Home alone in Rome

Alone for Christmas. Again. But being alone isn't the same as lonely. Besides, I do have company: my lovely dog, Ella, and my gorgeous asthmatic cat, Bud. They are perfect company. It's just the world outside my home that dictates Christmas is for family, Christmas is a time for sharing, it's a time for togetherness.
In Italy it is said that Christmas is for family, New Year is for friends.

This year, I got myself a tree, a small wooden beast from a popular Scandinavian home goods store. It's so small the cat isn't interested.
Then I have to figure what to eat. Leisure time is easily dealt with in the age of Netflix and a surplus of unread books weighing down my bedside table.
Italian Christmas dictates fish for the 24th and something heavier and richer for the 25th such as roast lamb.
I go fish wise for Christmas Eve, a smoked salmon mousse with pickled vegetables. Then spoil it, by adding a chicken parfait under an orange jelly with beetroot oatcakes. Parfait=perfection.

I have a pink bubbly, a gift from a neighbour, in this year of Christmas gift dearth - it would seem a belated punishment from close family for my absence at the yuletide table.
The 25th I opted for vegetarian, the parfait was a lapse, and made a pumpkin, garlic, leek pie with a walnut crust. The pink bubbly had run out so I opened a Valdobbiene dry prosecco. Prosecco goes with everything, right?

I then moved on to dessert. It was a first, a yule log :chocolate ganache, chestnut mascarpone cream filling on a cacao Swiss roll. Each step had been a culinary pitfall: mix the beaten eggs softly into their yolks, roll the sponge while hot without splitting it, whip the cream to the right spreadable consistency, then there was the ganache. It was at first too runny, a lack of double cream was the culprit, but mixing the runny cream to some mascarpone saved the day. The ganache lay on top of its log and let funnels be traced in it to mimic bark. It turned out a beauty. It was a shame not to have any one to share it with.

The day after, Santo Stefano here, is a national holiday. The weather was clement so it was as good a day as any to walk the dog. New Year is just around the corner. What can I make? I'll still be alone but a belated gift has lifted my spirits.

Discoveries

There is always a simple pleasure in coming across new things. I've been in Rome for twenty years now. The area I live in, beyond the city walls and on the unfashionable side of the Cristoforo Colombo road, is well-trodden. I've explored the streets, the nature reserve, the area around the Appia Antica and the Ardeatina. I know where all the carabinieri check points are. I've explored it to such an extent that I've lost the effect of wonder or enchantment at coming across something undiscovered or unusual. That was until my last jaunt in the Caffarella, the large park that extends between the Appia Antica, the ancient city walls and the district called Appia Latino after the ancient Via Latina that crosses it.

As I and the dog climbed down into the valley of the Caffarella on this sparkling clear blue morning we looked out for the flock of sheep that usually grazed there. They were absent. Once in the valley I paused, I gazed upwards at the bank of appartment blocks that looked down onto this part of the park. To my right, I knew was the farm, then the source of the river Almone, but to my left?

The map on my phone indicated it would lead up to the city walls. I hesitated. Then turned left, over a stream and up a hillock where I stopped to look at a rabbit nibbling on some grass without a care in the world. It didn't even seem worried about the dog. I continued my ascent past some cultivated land where cabbages were growing and then dipped down onto some rough untended land rather than heading for the streets higher up. 

The path ran alongside some allotments, the first time I'd ever come across such a thing in Rome, they appeared to be well-tended if deserted. The fence was made up of all manner of broken pieces of wood, some obviously derived from old furniture: bookcases, bedrests, tables, chairs….. Probably a better use for the old furniture than cluttering up bins and landfills or, this being Rome, the city pavements. I rounded the allotments and climbed up towards a small glade. There were people with their dogs. A sign pointed towards an ancient cistern. The ground rumbled as a train passed on the nearby tracks. I decided to find the cistern. The first attempt led to a padlocked gate. Maybe it wasn't accessible? But following the trail which double-backed downwards I found myself in front of a massive stone structure. Who would have thought that in this forgotten corner of the park, a park I'd been to thousand of times, there was such a massive and well preserved ancient Roman ruin?

A table had been set up outside the structure. Voices echoed from inside the cistern where a visit was in progress. I walked closer peered inside as the guide and her company came out. I trod over some wild mushrooms and half listened to her explanations while walking around as much of the structure as was accessible. I learnt that this was one of the best preserved giant storage cisterns in the park but sadly forgotten. Few people came this way. A visitor suggested better sign-posting. This it seemed was not possible, there were rules, there was a cost. Same old, same old, I thought. The dog and I moved on from what I later discovered was one of the best maintained cisterns of its type in Rome - 8 metres high, 12 metres long - due to a recent restoration project. It had been opened to the public in 2017 and had once served a grandiose Republican Rome era villa in the area. 

Back among the trees I followed the trail to the train tracks. A graffitti-covered multi-coloured local train flashed by. I could leave the park or turn towards a piece of scrub land. I wasn't sure it connected with anything I knew and a man struggling to hold back his two large barking and baying dogs decided me to head for the road. The area was barren apart for the dying grass. I edged past a padlocked gate and climbed up a small verge onto a parking lot alongside some well-graffitied buildings. I crossed a small bridge over the tracks and paused at an ancient looking church.
I went on in search of the city walls, the Mure Latine which I could then follow to the Appia Antica. The remains of the antonine aqueduct proved disappointing small piles of bricks roped off behind fences. I followed the road and took a left onto Via Talmone. The walls reared ahead tall imposing, slightly slanted, a veritable barricade to any invader. A papal crest was affixed high up above some slits which pigeons had taken over. 

I followed the walls tothe Porta San Sebastiano where there was the museum of the walls, one on my list of museums to visit but without the dog.I'd read that it was possible to walk along the top of the walls and inside them. 
At Porta San Sebastiano a police car was parked and a vigilessa was stopping cars from turning onto the Appia Antica which is pedestrianised on Sundays. I slunk past the car and the fountain of San Sebastiano.Thesound of hooves striking stone Drew my attention and I was overtaken by a long column of horses and their riders out for a Sunday stroll. The leader of the column was quite frisky and seemed to be dancing on the cobbles as his rider reined him in. Others were more dozy, but many were slipping as their hooves found it diicult to find a purchase on the cobbles. Cyclists and joggers also passed. As for the dog and I, we were approaching the end of our long discovery-filled walk. 

It was a perfect setting for a walk. Soon we reached the bike rental shop near the Church of Quo Vadis we climbed behind the shop and into Parco Scott. The dog perked up. Even if I was bushed she wanted to play with her pals in the dog park. Should I let her?