Bourdainism in Rome: Marveling at Human Achievements, Falling in Love With Rain, and Princess—For You, I’d Bring You the Moon, and the Stars, too

I kissed zero Italians while in Italy.

Crazy, right?

Crazy because statistically, spiritually, and according to every auntie who’s ever watched Eat Pray Love—I should’ve at least had one cinematic moment where a man presses me against a centuries-old wall and tells me I’ve “awakened something” in him. Actually, a woman at a perfume shop asked me if this was my ‘Eat Pray Love’ moment. And I said, “We can do better than that, sister.”

I needed some sort of routine. A loose one, but still…a thread to hold the days together.

So I chose a wonderful little restaurant in front of my hotel and dined there basically every day like I was a local woman of importance. Not because I’m predictable, but because I’m learning that consistency is, in fact, a form of self-respect. (Also: I hate packing and unpacking my nervous system.)

My order became a ritual: a bottle of sparkling water with lemon, pasta, and maybe a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. (I’ve defaulted to accepting I’ll drink while traveling—hey, rigidity never served me too well.) Then: my daily walk. Not a “steps” walk. A devotional walk.

And Rome… Rome is flirtation as a civic duty.

The way people flirt here should be studied. Getting hit on at a restaurant isn’t necessarily novel, but get this: one night, I ordered a lobster, and I asked:

“Is there any way I could get this cracked open when served? I’m afraid I’m not great at opening shellfish, not with these nails…”

And he said, “Tell me exactly, what is your dream? What do you want? You want it cut up for you?”

Now. I had no idea if he was being sarcastic, romantic, or simply Italian. But I said, “I mean, yeah, that’d be ideal.”

And guess what.

He did indeed cut the lobster into bite size pieces, then added Parmesan for me as well, and chili oil, and mixed the pasta up and served it to me on a platter.

The whole staff came out to wait on me. I felt mildly uncomfortable and very beet red. Maybe they felt bad because I was a single woman on Christmas week. Maybe they truly thought I was a K-Pop star. I dunno.

But I’ve gotta tell ya: Americans have a thing or two they could learn.

Italians know they’re charming, and they’re used to it working on foreigners. They do not take rejection too well, I’ll tell you that much. I think my block list expanded to double in my time here. I take back whatever I said about men in Central America.

But eh—truth is, a girl was too busy falling in love with rain.

And I mean falling in love. Not in a moody Tumblr way. In a real way: the kind where you stop fighting the weather and let it make a poet out of you. Rome in the rain doesn’t feel like “bad luck.” It feels like permission. Like the city is telling you: Slow down. Write. Watch people. Stop trying to conquer the day like it owes you something.

There are a few things that struck me about Rome:

The weather is perfect. Literally perfect. The air, perfect. The ambiance, perfect, too.

The style—oh, the style. Getting complimented in Texas? Easy. New York? Bit harder, but not far-fetched. In Rome? I felt like calling Vogue and asking, “Do you know me, yet?” It challenged me, and I loved it. Everyone looks like they have a secret life, a cigarette, and a lover who texts in complete sentences.

Food? Come on, now. Food is the one religion I practice without skepticism.

And for every pro, there is a con: the crowds in the city center made me feel like I was in Times Square on New Year’s Day, and that’s not fun. But my local friends made it clear: Roman locals don’t live anywhere near the center. To live like them, I’d need more time, and a car—and the kind of casual confidence that says, “Yes, I will drive through an ancient maze of scooters and near-death experiences, and I will do it in sunglasses.”

I actually spent the better of two days outside of dawn hours in my hotel, and happily so: listening to the rain, writing, working, drawing.

I wrote a lot in Rome.

Here’s one of my favorites:

“I love when every detail is intentional; I love when people remember details. I love being seduced by the depths of one’s mind; I love marveling at ancient wonders that were only possible without all of the distractions forced upon us now. I love knowing that we, as humans are collectively capable of achieving incredible things.

When friends of mine travel and they get home, they tell me they lament their lives. They want to keep just traveling, and I can’t help but think, ‘Of course…you spent several days enveloped in luxury, why would you want to escape the bubble?’ I travel a bit differently: I don’t plan anything at all. I don’t want to escape. I want to just be inspired. Usually, I just make conversation with people and they tell me what I should do. I’ve done a few tours here and there, but I usually end up canceling them or leaving prematurely. To me, it feels too packaged and fake.

My trips usually end when I can’t wait to get home and apply my new perspective to my current life. I do not travel to escape.

I met someone in Rome who asked me, “But the way you travel… you are getting biases; no? Surely the restaurant people will recommend their friends, and everything is marketing; everything is sales, don’t you want to research for yourself?”

And before I got into it and explained that by that same logic, research would only be the same, I just said, ‘Well, I’ve never had a bad time.”

And you know what? He smiled, then showed me the most incredible sight I’ve ever seen in my life, right up there with Manchu Piccu: Rome at night. And therein proved my point.”

That’s the thing about Rome: it doesn’t need you to be efficient. It needs you to be receptive.

And as an art-lover, I’m usually a fan of galleries…paintings, primarily. Of course, my father was an architect, as I mentioned before, and I do appreciate that too from time to time.

But in Rome, that was all I could think of. Architecture.

The galleries were beautiful, yes—but the Roman architecture, just out there, non-graffitied and all in the center of the city, blew my mind. It felt indecent. Like walking through a museum where the admission price is simply being awake.

Every building, sculpture, and column seemed to invite me to a rabbit hole:

“How do you think I got here?”

And suddenly I wasn’t just looking at beauty—I was looking at proof. Proof that humans, when not entirely sedated by distraction, are capable of building things that outlive empires… and relationships… and whatever petty little crisis we think is the whole universe this week.