RomE-biking

I was raised on a 90s American media diet. My Saturdays were spent at the altar of the cathode-ray tube, watching teenybopper blonde Disney stars take ineffable middle-school class trips to Europe, where their first order of business was to hang out of a limousine’s sunroof as they sailed past Paris’ Eiffel Tower or Rome’s Colosseum. Eventually the beautiful city would fade into the background as the characters’ obsession shifted towards preteen blond Disney stars of a different gender, but for a few shining moments, the cities were the stars of the show.

If these movies taught me absolutely the wrong lessons about romance and life priorities, at least they infused my childhood travel ambitions with some international spice and gave me the urge to zoom past fancy landmarks with the wind in my hair and the world at my feet.

Cut to: Rome. 2022. A warm February night.

The basilica of Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore, floodlit in gold, scintillated against the indigo sky. I flew beneath its lofty towers, only remembering that I sat astride an electric bicycle whenever I hit a particularly ill-placed cobble. An unobstructed view of the city exploded out before me: the stars and the ruins and the Romans themselves were separated from me by air alone. A late-winter Mediterranean breeze grasped at my thick jacket, insisting that I take it off because spring had almost arrived. I could smell the truth of it. An earthy undertone of impending growth punctuated the sharp tang of simmering garlic and onion that wafted down the street from a nearby trattoria. Yet I couldn’t stop for anything – not photos or dinner or Spring – because I was part of a Rome e-bike night tour, and we had so much left to see. We flanked the basilica counterclockwise, and my gaze locked on a belltower as it peeked out from behind the roofline. A preteen limousine ride this was not. It was so much better.

I’ll let you in on a secret. Until I took this tour, I’d been afraid of electric bicycles. Seriously. I am a woman who can drive 100 mph down the German Autobahn at rush hour without batting an eye. Bike-pack-camping 300 kilometers alone is something I’ve done for fun. But if you affix a 0.3-horsepower motor to said bicycle, it becomes a death trap in my eyes. Why? No idea. A better question: why had I paid good money to ride a death trap for three hours through Rome? Well…envy.

Footsore as I was from exploring Rome the past few days with my parents, I still couldn’t stop walking. I’m a huge fan of exploring on foot. Walking is romantic and conducive to whimsy. Life comes at me at a digestible pace, and I can absorb all the sounds and sights and smells at my leisure. I can also get everywhere. My body is not exactly petite, but it fits into all the narrow alleys and nooks where the neat secret things hide, places I don’t even notice while traveling on wheels. Each day in Rome I’d walked so much that when I finally sat down at night, I’d felt temporarily paralyzed. The day before my tour had been no different, but I’d still decided to drag my concrete feet up Capitoline Hill after nightfall. The tiara of museums crowning the hill are the reason most people visit, but for me it’s a bend in the nondescript road leading away from all that, where you’ll find my favorite free viewpoint:  from this point you can see down the entire length of the Roman Forum to the Colosseum’s broken crown at the end. The only downside to this viewpoint is its UPside: it’s obviously at the top of the hill. So there I was, struggling uphill, slowed down by my pizza-rich vacation diet, when a fleet of e-bike tourists zipped past me with absolutely no effort. I stopped dead in my tracks. What kind of peasant was I, walking everywhere?

I still wasn’t sure about the whole endeavor until my guide showed me the e-bike’s brake, and I felt much better when it brought me to a screeching halt during my sidewalk test-drive. We were given a crash-course in tour etiquette and then our group of six was off, led down a Roman thoroughfare by this wisecracking Italian who yelled Mexican love songs at the top of his voice. The late winter’s night had fully fallen, and most everyone else was safely ensconced in trattorias or kitchens or hotel rooms, leaving only a handful of people roaming the streets. The night owls and late-night revelers. The ones who just can’t seem to stop exploring. My people.

