When my wife, Denise, and I took a cruise in 2012 from Rome to Venice, around Italy and up the Dalmatian coast, we spent three days in Rome before heading to its port at Civitavecchia. Based upon the suggestion of our travel agent, Michelle Bemis, at the McCabe Travel Agency in McLean, Virginia, we stayed in Rome at the Hotel De Russie on Via del Babuino. And, as I try and reflect in the book, it was fabulous.
As the book indicates, when we arrived at the door along its narrow street, there is little impressive other than a well-dressed doorman. But once one steps inside the front door, that all c
hanges immediately. The open, high-ceilinged reception area is to the left, a warm and comfortable lounge to the right, and the open courtyard with the terraced garden and restaurant visible straight ahead.
When we checked in, the cute and multi-lingual young woman behind the desk asked for the usual documents before congratulating us on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. She then stated that to commemorate this milestone, there was a fruit basket and a complementary bottle of champagne in the room. This was a wonderful gesture by the De Russie, but it had one problem: it wasn’t our twenty-fifth anniversary. The young receptionist was nonplused by this news, said it was their misunderstanding, and to enjoy the fruit and champagne anyway – which we did. Accordingly, I decided to make this little check-in error more dramatic in the book, when the receptionist believes that Carter and Katherine are married.
Our room on the sixth floor is Katherine’s room, including the large chair where Carter eventually finds more comfortable sleeping conditions, the fabulous bathroom, and the annoyingly loud phone. The hallway outside is the one Ombra stalks while preparing for the hit he has been hired to make, and the courtyard restaurant is the one Carter and Katherine use for a couple of meals.
Admittedly, I never went to the very top floor to see if it was where the resident staff might have their accommodations, but I did enjoy the tea in the lounge near the entrance waiting for Denise to appear so we could walk down the Via del Babuino to the Spanish Steps. So, in the book I reversed the situation and had Katherine waiting for Carter – although let it be noted that having had the same training as Carter, I’m the one who gets ready quickly.
As for the Café Vaticano, it is across from the Vatican Museum, and is where we enjoyed a cup of coffee while awaiting the guide we had hired to show us the museum and the Vatican itself. It is very much as described in the Prologue and in Chapter 17 when Carter, Katherine, and Cardinal Krol have their exciting encounter with the KGB. Nothing like that happened to us, of course, but if we get back I plan to see if there are any bullet holes just for fun, while enjoying a nice Tuscan red wine.