Flight of Fancy in Roma

     It has been a while since my last post. Perhaps it is that we have fallen into a routine of life living in and around a Tuscan village known as Volterra. It has been a month of celebrations with my birthday having passed. A month of multiple dinners with new friends and one with an old HS friend and her husband. The month of olive harvesting and pressing to extra virgin olive oil. November is a special month. It is the month that most Ex-pats celebrate Thanksgiving. I had not taken the time this month to just look around and take in what is before me naturally. But, in the excitement of visiting our son in Rome for Thanksgiving, we decided to visit one of my favorite sites: Castel Sant'Angelo. It is special to me because 16 years ago I visited it for the first time, before the economic boom, when it was rustic and glorious in it's crude appearance. It was the place that I made my first international phone call. Weird, right? Well, not for me. 16 years ago, I had an infant son named Liam Mackey Soffer. In our plan to visit Italy, we had to make the tough decision to leave him with my parents in the US at 10 months old. I would use phone cards to call Liam just so he could hear my voice. Castel Sant'Angelo is where I would come to make the calls home.

So, here we are 16 years later revisiting this wonderful castle: former Tomb of Hadrian, burial site of many subsequent rulers, prison to later captives of war, and safe haven to the Popes following the sack of Rome in 1527. Still today there is a wall which connects the Vatican to the Castle. It was the escape route set up for Popes to run to escape capture or even death.

We experienced the excitement of bringing Liam to the Castle. We saw how much the exterior had changed in just that short while: gift shops, an indoor ticket booth,audio tour stands, relics on display, glass enclosures, refurbished Papal quarters and a public bathroom. One very beautiful thing happened when Liam led us to a room that he ventured ahead of us to see. It was a Baroque-style room called the hall of Paolina. Pope Paul III's sister's quarters. It was gloriously adorned with frescoes of pastel colored cherubs and ornate adornments. It bore the symbol SPQR  which symbolizes Senatus PopulusQue Romana meaning the government of the ancient Roman republic. I had never seen the room before as it was closed to the public years ago. I turned to a guide in the room named Petrpaolo (Peterpaul) to ask him how long this room was on display explaining, I had been there before but never seen this room. He replied "16 years." I was shocked, it must have opened shortly after we visited.We continued to converse in our equal versions of second languages: my broken Italian, his broken English. It was incredible. He explained that when he was a little boy, he used to visit there often and it was free to enter the castle. Now, it has a cost of 7 Euros per adult, kids under 18 years are free. Petrpaolo was proud because he has been employed there and was excited to explain where Hadrian's tomb once stood. The explanation was better than any audio tour I could ever buy. 

Following the elaborate explanations with big smiles and passion by Petrpaolo, Liam approached us once again, urging us to come out of the papal library and look outside. He said "Mom, dad, you have to come see these birds!" "Come out onto the veranda it's incredible!" So, we did! We ventured outside to behold something incredible! It must have been thousands of birds. They were seriously loud and determined in their work. They were performing what looked to me like air ballet. They would move in unison but with varied formations and flutter across the sky. It was better than fireworks! They formed what looked like an exclamation point, a running lion, triangles, tornado cones, and all in a wonderful stream of duty! I turned to see Petrpaolo by my side. He explained that this is a something the migrant birds do every year about this time in November. "They are preparing to migrate to Africa". Astounding!

To see video of this marvelous display view it here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sir-YM8400o

It was a wonderful way to see in nature the ins and outs of routine and ritual much like Thanksgiving but upon the canvas of the Roman sunset-filled sky! A memory I will not soon forget!