travel – The Flâneuse Diaries

July 16, 2022July 16, 2022

Tour de France

These days, travel is a game of chance. An obstacle course of swerving strikes, illness and last-minute cancellation. Will your long-awaited escape from this mad island end in the bitter blow of disappointment at Gatwick airport? Will your bag end up adrift in a carpet of unattended luggage?

In a deviation from earlier plans, I decided to put the Aegean on hold and take the train to France, travelling from Paris to Bordeaux and onto Ille de Re. The last time I did anything like this I was 19, clueless and skint, lurching from disaster to disaster as is the rite of passage of all interrailers. This time there will be taxis, boutique hotels and not a whiff of a rucksack. Please. I’m fifty next year.

(A quick note on logistics. As anyone who has experienced them will concur, the French know how to do trains. Sleek, inexpensive and when they’re not striking, Mussolini could have set his watch by them. If you’re considering touring France by train like this, download the brilliant SNCF Connect app and plan your route in advance. The best site to consult for the latest status on all aspects of French travel can be found here)

The day I travel to Bordeaux from Paris, it is the midst of a blistering heatwave in south-western France. I awake from a sleep littered with anxiety dreams having dozed off in front of TF1 News, helpfully showing pictures of a train derailment that was finally having its day in court. It’s rumoured to be in the late thirties by midday and I have visions of melting tracks and rogue bush fires.

The best thing about train travel is you can see the country and your suitcase at the same time. I’m on a double decker train and it feels luxurious for forty quid. By the time I get to Bordeaux, it is a ridiculous 41 degrees, which if you need a translation is nearly 106 Fahrenheit. The last time I have known heat like this I was in a canoe on the Orange River in Namibia. I look at my phone and wonder if it will spontaneously combust.

I’m staying in what’s known as the Golden Triangle of Bordeaux at the Hotel Konti which truth be told is a bit fur coat and no knickers. They’ve upgraded me to a bigger room with an adjoining suite which I’m inexplicably not meant to use, but nobody would know if I did. I arrive with a snapped off suitcase handle after my taxi driver yanks it out of the boot with too much vigour. I really need to learn to travel lighter and decant my toiletries. It is my voyaging downfall.

Bordeaux

Sheltering under an awning near the hotel with an Aperol Spritz I watch my sweat-clad waiter stare up at the sky like the apocalypse is coming. The forecast is thunder and lightning at 8 pm followed by brilliant sunshine an hour later. I decide to escape to the Miroir D’Eau on the bank of the Garonne to cool off. It’s really a flâneuse’s dream here as the location of the river means it’s hard to ever get too lost and the Bordelaise are full of character and very watchable.

The city feels like the embodiment of old France. It’s got the classy vibe of Avignon, yet it’s so much grander and has a multi-cultural atmosphere that’s unusual in cities outside of Marseille. The ancient links between Bordeaux and England run deep, as after Eleanor of Aquitaine had finished with Louis V11, she married our Henry Plantagenet, resulting in three centuries of Anglo-French government in the city and a booming wine trade between the two nations.

There’s a smattering of largely empty English pubs and on my wanderings, I count The Charles Dickens, The Sweeney Todd, The Dick Turpin and, to bring things more up to date, Le Brixton. It also seems to be a city that attracts groups of British men in their fifties and sixties on gastronomy tours…. apart from this though we are very much en France.

A neighbourhood not to be missed is St Michel which is Bordeaux’s multi-cultural hub. There’s a big and bustling brocante in Les Puces de St Michel where I stop for coffee and seat myself opposite two grizzled antique dealers who are brazenly counting wads of cash whilst being brought occasional objets d’art for approval. One picks up a freakishly long and ancient hunting rifle and points it at the other, before laughing and camply sparking up a cocktail cigarette. Through the huge sash windows in the surrounding square there are all kinds of life peering out. I get the sense that whilst it looks grand on the outside, the reality within may tell a different story.

My main reason to visit this neighbourhood is for foodie’s haven Les Marché des Capucins and the legendary pintxos that are served on a Sunday lunchtime at La Maison du Pata Negra. It’s too cool to have a website, but get there at midday, grab a seat at the counter and choose from an array of delights which will give anything you may have had in San Sebastian a run for their euros. Just store up the colour coded cocktail sticks from each one and hand into the bar owner when you’ve fully gorged, and they will add up the bill.

