Four Days in Rome

Rome has a way of interrupting your plans with something two thousand years old. I’d set out one morning just to find a specific bakery and ended up standing in front of the Pantheon instead, having completely forgotten it was on the way.

The Colosseum is worth the early alarm to beat the tour groups — an hour inside before it fills up is a completely different experience to midday. Trastevere at night was the opposite kind of good: no monuments, just narrow streets, good wine, and no particular plan.

I never sat down for coffee once. Standing at the bar with a one-euro espresso, the way everyone actually does it, turned out to be half the fun.