Saturday and the first part of Sunday, or Classical Larks as Prelude to a Disaster

A brief step-by-step account of our romantic weekend up until The Event:

Saturday:

• Leisurely stroll up the road to Santa Maria Maggiore to see the church. Pretend to admire some mosaics on the grounds that they are well old, then am genuinely freaked out by a large creepy statue of some pope (Pius IX, pope-fans!) kneeling before a chest containing an alleged nose hair of St. John the Baptist or something.
• Shouted at by bored looking employee for trying to enter the museum without a ticket despite there being no indication that such a thing is required. Go back, procure ticket, enter museum only to realise that it is full of boring religious shit. Feel cheated, whinge a bit.
• Find area where archaeological excavation is taking place (i.e. that which we wanted to see in the first place- remains of a Roman villa with frescoes depicting a rural calendar*). Cheer up. See some actually impressive traces of early wall paintings and mosaics.
• Pass dick-head giving tour to elderly English people. Dick-head pursues, informs us that we require a ticket. Show him ticket. Wrong one, apparently. Swear at him gratuitously loudly. Stomp off and look around anyway. Run away when we hear him coming back. Fuck you, tour-guide!
• Fortifying glass of wine.
• Baths of Diocletian. Beloved drags me round three floors worth of Republican inscriptions. Pretend to be interested and not hungry. Lose plot on third floor and ask if there is anything else apart from fucking inscriptions. There is, mercifully.
• Fag in courtyard full of headless statues and manky cats, inspect remains of baths. Massive, imposing, part of the roof actually intact. Tantalising glimpse of the rest of it largely obscured by bafflingly boarded-up windows. Admire gorgeous columbarium with impressively visible original paintings. Really quite hungry now.
• Stroll to Piazza Barberini, fortifying bottle of wine at shamingly touristy restaurant. Take instant disliking to waiter for speaking to us in English. Scallopina al limone=cold and disappointingly small. Beloved inexplicably delighted with his tortellini al brodo, which is essentially bits of pasta in some Bovril. Sulk a bit, wine helps.
• Cheesy tourist kiss at Spanish Steps. Then nearly break an ankle walking down the fucking things.
• Absolutely convinced that have found way unassisted to Piazza Navona, feel quite smug. Am proven wrong, end up by Tibur. Swear a bit. Beloved salvages excursion by gently pointing me in the right direction. Feel smug again as I was nearly right.
• Palazzo Altemps. Perk up as I love this museum and there are no sodding inscriptions. Perv on sexy statues (especially Antinous, yum) and shamelessly show off in front of the Ludovisi Gaul by parroting what I learned for the art paper I took for my finals. Beloved pretends not to know that this is the case, is good enough to look impressed.
• Fortifying glass of wine, maddeningly cut short by arrival of American cretins shovelling sandwiches down their gullets and relating undoubtedly fictionalised accounts of their sex-lives. Sad.
• Stroll over the river to Lepanto where my TEFL school was (Beloved overwhelmed by nostalgia). Return to fabled cafe of 1 euro glass of wine fame. Wine now 1.20! Barman recognises us despite six-month absence. We feel special rather than seeing this as incontravertible evidence that we just drank far too much.
• Dinner at nearby restaurant on the grounds that we ate there last year and so should continue with trip down memory lane. Realise within ten minutes that it is not, in fact, the same restaurant, just one which looks remarkably similar. Keep this information to self until Beloved finally clocks. Both feel a bit silly, but share several plates of delicious fried things, so not too bothered all things considered.
• Waddle to Trastevere for fortifying litre of wine. Attempt to take romantic photo of the two of us by the river, look like have seven chins, sulk. He takes a slightly better one later, cheer up. Quite pissed by this point, so pitch concept of he and I as roving presenters of a maverick travel programme:

Me: "Cause, like... You can do the boring bits, right? Ooops... What was I saying? Oh yeah, you can do the boring bits... And I can do, like... the fun bits... You'll be, like, the Simon Schama to my Davina McCall [for the record, I detest Davina McCall so quite why this seemed like such a good idea completely escapes me in retrospect]! Who wouldn't like that?!?"

Beloved: (gallantly but clearly unwillingly) "Yeah! Great! Let's... um... look into that!"

• Stagger home, get lost. Sulk. Arrive home. Pour glass of carton wine, only to ignore it and fall asleep fully clothed. Bliss.

*Thank you, Blue Guide!

Sunday:

• Awake early to house with no food in it. Without bothering to shower, drag dishevelled selves out to buy bread. Beautiful morning, flower stalls dotted around the piazza, gorgeous crusty loaf of bread. Feel quite European and sophisticated despite looking like tramps.
• Return to espresso, bread and jam (the latter courtesy of GPN- she left yesterday, hurrah! Take particular pleasure in consuming stolen jam as once nearly came to blows with the tight cow because I had the audacity to nick one of her teabags).
• Now suitably energetic to venture out. Plan= Palazzo Massimo, Campo del Verano, early dinner then Beloved to fly home, refreshed and reinvigorated. What could possibly go wrong?
• 11.45- Settle into bar near Santa Maria Maggiore for quick fortifying glass of wine before taking on the museum.
• 11.50- Beloved starts to feel unwell. We had a lot to drink yesterday, I don't think too much of it. We sit in silence for a while. The sun is beating down, hordes of people are scuttling past, he begins to feel claustrophobic. He holds his head in his hands. He drops it between his knees. He collapses.
• Almost bang on midday- we hear the striking of the church clock. He jerks back. He loses all the colour in his face. He stops breathing. His eyes roll back into his head. He convulses wildly for thirty seconds. His entire body slumps, spent. I hear myself shouting for help, any help, although I have no idea what any of these people who are staring at us can possibly do. Fuck. What the fuck is happening?