Ille de Ré

It’s Tuesday and France is still raking over the coals of Macron not getting a majority. Breakfast television is full of this and of the freak weather. A man is interviewed holding three white hailstones the size of billiard balls and the camera pans to the smashed windscreen of a car. I’ve tried to decipher what the political pundits are saying with their polo necks and their crossed arms, but here finally is a news item I can understand. My taxi driver on the way to Bordeaux St Jean seems concerned about the future of France, although I point out that compared to us, everyone seems completely sane. He’s too polite to disagree.

Other than googling beaches, I have done no research on Ille de Re, so on arrival at a deserted La Rochelle Ville I haven’t a clue where I’m going. I flag down a taxi wildly like I’m on 5^th Avenue and warn the driver to be gentle with my now new suitcase. We cross a long toll bridge onto the island and it is now feeling very rural and is peppered with vineyards. Sometimes it’s good not to have too many expectations because it turns out that Ille de Re is ridiculously beautiful. It’s how I would imagine Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard – only very Gallic – and it smells incredible. It’s fragrance of salty Atlantic breezes, pine forests and hollyhocks needs to be bottled.

Ille de Re – absolutely no riff raff here

My guesthouse (and you need to stay here – antiques, walled garden, amazing hospitality) is in the centre of a village called Le Bois Plage-en-Ré which is an ideal situation half way down the island. It’s less than ten minutes’ walk from the sandy, sweeping La Plage des Gollandieres and a ten minute bus ride from the main town of Saint Martin-de-Ré (be warned Line 3 turns up when it wants to). If you like laid back luxury this is the place for you. Lots of small dogs, a few Ralph Lauren look-a-likes in Breton tops and as much reasonably priced seafood as you can handle. It’s Midsummer’s Eve and there’s a disco band setting up in the square called Les Biscuit. There are stalls selling huge vats of mussels and there is absolutely no riffraff. I think I’m going to like it here.

I’m not sure you can write a guide to Ille de Ré as it’s simply a place you experience through your senses. As I’m walking back to the guesthouse, I chat to a man who tells me he is the unlikely combination of part time healer and part time local salt miner. I ask him what the residents do when it rains. ‘Nothing’ he shrugs. The island, which is full of cycling paths, is very much an outdoor destination. Its local population is around 20,000, swelling to 250,000 in August. Don’t come in August would be my tip.

If you need an injection of urban life, atmospheric La Rochelle is a one-hour bus ride away. My only knowledge of this city is through the 1980s Tricolore French textbook where sadly I also left my ability to speak the language. Sandrime and Pierre buy a ham baguette and it is good. I would like an Orangina, please. Je suis en rock star. Well, OK, not je suis en rock star, but you get the drift. The only downside of wandering around this lovely city was the sudden downpour that forced me into a insalubrious harbourside restaurant where I made the mistake of ordering ‘un piece du boucher’. It turns out that this is French for lucky dip of mystery meat and, whilst I’m not suggesting that this meal once won a race at The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, I did have to send it back.

So, the love affair with France (and trains) continues. On my way back I found myself wandering the concourse at beautiful Gare du Lyon, staring up longingly at departure boards. The continent of Europe is so wide, Mein Herr…..

February 14, 2021February 14, 2021

Please Say Greece is the Word

With the sap slowly rising, I’m starting to think about rejuvenation and the faint beckoning of foreign lands. It is only a tantalising whisper because hey, who am I kidding? W1 is another country to me right now. Having not opened a travel magazine or gratuitously googled a flight for months, I’m beginning to have thoughts. I blame this reawakened flânerie on an excess of French subtitles having blitzed four seasons of Call My Agent in under a week and revelled in its Gallic glory. I don’t want to be in ‘locked down’ suburbia I heckle at the TV. I want to be on the back of Gabriel’s scooter weaving through the Parisian boulevards.

