Trading Bonjour for Buongiornio

First,let me just say that if you can make it to Paris on any June 21^st, DO IT!! The Fete de la Musique aka World Music Day, although the direct translation is Festival of Music. Any who…it’s fantastic. All types of musicians take to the streets and venues on nearly every block and the crowds rejoice! Because every living soul with a pulse loves music.  The city vibrates with sweet tunes all evening long. What a treat to have been here and what a perfect bon voyage from the city that steals just a little bit more of my heart every second. 

Musical mayhem in the streets of Paris

Rome! You are a charmer. A city built amongst, incestuously with the ruins of an ancient empire. Every which way you turn, you are reminded that you are surrounded by a city mature beyond your imagination, who happens to just have celebrated it’s 2765^th birthday!  An ancient civilization so advanced that they had libraries, working toilets and running water. We can’t even say that’s true for parts of the world today. FYI – America is 235 years old. They have street trash older than that. France is 1400 years old…1/2 the age and it shows, you sexy young thing! 

 

Roman Forum

As you may recall, I reported that I would in fact discover the secret behind Italy’s mind bogglingly low divorce rates (20%). I may be one step closer. On the train ride into the city from Rome’s Fiumicino airport, I met a friendly woman by luck alone. Let me just say, I have a habit of winging it when it comes to my trips. I do as little research as possible so as to not leave out any possibility of chance sweeping me off my feet. It’s all in the wonder -  In the magic of discovery. Well, that also means I don’t always know EXACTLY how to get where I’m going and when you are talking about cities unkown and dimly lit streets at 10pm, that’s sometimes a crap shoot. In come my Italian guardian. She happened to be going to the exact same stop and happened to live on the same street. Talk about dumb luck! An escort home from a wonderfully interesting woman. And so I begin.

Wedding's all about in the Eternal City

 

In our short 30 minute train ride she tells me of her incredible life. It reads a bit like a love story of the ages. 18 years old young girl from Madrid studying in London meets a young Italian in medical school. They fall madly in love and wed one week later. Move to Rome. Followed by 42 years of marriage, she becomes a United Nations worker specializing in nutritional enrichment and him a leading Cardiologist. He has a heart attack late one night and the ambulance arrives 25 minutes too late. Mind you they lead the healthiest of lives and ran marathons in their free time. He falls into a coma and recovers just enough to live out the next 5 years of life in a wheel chair with little speech and cognition. She describes them as the best 5 years of her life. “Had I lived this life to only love my husband, to know his love and be by his side, that would be enough for 5 lifetimes.” She never left his side in those 5 year. She sang to me the song of eternal love she was singing to him the morning he died in her arms one year ago today. Passion, instinctual attraction and the heart to follow the palpitations that tell you it’s so. Just a glimpse. More research to come. 

Dining in  Piazza Navona and capturing the exact moment Italy scores the game winning point against England during the 2012 Euro Cup- Priceless