn.
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As I sat in jam-packed Curva Sud, the A.S. Roma ultras’ one-time home that has long since gone quiet, I sensed for the first time this growing phenomenon on the Italian sporting scene. Italy, the winner of four soccer World Cups and where soccer rivalries resemble provincial wars, has gone rugby mad. And on Saturday, the rabid rugby fans were treated to the Alabama Crimson Tide of world rugby. New Zealand’s All Blacks won the last two World Cups in 2011 and 2015. They won the inaugural one in 1987.
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