Small wonder I have cabin fever. It took over six months of pandemic for me to venture out on my one and only staycation, or as I like to call it, holidaying in the UK. We chose Norfolk, the Kirstie Allsopp of the outer home counties (smug, jolly sensible boot room, probably drives a Porsche at weekends), in which to celebrate Mamma Flâneuse’s birthday. My solitary holiday goal had been to emerge reborn on Holkham beach like a radiant Gwyneth Paltrow at the end of Twelfth Night, but even that small dream was thwarted. Instead I looked more like a dying duck in a hurricane as Storm Odette battered us all into submission. Even a visit to Cromer pier to buy a stick of rock seemed ill-advised.

Mamma F, delighted as she was by her gifts of rainbow umbrella, Doris Day DVD and three nights in a luxury B&B run by Andy and Steve, flicked through her BBC weather app on the morning of her birthday trilling ‘London, sunshine, Hampshire, sunshine, Cornwall, sunshine…..’. I began a blog entitled ‘Very Wet, Norfolk’, but abandoned it when I realised that having been confined to our room due to the howling gales, I didn’t actually have anything to say. To be fair, we were just thrilled by the change of scene and the opportunity to eat someone else’s food.

Since then my first foray back into the world of armchair travel began recently when I moved my 6^th flight in a year. Having realised that – quelle domage – I would most definitely not be revelling in the aforementioned Gallic glory of the Cote d’Azur this Easter, it was now time to face the inevitable facts. I would not be visiting the Musée National Marc Chagall nor would I be nibbling on socca from a swarthy street vendor or channelling Leslie Caron at some charming bistro. For god’s sake, can I not make a plan? Can I not even make a plan to make a plan?

With booking holidays now like a craps game, I rolled the dice and came up with Santorini in early autumn. Why not? Weather still good, kids in school (fingers crossed), fewer seasonal crowds (again, fingers crossed), best track record for containing COVID-19 in Europe and odds for middle agers like me being vaccinated, more than fair. This is how we decide our travel for now, through a series of calculations we hope will get us to our destination.

I first went to Santorini ten years ago and stayed in Oia in a tiny studio apartment built into the cliff that was reached by going down nearly 200 enormous stone steps – a nightmare for luggage and heels. It had no air conditioning, only windows that opened straight out into the sea and one night I watched a total eclipse from my bed because the holiday was that kind of magical. Below me, a Susan Sarandon-like dance professor from Texas was staying with her teenage daughter in one of the stunning troglodyte houses for which the island is famed. I don’t remember their names, but I still recall our conversations vividly (‘It’s not ‘get into shape’, it’s ‘get into condition’, let’s get the terminology right!’ and ‘Darling, the only reason I agreed to live in Texas, was so I could save up enough money NOT to be in Texas’). I remember how we clutched our mojitos when volcanic tremors rippled through the bar one night and how the waiter gave us an insouciant shrug as we looked expectantly across the caldera. All these moments are inextricably woven into that glorious trip.

Holidays are like strings of jewels. They are made up of people we’ve met, food we’ve tasted, art we’ve gazed upon, snatches of songs we’ve heard and sunsets we’ve watched. These are the things we are missing and the things we need to get back to when it is safe. Until I can dive into the Aegean again and hear the applause as the sun sets, I can feast on these memories. Just as well because when I looked in my Santorini notebook, I was too busy being awed to write much.

I will remedy that next time.

August 16, 2020August 16, 2020

Armchair Cartography

I had been looking forward to donning a bikini this August. I just hadn’t realised I’d be wearing it in the living room with all the curtains closed. Temperatures at my desk have reached a balmy 31.5 degrees and I’ve retreated to the slightly cooler climes of the bedroom where I’m being serenaded by the sound of a power drill emanating from the longest flat refurbishment in history downstairs. I would sit in the garden and top up the vitamin D, but my neighbour is ‘de-magging’ the wheelie bins on the yellowing lawn, so that takes another limited option off the table. I know we should all be counting our blessings right now, but I’ve had better summers.

I’m afraid I haven’t settled into this pandemic. If you’re someone with no desire (or opportunity) to see new places or have new experiences, perhaps you’ve been able to make some kind of peace with its limitations. You can live without the thrill of knowing tomorrow something new and different beckons because of who you’ve met, or where you’ve been or what you’ve seen when you got there. The sheer joy and infinite variety of being alive feels absent right now and a big part of that is the freedom to move across distances. We’re all told we have to be citizens of somewhere but why does it have to be here?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with travel recently and how it enhances my sense of self. How it comforts me with its rituals and creates the sense of occasion and the landmarks in time that I crave. As the world shrinks, are we going to go backwards to a time when international travel is only for the privileged few? For me, Center Parcs would be like descending into one of the portals of inflatable hell and whilst holidaying in the UK can be wonderful, it’s rarely cheap. If you want to avoid ‘Jeanette and Dougie from Manchester’ (to steal from Willy Russell) you really need to broaden your horizons and go where they are not.

