30 Blog Post October 3, 2024 “The Haircut”
The day started off badly. I woke up feeling distinctly like a cold was not just hovering in the distance, but like it had already landed, but Alistair needed to get a haircut. So I stayed behind and he went back to a local barber shop we had passed in our travels yesterday.
When he got to the Antico Barberi, the barber did not speak English, but he asked Alistair a one-word question: “Classico?” and Alistair said “Yes. Classico,” even though he had no idea what that actually meant. The barber began, but did not use clippers, which was unusual, and he cut Alistair’s hair entirely by hand with scissors. Then, after cutting Alistair’s hair, the barber used a type of long wax match to burn Alistair’s hair. Alistair could hear the sizzle and smelled burnt hair around his head the whole time. ( I did some research, and it’s supposed to help with preventing split ends and with keeping the haircut looking good for a longer period of time.) Then the barber put his hand into a glove-like apparatus with a vibration that he used to massage Alistair’s scalp, and finally, he washed Alistair’s hair. Around that time, a well-dressed Italian man came in to have his nails done, which was completely strange to Alistair. The barber then used 5 or 6 different brushes to part and style Alistair’s hair before sending him out the door, kind of stunned but very well-coiffed! The cost? A cool 45 euros, which is more than he would normally spend, but hey—this is Italy!
We then took that new haircut to the local Anglican Church which was holding a noontime service. Since we aren’t sure what we’re doing or where we’ll be this Sunday, we decided to go to the weekday service at All Saints’ Church close to where we are staying. Fr. Rob was happy to see us and another young man who had wandered in, and then stayed for the service. We ended up taking the young man, Fred, out to lunch at a German-Italian Taverna in the basement of local building because he wanted to talk about church, and about his possible call to ministry. Fred has served in the military and is about to move to Colorado to become a commercial pilot but has felt the call to become a chaplain to soldiers. We spent two hours with him, learning more about him and asking him questions. This was the first time we have had a meal with someone else since we arrived here (other than the food tour—but we didn’t choose to eat with those people, even though it was fun).
During all this, the rain had started in Rome, and it just got worse and worse as the day went on, which frustrated me. Because we walk everywhere, rain really gets in the way, and once our clothes and shoes get wet, we can’t always get them dried, so I wrote postcards in the hotel room, and Alistair tried to catch up on our record keeping for the trip, but as always, we have to leave at some point to have our dinner, but didn’t want to go far.
I know I’ve described this before, but what we wanted was ‘apertivo’ which is a happy hour tradition of pairing small dishes of food—cheeses, veggies and meats with—a drink. Around here, as in Venice, the Aperol Spritz is the drink of choice, and I am still enamored of it myself. Maybe it’s the cheerful orange color, but it feels light and vacation-ish, but it’s not sweet.
We left the hotel in the pouring rain (travel tip: buy the best rated, lightest, wind resistant travel umbrella you can find. My umbrella is now failing to keep the rain off my head and it leaks big cold drops down my head and back. Not good.) We decided we needed to land somewhere close enough so we could spend the least amount of time in the cold rain, and we stumbled on a little shop/restaurant, Calabriat, that had a back garden terrace that we had all to ourselves. They brought out the appetizers, prepared in their own kitchen: small dishes of roasted peppers, sauteed mushrooms, olives, cheeses, cured meats and salami, artichoke hearts, taralli which are small ‘o’s of dough that are baked and crunchy, slices of bread, a tomato-red pepper spread that was warmed on a votive candle stand.
Other than the food, it was completely un-fancy. We ate off paper plates and used plastic cutlery, drank our water from small plastic cups. But the freshness of the food, and the attention that they gave us as they brought out the platters for our table made the whole meal special. Rain drummed on the roof of the terrace, but we were warm and dry in our little private dining area with our meal of small bites and tastes of the vast array of flavors available in this food centric culture.
Afterward, we walked back up the hill to our hotel, only 5 minutes away, full and happy with our choice, cold rain dripping down my neck from an umbrella that has given up, and grateful for the opportunity to become part of this very different world, for the time to be flexible so we could meet Fred and Fr. Rob at church today, so we could stop at the local grocery store/restaurant to eat our small meal.
Oh…and Alistair’s haircut still looked marvelous, even after our walk in the rain. These Italians have style.