The shape of my bike turned out to be a bigger adjustment than its freakish speed. It was the collapsible commuter style, all weird angles and tiny wheels. My knees were thrust way out in front, making me feel like a child, while its ape-hanger handlebars instead suggested that I was part of a biker gang. Maybe both stories were true. Smaller satellite crews on French and Spanish versions of the same tour kept leapfrogging us, and together we giggled and blitzed past waiters and pedestrians who yelled after us to watch out. 

By the time we reached our first stop I’d become a speed demon. I shot up Capitoline Hill with a tiny flex of my thumb, unable to wipe the grin off my face. Who’s the peasant now? Luckily my brakes were strong and the brake lights were bright enough to catch my attention even when my eyes were elsewhere, since my eyes were always elsewhere. Red light – SQUEEZE! – it became a reflex. We halted in the center of the Piazza del Campidoglio, a square designed by Michelangelo – yes, that Michelangelo. It felt a bit criminal to ride across such a work of art, but people have been walking its face for half a millennium and the hearty stone looks no worse for wear.

We made requisite pilgrimages to the major landmarks: my favorite Castle Sant’Angelo, the sleeping Colosseum, and a deserted Trevi fountain (into which I didn’t throw a wish, because I was already in Rome). As much as I enjoyed these grander stops, it was the quieter corners that really caught my attention. In the Jewish Quarter we swung by the Fontana delle Tartarughe, fountain of the turtles, whose reptilian decorations have been stolen and recovered so many times that three of them are now safely ensconced in the Capitoline museum (the fourth turtle is still MIA) and replicas swim in the trickling water. The best part, though, was flying between the stops. Sunset-colored neighborhoods and millennia-old columns and intricate statues slipped past me in a fever dream thrown into even sharper relief by the dance between floodlights and darkness. Gulls called overhead, reminding me that the sea was near. All my hours of Saturday worship had not prepared me for the reality of plunging through the inky streets of Rome, the metaphorical and literal brakes only loosely held by my adrenaline-saturated fingertips.

I’d gotten lost in the thrill of it again, ogling a boutique window filled with cloth of magenta and lime. I was trying to memorize the shop’s name for later when red lights flared and my braking reflex engaged. I looked up and felt a jolt, like my e-bike had gone rogue and shocked me. While I’d been looking elsewhere, my favorite building in all of Rome had snuck up in front of me. The Pantheon.

Most pieces of Ancient Rome have long since been cannibalized and turned into pieces of slightly-less-ancient Rome. Old buildings became new monuments. Former city walls became new park boundaries. Ruins were simply left where they were and built around, like those glacial boulders that become home to mosses and ferns and a tree or two. Yet the Pantheon remains intact. Squatting at the center of a relatively modern square that’s furnished with gelaterias and a tinkling fountain, it’s an untouched piece of Ancient Rome that hibernates in defiance of time. Its concrete is formed from local volcanic rock that contains unique minerals, and the Pantheon’s walls are able to self-heal into an even stronger concrete after they’ve been damaged. Despite wars, religious paradigm shifts, and earthquakes that brought even the Colosseum down, nothing in the past 2,000 years has been powerful enough to budge this behemoth. Its impact on me is greater than its indestructible mass. I gravitated towards it.

Only occasionally was the tour’s pace too fast for my pedestrian heart. Once, we were zipping down a broad avenue when the corner of my eye caught a building whose facade had been blown away. My head whipped around for a double-take, but the sight was already gone. A secret nook, missed because I wasn’t on foot. (Fortunately I earmarked it for the next day, when I returned to find a clever art installation meant to show the innards of the French Embassy like an X-ray). More pressing was that my hands often ached for the familiar weight of my camera, but at the same time I knew no photo could catch the electric feelings of freedom and wonder passing through my body. I had no choice but to be present for the ride. I had to be fully immersed, taking in the grasping wind and simmering garlic and yelling waiters, and just experience my fever dream through the time machine that is Rome.

Looking back on it now, I think that was my absolute favorite part of the whole night. Maybe my priorities are fine after all.

Tour company: EsBike Tours
Tour: Rome by Night- E-bike tour with food and wine tasting
Note: I just really liked the tour; I’m not affiliated with, endorsed or compensated by this company in any way.