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Vacation time is pretty much a myth when you’re self-employed. Since last November, I’ve had a total of two days this year where I haven’t been working, or at the very least checking emails. So when I discovered that my tax bill didn’t quite use up all the money I (or rather, my accountant) had set aside for it, I did what any normal person would do – I set up my out-of-office autoresponder and went to Rome.
It’s extremely cheap to go to Rome in August, mainly because all of Rome has gone somewhere else on vacation. (Mediterraneans have got it so right – summer vacation isn’t just for school kids.) We didn’t really mind that so much was closed for the summer, because it gave us an excuse to search out the little bits of Rome that normally get shoved aside in favor of the Colosseum et al.
One lovely surprise was the Museum of Musical Instruments (Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali). It’s a big house stuffed with 3,000 instruments dating from ancient times through to the 1800s, collected by opera singer, Evan Gorga. Apparently Gorga ran into some financial difficulties, and donated the collection to the state in a deal that cleared his debts and gave him a lifelong pension. (Somehow I doubt my Fender Cyclone and non-reverse Firebird copy could keep me in pretzels for a week, let alone a lifetime.)
Among the items on display are a 17th-century harp, an early piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori (largely regarded as the inventor of the instrument), and a section dedicated to unusual folk instruments from non-European countries, my favorites being the African madolins made out of armadillo shells. Annoyingly they don’t allow photography, but I managed to get a cheeky snap of Neil peering through some 18th-century cellos.
Note the massive pile of whipped cream in the top right.
But, we can’t talk about Italy without mentioning food, and even those of us who don’t have much of a sweet tooth find it hard to pass up some proper Italian gelato. Rough Guide told us that the Gelateria Giovanni Fassi, was a short (and sweaty) walk away. It dates back to 1880, making it the oldest gelateria and ice cream factory in Italy. It was nearly 4pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. There was no way we weren’t going.
And there was no way we weren’t going to love this. First of all, this place was a bastion of efficiency. (Anyone who has ever visited Italy, or any other Mediterranean country, particularly in the summer, will have noticed that expediency is not on most Italians’ lists of customer service priorities.) You place your order at a desk (1, 2 or 3 scoops) and take the little slip over to the counter which houses about a billion different flavors of gelato and ices. Even though it was rammed, we were served in minutes.
