Wow! A month of big monumental things. The most notable was that it snowed in Rome last Friday!!! Some of the photos in this post show the scene. It is not unknown for snow to fall here and it apparently does every 5 or 10 years but that is always very light. Last week we had quite heavy snowfall over a three or four hour period. Heaviest for 26 years. So the snow coated the ancient monuments and made them pretty and white – for a while. By night fall nearly all the snow had melted away.
Everybody, including us, was very excited. We were having breakfast and aware that it had been raining heavily. But then as we looked out the rear doors of the apartment, the rain seemed to be 'slower' than normal. There was a period of uncertainty when we really couldn't be sure but then the heavens opened and flurries of very large snowflakes started floating and swirling about.
We went about our windows taking pictures (naturally) – as did many of our neighbours. So I walked to work in the snow – something that I never thought I would do in Rome.
The snowfields may have melted, but the photos and the memories remain!!
Another monumental event? Well the scaffolding came down last week. So we now can have daylight in all our rooms and we can see out (terribly important should it snow of course!!). They have done a great job and the apartment is now a lovely shade of 'pink' – not everyone's favourite colour but very neat with cream trim and brown shutters (the old shutters are also to be replaced). I have included a photo for you. We are on the second floor but that isn't counting the ground or zero floor, so we have two floors above and below us. The astute viewer will notice that there are still wires running casually down the walls into windows. That is because of the age and construction of the building that makes running wires through them almost impossible. Seems that they didn't adequately anticipate cable TV.
And the third monumental thing? Well, more of a monumental st@#f up! You know that car that we purchased in November? It seemed only a couple of weeks away from delivery yesterday morning when we went to pay the residue for it, but a paperwork error was noticed by the keen-minded salesman and I now suspect that we will not be driving about Italy for another six weeks. Not all monumental events are good events.
We are about to abandon meat for Lent with Ash Wednesday next Wednesday. And Rome is in Carnevale mode (goodbye meat). This will culminate on Tuesday with 'Mardi gras' - fat Tuesday – the time to pig out before the fasting starts. So there is a good deal of dressing up, mostly of children, who walk through the streets pelting confetti at everyone – the little darlings!! So a picture of the parade down the Via del Corso last weekend.
When you live in a snowy country (as we do) you need those warm wintery clothes (which we have been buying) and we now look reminiscent of eskimos. So maybe some pickies of the Douglases of the North next time. Mind you, we are yet to embrace the fashion for skinning small furry animals and making full-length coats out of them – something about not liking paint thrown at one? But we seem alone in Rome for that reticence and we are here where the fur coats are in abundance. And not just for the opera – at any time of day, as testified by the photo this time of a Gina Lollobrigida look-alike at the local fruit market with her trolley.
Oh! And another monumental event that will enable me to name-drop. A week ago, whilst walking up Via Sistina, a narrow-footpath-ed minor road that runs from the Spanish Steps to one of our regular gelaterias, I thought I recognised this stocky little grey-haired bloke who moved off the path to let us pass. We exchanged those sort of “G'day” nods and walked past, but I became aware of this chap having quite a few mates – maybe eight or so – who walked with him but in a sort of semi-circle around him. Some wore black suits – a bit ostentatious for a Sunday walk even in Rome - and they all seemed very intense. The the penny dropped (or more properly the cent) and I realised that we had just had a moment of fame with the US Defence (Defense) Secretary who must have been passing through after a NATO meeting in Istanbul. Quite proud of myself for noticing but I got the name wrong. I thought he was Robert McNamarra but then realised that this was a name from another era, another warlike 'defense' – my mate is Robert Gates. Anyway, he wasn't assassinated and neither was I.
Ciao ciao ciao from monumental Rome
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