Me pensively channelling Lucy Honeychurch in 1989

Like most kids of my generation, we didn’t travel abroad much. Up to the age of seventeen I can recall only a handful of occasions and they were a very mixed bag. The first foreign place I ever encountered was Amsterdam. I was ten and we stayed on a floating hotel on the canal – Mamma Flâneuse, my grandmother and me, together on our first package holiday. The type where you drive for hours by coach for a photo opportunity involving a pair of outsized clogs against a backdrop of blowsy tulips. I’m pretty sure I enjoyed the novelty of this experience, but I have only a couple of memories now which are more feelings than images. One is staring with inexplicable sadness at the solitary Delftware loo in Anne Frank’s house and the other the sound of my normally prudish grandmother laughing uncontrollably as she recounted her guided tour of somewhere I hadn’t been allowed to go called the Red Light District. This must surely be the genesis of all my FoMo.

The following year I took my first flight and there is a photograph of me coming down the aeroplane steps and onto the runway at Alicante airport, looking ashen-faced and clutching a Snoopy. I had a week in an apartment in Coveta Fumá with my father and stepmother who basked like lizards in the unfamiliar, dry heat, smoking king-size cigarettes and reading fat paperbacks. It couldn’t have been memorable because other than ex-pats looking glitzy and red-faced on bar stools and the sound of Paul McCartney and Wings on the stereo, I don’t remember it at all. My experiences of Southern Spain since then, beyond the triumvirate of pool, pub and hypermarket, are like they come from a different world.

More teenage moodiness on the banks of the Arno

It was another three years before I would get on a plane again. I was that saddest of sounding things an unaccompanied minor, heading off for a fortnight in Germany to see a pen pal in the Moselle Valley and it was the longest two weeks of my life when I realised – as we often did – that she was nothing like her letters. As a natural Latino type, I didn’t gel with the Teutonic way and was bewildered by the sausage parties and the oompah bands (true story). I was more homesick than I have ever been.

There were happier trips to Florence where I channelled my best Lucy Honeychurch in a pensione overlooking a convent because we were all obsessed with Merchant Ivory films and Helena Bonham-Carter’s hair. And who could forget Paris in a one star hotel, with its neon sign that flickered all night though the net curtains and kept us awake, leaving us slightly hysterical in the morning as we ate dry baguettes in the lobby? Basic accommodation didn’t matter so much when you stepped outside into the City of Light. Foreign travel opened our eyes and our minds.

The monotony of unvaried days and the fear of missing out is not going away any time soon, but the point of the Flâneuse is, after all, to wander aimlessly and that’s hard to do in a global pandemic when you’re playing holiday roulette. What we have for now are memories, books and maps. We are the armchair cartographers of our own far-flung dreams.

In other news, I really can’t be arsed to fight with Ryan Air, so it’s no People’s Republic of Cork for me this month. Instead I will be reaching for ‘Hitching for Hope: A Journey Into the Heart and Soul of Ireland’, by Irish Times bestseller Ruari McKiernan and listening to the sound of much needed rain.

If I imagine hard enough, I might even be there.

May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

Why Do The Wrong People Travel?

In the words of Karen Blixen, I am a mental traveller. I have recently taken to cutting wistful pictures out of my Lonely Planet magazines and – when the pritt stick I ordered on Amazon Prime finally arrives – there will be a collage of a trip stretching from Malaga to Athens. I’m calling it The Flaneuse’s Great Depression Tour and, because the continent of Europe is so wide Mein Herr, I’m thinking six weeks, two carbon-busting flights and the rest navigated hobo-style by boat, road and rail.

