Friday, 18 March 2011

A sunny day! Even with that we got a late start, as I stayed in bed a little longer to baby my cold. I was watching a movie on the iPad, using my noise-canceling headphones so I wouldn't wake Tenar, when I noticed that the living room lights came on. I sat up, and there, peeking in the bedroom was a good-looking Italian man. Claudio had sent him with fresh towels. He explained that he had knocked. The headphones really work. I'll have to send an endorsement to Bose. We were both embarrassed, he for disturbing me, me for being caught in bed at 10:00 am.

Shortly after, Tenar and I began our day by going to what we now considered our market for fresh pasta for our dinner that night and down the street for fresh pizza for lunch right now. We happened by a shoe store, so were able to buy a pair of shoes for Tenar. A day in the rain let us know his old ones had lost any water-proofing they might have had. Putting them to dry on the radiator created an odor we didn't want repeated. Into the dumpster the old shoes went.

Tenar feeding Mr. Crippled Foot

After depositing our food at home, we caught the #52 bus for the ancient part of the city. We walked from the bus drop-off to The Spanish Steps. This is a great place to people-watch, if the only people you want to watch are the tourists or street vendors. Tenar was able to feed a few pigeons some of our left-over Italian bread. Lucky pigeons. This is also an area with some very high-end shops: Prada, Luis Vitton, Dior, Dolce & Gabana and one place I could afford, Sermoneta, where I bought a pair of very soft, cashmere-lined black leather gloves.





Roman Forum (Woman in front did not give her permission for the photo.  Forget you saw her.)



We then hopped on the metro red line, switched to the blue line at Stazione Termini, and got off at Formo Romano (the Roman Forum). There we saw a few more tons of marble in various levels of destruction. There was also a lot of green space in the neighboring section called the Platino on a hill between the Forum and the Colosseum. Even with all the tourists, I could imagine the Romans in the space, always of course in white robes with a circle of olive leaves perched on their heads.



Campo de' Fiori (just before the rain started)



We left the Forum to look for Campo de Fiori where I thought there would be a row of columns which the guidebook said formed some sort of optical illusion. We finally found Campo de Fiori, but no columns, no optical illusion. Turns out the optical illusion is a couple of piazzas south, but we couldn't find it. By that time there was one dark cloud in the city, and it was directly above us. The wind came up, the rain started, and again our map got soaking wet. Sigh. We saw a beautiful rainbow, and eventually the rain stopped, but we gave up on finding the optical illusion. It was dark! Putting the map away, we challenged ourselves to find the bus stop on our own, and we did! Tired in feet and mind, we took the #52 bus home for our dinner of pasta pillows with Ricotta and lemon, followed by an early bedtime.