PURPOSEFUL VACATIONING: ROME

weetuzoo's International Correspondant Amanda Carlson tuvo la suerte de visitar una de nuestras ciudades favoritas: La Roma! Not just the antique beauty, gelato eating, wine drinking, pasta eating kind of Rome. This visit was leather around the edges - just the way we like it.

Next blog stop: Rome -  Harley and the Holy See

By Amanda Carlson

While on a recent visit to Rome, our tour guide at the Forum made the following observation (paraphrased), "Rome in the 4th Century was a colorful and gaudy place...All around the city, temples and monuments would pop up...It inspired awe and excitement around every turn."  The remnants of the Forum made it possible to imagine some of the city’s prior form.  But, every so often, such visions would be interrupted by the same noise that made our guide nearly impossible to hear.  Rome was rumbling.  

On the ramp out of the Forum and up to street level, the source appeared – hundreds of Harley-Davidsons taking the streets of Rome.  As one of the sites for Harley-Davidson's 110^th Anniversary celebration, the city attracted thousands of riders from around the world, and the event culminated in a Sunday papal blessing of the bikes. 

The visual dissonance of ancient Rome and modern Harley worked together to emphasize both the city and the brand’s most basic qualities.  The city appeared more sun-bleached and pock-marked.  The bikes turned corners sleeker and more irreverent.  Like in the Forum, the noise of the street and the curiosity of the situation’s incongruousness made me experience Rome in a way that seemed to mimic the gaudy excitement of the 4^th Century: the colors were bright; the cobblestones were packed; and Rome felt like the center of the world (at least for Harley lovers).  

More importantly though, what Rome left me considering: How do cities achieve such awe and excitement without millennia of history and the glimmer of motorcycles?