Roman Daze: "Oh, to Be Back in the Land of Coca-Cola"

The Piazza Di Spagna, the Spanish Steps. December 2008 - January 2009. Featuring the "Light of Freedom" (memorializing the victims of kidnapping everywhere). Photo - Brooklyn Beat

Back from the Eternal City. Savoring the memories and experiences of traveling with My Better Half and our four kids (13x2, 17 and 20). Meeting our daughter who is studying in Urbino for the year. We stayed in an apartment near the Spanish Steps, walking all over the city. Seeing the antiquities and the art, old and new. Shopping in the supermercati with the Romans, making and enjoying family meals together, talking the train to Napoli and Pompei down the coast. Jean Michel Basquiat exhibit. Visiting the Jewish Ghetto (geto), seeing the Great Synagogue and the Portico d'Ottavio, and talking with the Italian - Jews there. Attending midnight Mass on Christmas at the Chiese di San Ambrogio e Charles for the experience. New Years eve, crazy fireworks. Watching The Godfather 2 in dubbed Italian. Shopping. Seeing a new world and returning to a familiar one with a different perspective.

On our last day, on the via del Corso, this tune popped into my head and now I see I will never shake it...

When I Paint My Masterpiece

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.
Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.

Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola.
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

I left Rome and landed in Brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside.
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.

-Bob Dylan

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