The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Related Content

• Eating Christians

We arrived in Rome yesterday around 2 p.m. This after 18 straight hours of travel, consisting of two hours in the MSP airport (who knew we'd whip through security in 30 seconds?), eight hours on the flight to Amsterdam, four hours in Schipol, and another hour 58 minutes in the air.

I don't sleep on planes [I can barely sleep in beds, for Christ's sake!]. My head was still stuck back home: Did our son make it to school? Was anyone feeding the cat? Had our daughter had anything new pierced in the scant day since we left? Weary and worried, I found Rome formidable.

Everything sounds and smells different here. The streets are made of cobblestone, which gives the rain a darker odor and car tires a hollow bumping beat. There are throngs of people snaking down narrow alleyways, flashing neon Farmacia signs, tiny stores selling €200 shoes.

Around 5 p.m., I felt irrationally daunted. Strung out, stupid, and desperately in need of a drink. Still unshowered and in our two-day-old clothes, John and I went to a supermercato called Sma. It was under a furniture store, accessible only through a subway-like set of stairs. The aisles were crazy -- some straight, others curling, with no pattern at all -- but in the back of the store (or maybe it was the left in the front), there was a small wine section. We sifted through the bottles, mostly Italian, a few French.

There were rows of a Barbera d'Alba 2006 from the Cooperativa FRA Produttori for €4.99 each, plus one dusty, scuffed bottle of 2005 marked one Euro less. It had to be a mistake, I told John. Throughout Europe, 2005 was the best year in decades. There was no way we could buy this wine for the equivalent of $6. But when we went to the cashier, she rang up the Barbera d'Alba for exactly €3.99.

I don't know that any wine has ever tasted so good to me. Fruity and musty with a little bit of the dark, rocky rain I'd been smelling all afternoon. The day softened into evening. We drank the entire bottle in our room at the Hotel Italia, then fell asleep -- blissfully -- for a little over 11 hours. And when we woke up this morning, the sun was out and everything was new.