So I’m flying to Rome for the 7th time in 12 years on Friday & 2010 is the year I will be finally, completely ‘plugged in’. I bought my $60 international iPhone plan so I don’t return home with a $1,000 bill updating on facebook, “I’m in the coliseum” or tweeting, “I’m walking in the footsteps of Caesar” or talking to someone back home in between the penne alla arrabiata and the prosecco while staring at the Pantheon on my iPhone. We’ll be re-watching the ROME series on Itunes on the laptop in the room at the Grand Flora at night and listening to audio guide tours on our iPods of the Roman Forum and the Vatican while we’re there on the very spots and watching Rick Steve’s video podcast tours of Naples, in Naples and I’ll use my nano video iPod to take in the moment movies files to upload to a myriad of social networking sites of the view from the Amalfi Coast or a Neapolitan making the perfect espresso in some family run bar/cafe. Plugged in, tuned in, uploading, downloading, hooked into two worlds: the ancient and the 21st century. It just keeps getting easier. And yet I just keep feeling hungrier. 

I’ve always wanted to record a trip something akin to Anais Nin or a travelogue to savor later because my memory can be terrible at times but I never ever commit to pen and paper. Maybe in all this digital madness I can somehow ‘taste life twice, once in the moment and once in retrospection’. Not for bragging rights, but for posterity & to prove to myself my own existence. And to maybe become a writer again. I miss it. I miss you.

(Written in March 2010 before I left for Rome. This March, 2012, I will return to Rome armed with a newer faster iphone and I hope a new nikon dslr (to accompany my film one as my digital camera is old and broken). I’ll also be videoing here and there on my phone and “instagraming” #igersrome #igersitaly).

This upcoming visit will be my 8th to Italy since 1998.