Felix and I spent much of Monday riding busses, trains, and trams to see parts of the city and, especially, bus-stops that we hadn’t before. It was wonderful.

From the corner near our house in Trastevere, we took the No. 8 tram along the viale di Trastevere southward past where we usually get off, at the Trastevere Station. The tram continues along the circonvallazione Gianicolense past two major and park-like hospitals. Where we got off, the streets were populated largely with nuns in habits and people in bandages or casts.

The No. 8 runs along the median in broad avenues for its entire route. It stops at the lights, but it doesn’t get bogged in the traffic. The median is also open to the busses, which don’t use it much since their stops are at curbside; to emergency vehicles, which use it all the time because it’s quicker; and to taxis.

Over the weekend, we had a visit from our worldly California neighbor and old colleague John, who realized that he had to change planes on a Saturday somewhere in Europe, and Rome turned out to be an efficient choice between San Francisco and London. (Air travel, especially when it involves a weekend, can sometimes net these strange layovers; I was coming home from Seattle in May, and because of the way airline routes worked on one particular afternoon, it was cheaper and more fun for me to have dinner with a friend in Los Angeles and change to a commuter flight to San Jose than to fly straight home on one of the hourly shuttles from Seattle to San Francisco.) After a fine dinner at one of the Slow Food recommended trattorie in the centro storico -- a dinner at which I tried braised abbacchio in a standard Roman sauce as well as rigatoni with pajata -- John walked back to Trastevere with us.

When John was on his way back to jet-setting, it was the party hour here in Trastevere. After a few minutes at the empty taxi rank, John sensibly pointed out that we could just stand along the tram tracks, and a free taxi would show up. I filed this under useful travel detail, alongside remember to check if a strike is scheduled for the morning you leave to the airport.

From the No. 8, we changed to a 719, which is a bus that runs back past Trastevere station, across the ponte Testaccio (which I had never crossed before), into the neighborhood called Testaccio. From Testaccio was the meatpacking district of Rome on and off over the centuries, and most of the guidebooks list it as a great place to eat offal or to go to a nightclub. To me, it just seems like an appealing and leafy sort of place.

At the Ostiense station, Felix and I got off and visited another station bar, at this one for a chocolate pastry. (Felix really likes chocolate, which is clearly an inherited trait.) Maybe there has been a campaign to clean up stations in Rome since I first came in 1991, or maybe my impressions have changed, but Roman train stations feel distinctly salubrious this summer.

From Ostiense, Felix chose a train going through to the Termini station so that we could see the fountain of the naiads in piazza della Repubblica. Termini is a whopping big terminus -- a terminus is like Boston’s South Station, most of Zurich Hauptbahnhof, or New York’s Grand Central: the trains’ tracks end in the station, so they have to leave in the direction they came. Termini is right inside the walls. I hadn’t visited it during this trip, although it’s where a lot of people get their first impressions of Rome: pretty fine 1930s architecture in the station itself, ancient baths across the way, and people from all over the world.

The naiad fountain is interesting, and some guidebooks say it was scandalous for its sensuality when built. It led Felix and me to talk about what makes bronze statues valuable. At 7, Felix has a distinct sense of the Olympic-medal-model for valuing materials. He knows about the minor metals like platinum and tungsten, and he’s even up on the difference in composition between brass and bronze, but there is clearly something significant about the triad bronze, silver, and gold. The fountain, thus, should have a substantial value because so much of it is in bronze.

I mentioned this, later, when Felix was picking out an ancient bronze key, to the septugenarian antique dealer. “Boys, especially about 7 to 10, all have the sense of a commerce in them,” he told me. I got the impression, although I’m not sure I understood exactly his words, that some boys never lost this sense.

A few days later, our old friend Ken was visiting and he said, “You know, I was just at the steelworks in Stuttgart, and the foreman explained that unreinforced concrete and steel have the same value: if you buy concrete and steel and spend the same amount, the pieces are very different sizes, but they can support the same load.”

From Termini, we took a No. 5 tram -- and a very crowded tram -- into the neighborhood that I think is called Casalino, although this might take in Prenestino, Gordiani, and maybe part of Centocelle. This part of Rome is clearly not particularly fancy and I think it’s also really appealing.

We went to the end of the No. 5’s line, along the charmingly generic via dei Castani (Chestnut St). Felix suggested it was time to go home for lunch, and that suggested that it was time to go out for lunch, so we went to a tavola calda, which is pretty close to what people in California call a “steam table place”. Felix had some pizza bianca, which seemed to be his mood, and I ate a plate of delightful stuffed mushrooms (surprisingly piquant) and a bigger plate of spinach.

From this part of Rome whose name I admittedly don’t know -- maybe it’s Centocelle -- we got on the 552, which is a delightful bus that runs along some major commercial streets, and then right through the neighborhood called Torre Spaccata on my map. There are shopping malls and big-box stores along the avenues. (Why are they called “big-box stores” in the press. Is it because of the shape of the building? The shape of what people buy there?)

We got off the 552 at a place called Cinecittà, which looks distinctly like it must be the movie studio where Roman movies are made. It has a metro stop, and we were ready for the cool quiet of the metro.

The S. Giovanni station is actually right outside the walls, while S. Giovanni in Laterano (which is the big church where the pope, who is the bishop of Rome, gets to act like a bishop) is inside. We walked for a little while through this neighborhood, familar from previous trips, and landed in a gelateria for a while.

The No. 3 tram rings much of the city, but construction has turned part of the line -- all the way from Trastevere station to Porta Maggiore -- into a bone-rattling bus line. We take it fairly often, but it is genuinely uncomfortable, and the no. 3 has been the only bus line anywhere on which Alaina and I cannot converse, because the clashing and crashing are so loud.

Nonetheless, Felix and I took the no. 3 home, between the Aventine hill and Testaccio, across the bridge to porta Portese, and then to our stop in front of the education ministry.

Book

I’ve been reading The pirate city, an adventure story mostly set in north Africa, by R.M. Ballentyne. It’s pretty odd, but it’s good bedtime reading. The essential driver of the story is a family of well-off Sicilian traders kidnapped and then enslaved in Algiers by a letter-of-marque ship, circa 1800.