The last time I attempted anything like this I was a scatty 19 year old. It was during the Kosovo War so the only direction you could go from Italy was west. The ensuing tour of Mitteleuropa wasn’t my dream itinerary, but I made the best of things, lurching from one interrailing nightmare to the next, attaching (and later freeing myself from) a conveyor belt of gap year Americans enroute to South East Asia.

One night I took a sleeper train from Vienna and woke up alone with no people, no buildings and not a scooby doo where in the world I was. The night before I’d been at an open air film festival near the Ringstrasse with a born again Christian from Illinois. Now I was trapped in an abandoned rail carriage, hyperventilating and looking like a refugee because twelve hours can be a long time in travel. I’d booted down the only unlocked door I could find and staggered down the tracks, frantically drawing on a Gauloise Blonde and crying like a silent screen ingénue. After an embarrassingly short amount of time I was rescued by a German train driver who shunted me back to civilisation on something that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Ivor the Engine. In his own Teutonic way, he’d found the whole caper hilarious and kept miming the international hand gesture for ‘schlafen’. It turned out I was in a siding 10 minutes outside of Munich.

Next time will be different. I have a bigger budget and I’m slightly less of a moron when it comes to planning. As the UK congas their way BEYOND THE THUNDERDOME, I predict the motivation to be elsewhere will become overwhelming. The question is will anyone want us? With my trip to ‘relatively unscathed’ Greece next month now in the can, the irony that it is we who are the most diseased country in Europe is not lost. After our visit to Palermo in early March, my friend and I sailed effortlessly through Gatwick without so much as a sighting of a poster about a public health emergency of international concern. Today we’re told in garish colours to ‘stay alert’ as if Covid-19 is a pervert loitering outside the school playground with a bag of lemon sherbets and the offer of a ride in a Datsun Cherry. I thought ‘stay safe’ was getting on my tits. The new government advice is the ministerial equivalent of Alan Partridge flicking two L-shaped fingers at you and saying ‘Be Lucky’.

With this in mind, I think 2021 is going to be magnificent for the British. Watch us as we catapult ourselves out of a V Shaped recovery like Roger Moore transcending the skies in a Union Jack parachute. Up we’ll sail, high above the wafting scent of fruit and veg rotting in the fields. I was thinking a move to New Zealand might be good, but it probably wouldn’t be quite far enough.

Being alone in my flat for nearly 9 weeks has certainly changed my attitude to solo travel. Before, my threshold to solitude would have been about 5 days and that’s with the company of obliging waiters. Now I could circumnavigate the globe without a companion, providing I wasn’t travelling in steerage and had an internet connection.

I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed about my trip to Greece. My happy place is sitting on the deck of a Blue Star Ferry, sipping a beer and listening to Bob Dylan as the islands rise up around me like ancient spirits. The plan – in the halcyon days of plans – was a week in Syros with a friend, followed by five nights channelling the 1960s bohemians on Hydra. It was going to be elegantly rounded off with a weekend in an artist’s apartment with an Acropolis view where I would blast the bejesus out of Maria Callas.

The host in my last Athens apartment knew how to make me happy

My last two week holiday was Santorini in 2011. I’d been fantasising about this island on the edge of Europe since I was a teenager and wrote in my journal about the headlong instincts of its residents, accustomed to living on the edge of a volcano. I wrote about the nightly applause for the sunset on the caldera and the man who rode his motorbike bareheaded, smoking a cigarette, with a white poodle under his arm. The resinous taste of retsina made me shudder, but I noted this was the only place I’d ever been where I could order a pina colada without embarrassment. Ultimately, it is our senses we appeal to and the snapshots of our travels we remember and store in our bank of memories.

The word is that domestic travel is going to boom later in the year. Sadly, it will be all the wrong people who will travel. Another excellent reason for the right people to stay at home and make a collage of better times.

Next Up: Memories of Andalucia.

December 29, 2019December 29, 2019

All Roads Lead to Rome

When I was a teenager I pinned a quote on my wardrobe which read in laboured calligraphy ‘All Roads Lead to Rome’. It stayed there for years and became a bit of a mantra. I’m not sure where I thought I was heading, but it was a pithy line to throw at foolish decisions.

