Early days in the Eternal City

First weekend on my own has been, frankly, a bit tough. I'm knackered, my italian isn't holding up very well (perhaps I should've expected that, after only 5 weeks of - intermittent - study. Hmmm) and I know absolutely NO ONE here. I've spent the last two days trying to navigate the supermarket, talking to the wall and failing to get past chapter 6 in my textbook. My new flat (home for the next month) is pure woggy kitch - all madonnas on the walls and best china in glass fronted cabinets. The landlady speaks only Italian, and I didn't dare refuse the coffee she had on the hob waiting for me, even though I don't, under any circumstances, drink coffee.

I know I've been a bit shellshocked. In all yesterdays wandering in this great city nothing 'really grabbed' me, apart from two old and ugly blokes who, in separate incidents, asked me for a drink 'only for talking, if you want'. Am I really only attractive to 50 year olds in Italy?

Today has been different. Today, I've caught a bus into town that took me past some amazing stuff - buses really are the best way to join up the dots in a new city, London taught me that - and at last, after 6 days (3 last time, and these last 3) I'm having my first, proper 'Holy crap batman, I live in ROME' moments...

The bus said '170 - Stazione Termini' on it. I know where that is, so I figured I'd hop on and see where else it took me. Turns out it runs along the Tiber, past some beautiful Roman ruins that aren't even named on my maps, then the Circo Massimo, home of chariot races in millennia gone by. On through Piazza Venezia - the square they tell tourists to not even TRY crossing until they understand italian traffic, onward up a winding hill past an irish and a scottish pub to Via Nazionale, then the old-style European Piazza della Repubblica and finally the train station.

This was the Rome I'd been looking for and which, apart from a few soaring moments when I stumbled on the Pantheon, and ate my first cassata beside the Trevi fountain, I hadn't found when I was first here. In those first crazy days, and even yesterday, Rome was overwhelming: with its layers of history all competing for attention over the smell of rotting garbage, piss and stale tabacco, or the cacophony of tourist groups, punctuated by the inevitable loud American.

Suddenly, from the coolness of an airconditioned bus, here were bite-sized pieces that I could file away for future reference, the quiet chatter of Italians, their unfailingly polite routine of 'permesso, prego, grazie' as people squeeze past each other to the doors. Here are places I can come back to to soak up at my leisure, landmarks I can see from a dozen different angles as I rolled out the streetmap inside my head. (Note: you can see the Vittorio Emanuelle monument at Venezia from everywhere. I must learn more about who he was!)

And here I found simple roman elegance, rubenesque statuary, and architecture that reminded me that, after all, I am in one of the leading cities of Europe. And I live here now!

I'm revitalised - I walk more than halfway home, tracing the route and stopping to wonder at the landscapes my mind snapped as I passed them before. I'm going to stop for icecream at the gelateria near my flat, which stocks more than 80 flavours (including sorbets and soy-ice cream, for the vegans out there). And for the first time, I suspect I might quite like Rome for more than just her food and her weather!