For the last few days I have been marching like a tourist around Rome. Fountains, walls, churches, statues, streets, monuments, and government buildings are all awash with tiny caffés and convenience stores and graffiti and tourists squinting at the glare of sun on marble (also the glory of Rome).

The past was not entirely lost to pamphlets and inscriptions, though; my guides were varied and unique and two of them had lived several years there as a writer and a soldier respectively, so I saw a face of Rome that the tourism industry does not promote. Of the many sights I have stored away in my memory to polish and revisit there are a few that I can mention here that will be of curiosity to blog-readers. Earl Grey tea sorbetto in an historical English tea room, for instance.

There was also a point where our fabulously and mysteriously wealthy host used the phrases "my cape" when referring to a replica of a cloak used by the Knights of the Holy Order of Jerusalem (the Knights Templar) which he had jauntily set round a rather prim-looking bust of a cardinal, and "my aunt" in reference to a rare 17th c. portrait of a noblewoman by her sister.

And then there was the instance when I stumbled as I walked through an extensive and dizzying set of catacombs and experienced the uncomfortable damp and cold surprise of walking through a large dewy spider web (very much more startling than when it is described in books or films).

Having come to a truce with the transportation systems and the language in which to order coffee, this felt like my second trip to Rome. That a few pieces of the facade were familiar--clothing brands, foods, names--made it easier to look beyond them and see just a brief but breathtaking glimpse of the nature of the Eternal City.