I finally made it to Rome in late Spring of 2005. I’d always envisaged that entering the Eternal City would be glamorous. I’d arrive pristine in an ivory suit, channelling Sophia Loren alongside a swarthy Latino in an open topped Alfa Romeo Spider. The reality turned out to be dispiriting, involving an overcrowded train from Bologna which hurtled through every one of the seven hills whilst my friend and I stood up in a packed smoker’s carriage and took it in turns to breathe. We arrived at the bewildering Termini, travel sick and eyes streaming, alert for the marauding bag-snatchers we’d been warned about. Things improved rapidly when we saw the soaring majesty of the architecture. Rome is a film set on every corner.

As we begin this travel odyssey together, let me state for the record, I hate Christmas in the UK. I loathe enforced jollity and mawkish television so I opt to get on a plane. This has now become a tradition and alongside my mother – we’ll call her Mamma Flâneuse – we find a different city to experience. It’s taken me a while to win her round to this one. I have a cousin who was once mugged on The Spanish Steps and this has put her off, but Budapest last year has emboldened tastes so here we are, in the heart of the Vatican, with twinkling Christmas lights strung like jewels along the streets and calendars of priest hunks in the shops. After dark, the nuns are out in force, administering food and kindness to the many homeless who shelter under the buttresses around Piazza San Pietro. The billboard of the local cinema towers above our heads with the ironic words I Due Papi. Where else could we be?

There is an abundance to see in Rome and it’s best not to try and do it all. You’ll fail spectacularly. I never made it to Villa Borghese or the many palazzos and churches that are strewn across it, but that can be for another time. This trip is about Christmas and avoiding the turkey and stuffing.

The dinner on Christmas Eve is the main celebratory meal and it’s always heavy with fish. Our restaurant is not far from Campo de Fiori and we’re going to be sampling sea urchin pasta. It’s hard to describe the flavour and smell of sea urchin, but when I put it in my mouth I know I will still be tasting it next Christmas. Imagine a heady combination of kitchen cleaner and tropical fish food and you are in the ball park. Two Japanese tourists valiantly plough through their plates and I almost expect the late, great Clive James to appear with commentary. The remaining four courses are delicious so I can only conclude it is the ingredients and not the cooking. In the morning, Mamma Flâneuse flings the shutters of our room open and says the place smells of urchin. Merry Christmas one and all!

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Christmas morning and Piazza San Pietro is showing us its shiniest face. On the way, we are verbally accosted by six people in the space of 1 minute trying to flog us tickets to the Sistine Chapel. ‘Jesus wept’ says Mamma F.

The sky is like a china blue plate and I have to put a scarf on my head to keep the sun from burning me. We’re here for the Pope’s blessing and so are several hundred thousand other people, only we’re early and we’re getting a seat which has pleased mother and her blister. I have done the Pope thing before. In 2005, shortly after the ordination of the creepy Benedict XVI, we came to the Square to watch him pop up at one of the smaller balconies. There were no barriers or airport style security and the atmosphere was raucous with cries of Papa and people letting rip. It’s more sedate and sanitised today, although we think that some way back the crowd are singing La Bamba with gusto. Turns out they’re actually singing ‘Buon Natale’ to the same tune. It all feels a bit Hare Krishna.

The pomp in the lead up to the Pope’s arrival is magnificent and the biggest crowd pleasers are the harlequin garbed Swiss Guard who get an enthusiastic round of cheers and applause. In order to become the Pope’s personal body guards you have to be Swiss Catholic, male, unmarried, aged between 19 and 30 and have completed basic Swiss Army training. You also have to be prepared to wear tights in the heat. It’s quite a niche role.

As we wait for the clock to strike midday, the silent expectation is extraordinary. You don’t have to practice any kind of religion to find this profoundly moving because it’s about collective faith and hope and it’s the best of us. The Pope, when he arrives, looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. After his address in Italian and the Latin benediction he finally breaks into a smile and you are relieved to see he is happy. The whole morning feels like it has been wrapped up in a bow and given to you as a gift.

