Los Angeles to Rome. Departure: 2:55 pm PST. Arrival: 2:05 pm CEST. Approx. 15 hours of travel time. What with travel delirium and all, I'll limit this first post of the Grand Tour (Part Due) to some photos, compliments of Sean's delirium and camera phone, and an occasional gloss.

Still Life, LAX International Terminal #1

Snatching only a tiny taste of sleep from the jostling, cramping, dehydrating netherland of air travel, enduring what in all fairness was about as good a transatlantic and transalpine flight, respectively, as one could expect, Sean and I deplaned at Fiumicino airport about one click below total airburn, waited for our bags, tried to get cash from two bunk ATMs that refused to give up the lucre, and met with our driver--yes, our driver, a very taciturn, fit, cigarette-smoking anachronism with designer clothes and a pristine Mercedes. A better driver than you might expect, although he may have been on his best behavior for the Americanos. He took us to a functioning ATM and dropped us at our apartment on Via della Luce in the Trastevere district. The vaulted dark wood beamed ceilings remind me of Camberwell, on a much, much smaller scale. But it's home, and it's in Rome, and it's beautiful.

Entrance, Via della Luce, 16

The living room, Via della Luce, 16

After sussing the place out, we ventured out to Viale di Trastevere and hit up the local Billa Supermarket for some staples. Our first adventure. Being the good armchair ecologists that we are, we decided to throw our fruits and vegetables, sans bags, into our basket, like we do at home. At the register, we immediately discovered why this is not the Billa way. One must bag each item, place it on a scale, press the button corresponding to the fruit/vegetable, and place the sticker that the machine spits out on the bag. Then and only then is one to bring one's produce to the register. Our checker, a young lady not unlike any other checker in the Western world, began gesturing and spouting Italian at an impressive rate, all of which was entirely lost on Sean and me, who understood all of this to be just the routine chatter of an Italian checker-girl. Only when the chatter accompanied a game of charades that essentially consisted of her picking up each item of produce and pointing out, manually, that she cannot ring us up because these things are not in bags did we begin to understand. And only when she took us all but literally by the hand, still chattering, and leaving a line of increasingly sour-looking customers, back to the produce section to demonstrate for us the Billa way did we finally, fully comprehend her very vocal dumbshow. My response? "Come si dice, 'I am very sorry'?" Her response: "Haha! Very sorry! Haha!" It is hard to convey her unique mixture of ire and good humor in writing. Suffice it to say, we thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to Roman culture. We paid our EU$23, took our bags within bags (which as it turns out is not the environmental atrocity we thought it would be: their plastic bags are 100% "compostabile"), and headed home.

We walked the short stretch home amidst molti graffiti and accattoni (panhandlers) and drivers who desultorily obey traffic signals and made our first meal: espresso. It was awful. I convinced Sean to buy Segafredo because the best espresso I had in Paris was Segafredo. But this was clearly not the same animal. This was "intermezza," which I now realize should have tipped us off. This is medium grade. This is shit.

A very hot, very disappointed Adam sipping a substandard dopio in the kitchen at Via della Luce.

A sleep-deprived, wonky-brained Sean masking his disappointment behind a veneer of delirium.

The Roman Banquet

Sean is washing away the scum of the day-that-was-two-days, and I close this out, to the ameliorative strains of Willie Nelson, looking forward to washing and eating and sleeping and really digging in to the other, non-Billa Rome tomorrow.