Rome

So I promised a post on Rome yesterday, but of course I didn't get to it, perhaps because I was still on Rome-time. They're not big on rush-rushing there. Maybe we should take a lesson from them. Or maybe, since their economy is still shuddering from the conversion to the Euro, we shouldn't. Rome is expensive and part of that is the shift they've gone through to join the European Union. I got an earful one day from Fabio (no, not THAT Fabio - snicker) who drove us to Pompeii. He is worried that Italy will lose their middle class with the inflation he sees from the switch to the Euro.

Of course this isn't what I wanted to talk about (why do I always get off on these rants, anyway?). What I wanted to talk about is the Piazza Navona. We stayed right near it in a little hotel covered by ivy dripping down into the street. This Piazza was amazing. My husband and I couldn't stop spending time there. It has this huge old fountain (and we're talking real old here, like 1651, not American old) in the center and the place is always filled with musicians, artists, these crazy mimes, and people, people, people. Filled with cafes and gelato stores, it is a people watching heaven.

One day, as we sat drinking a bottle of wine (much cheaper than drinking a coke, by the way), this old guy came and set up a keyboard. He was drinking a huge bottle of beer, smoking a cig, and was dressed in a rather dirty suit. As he played, it became rapidly apparent, to me at least, that he played one song with his right hand and a completely different one with his left. It sounded like a Bach fugue on acid. Then he stopped out of the blue, tossed his cigarette butt into the street, took a swig of beer and grabbed the dirty ashtray. He went all through the little tables we were sitting at, using the ashtray as a coin collection hat. Then he played an encore for a few moments, then stopped, packed up and went in front of another restaurant. The odd thing is, although this sounds sad, it really wasn't. I thought to myself how wonderful it was that he had managed to find a way to live that included music. He certainly didn't seem anything but happy at his circumstances.

Rome is a city of greatness. We toured in chronological order, for lack of a better way to do it. By the end of Wednesday, which we spent at the Vatican, my husband begged for mercy on seeing any more churches. So we strolled the streets, hand in hand, eating ice cream and watching people laugh and enjoy themselves. It was truly wonderful.