You gotta love the Roman photobomber at Vittorio Emanuele II Monument

If you are ever in Rome on Christmas Day my best tip is after you’ve seen the Pope, head straight for the Basilica. If you time it right, you can be inside in under 5 minutes and get a privileged view of the crowds slowly dispersing. In the splendour stakes, St Peter outdoes every Catholic Church on earth but for my money, and just for sheer laugh-out-loud audacity, it’s got to be the Vittorio Emanuele II monument. Dedicated to the first king of the unified Italy, the Romans famously hate it. It’s been likened to a giant wedding cake, but I love it’s big dick energy. It says ‘hey, we may be a declining nation, but we’ve still got a massive schlong, a couple of eternal flames and a 717,000 square metres of marble’. One ruminates on what might the London equivalent will be in the coming years. Go and see it, clamber over its many stairs and if you can find the lift (I couldn’t) take it to the very top for an Emperor’s view

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So it seems even my café decisions are political. I leave Mamma Flâneuse at the hotel happily watching Lionel Ritchie in concert at the Vatican, and head off along the Tiber. If there’s a river running next to me I can’t get too lost. At the Piazza del Popolo I opt for the Café Rosati as a base to watch the early passeggiata. It’s a random choice but I later discover it was once frequented by left wing writers whilst Café Canova across the square was solely the domain of the right. I order an atomically strong Aperol spritz and am served an exquisite home-made salmon roe pastry. It looks like a small crown of orange jewels and the delicate bubbles burst in my mouth. This blows sea urchin right out of the water.

Santa at Piazza del Popolo. Just hanging out.

It’s Christmas Day but you get the sense that some people are doing business. A couple of the clientele look like Pauly from Goodfellas (they don’t move fast because they don’t have to) and the crowd is largely well-heeled. A man in a full Santa costume sits down to my right and says salve before checking his WhatsApp messages. His girlfriend is glamorous and dripping in furs and Fendi. You wonder about their sex life.

Although it’s a sprawling city, Rome is not that diverse. Santa aside, for the hour I spend at the Café Rosati, I see more variety in the traffic than in the passers-by. A man on a bicycle festooned with coloured lights; a tiny car packed with people, a silver haired woman giving strong direction from the passenger seat with the aid of a crutch; a bottle green Lamborghini skimming past like a vulgar frisbee. And always in the background the sporadic sound of sirens.

Rome is heavily policed and ready for an emergency. Like all major European cities, along with the number of homeless pitching tents in the green spaces, this is its most notable change. A couple of days earlier we watch as two Italians in Roman Centurion dress rip off their plastic armour and run across Ponte Sant’Angelo. A group of ebony black migrant traders carrying their wares in bundled sheets follow, hotly pursued by two members of the Carabinieri. There’s a vibrant street culture here, but much of it is illegal.

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On Boxing Day we brave the tourist epicentre. The last time I was at the Colosseum it was surrounded by legions of skinny cats stretching out in the sun, as if the spirits of lions and tigers were living on in their frail bodies. Now the cats have gone (where?) and instead there are armies of sightseers vying for space on the many tours on offer. I dislike guided tours, but the ones of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum are worth doing and I hope you get Noemie, an exuberant history of art student who counts us all in and out with aplomb. Once inside, the stories of gore are off the scale. People eating animals eating people; babies being sacrificed to the gods inside the burning stomachs of bronzed effigies. Boy, the Romans really knew how to enjoy life. Like many city landmarks here it’s undergone a huge restoration funded by a luxury brand. It seems the Italian government can’t locate the ticket revenue from the 7.2 million visitors that clamour here each year, a concept that is accepted with the same world weariness as the notion that the Ligne C subway will ever be completed.

My most vivid memory of 15 years ago is the bar at the Castello Sant’ Angelo. Go there just before sunset for an Aperitivo and incredible views of the Vatican, before heading up to the roof to survey the long sweep of the Tiber whilst you’re slightly buzzing from your spritz. I highly recommend it as a moment of perfect happiness. Do expect, however, for you and your snacks to be eye balled by thuggish sea gulls and for tourists to film the stand-off.

Whilst I busy myself with my notebook, three Italians in their early sixties come to admire my view. When they find out I’m a Londoner one shakes his head and says sadly but you don’t belong with us anymore. For their part, they are baffled and sorry and I tell myself we will have to get used to this. We chat about democracy – or lack thereof – and they good naturedly suggest I move to Scotland. I tell them I can’t promise an imminent relocation, but I will be there for New Year…..

The gull’s eye view at Castello Sant’Angelo

‘I believe in such cartography, to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books’ – The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje