Dodging Lions and Wasting Time

For me, Rome has always been invoked most by Bob Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece, so you'll have to forgive me for this title. The lyrics can be found here.

I think both of us were buoyed by the espresso more than anything, because it was hours before either of us was able to knuckle down and admit we were hungry. Too much to see.

This is a block from the hotel room. That is Santa Maria Maggliore. Just your ordinary next door neighbor church.


We started wandering down the Via Cavour (Cavour was the diplomat who helped unite Italy in the nineteenth century; as I told Marjorie, he did the heavy lifting while Garibaldi got all the press), stopping into shops when the feeling got us.

Who knew that there was a market in Italy for "Italian dressing?"

At one point, Marjorie says, "look, a bookstore!
"
So I say, "Look what's in the other direction!"


And then she says, "But it's a discount bookstore!" And not just that, but look at the size of the discount on the Italian edition of Harry Potter!


Apparently, it's taken them awhile to translate the Deathly Hallows into Italian, but note that's "5 January", not "1 May."

Sometimes I'd just take a picture because the light was so beautiful. When I Paint My Masterpiece.



Sometimes, we just saw things that interested us, like the world's smallest footprint for a two-pump gas station.


Then we got to the Forum. Tomaso had told us that there was a booth where you could buy tickets to the Palatine and the Colosseum (one ticket for both without standing in line), so we walked to the Forum to see. But by the time we got there, we realized that it was such a nice day (we were both carrying our coats until it got dark), it made no sense to go inside when there was so much Forum to see outside. So essentially, we spent the next two hours just wandering around the Forum, photographing whatever made us happy.

Of course, we didn't neglect the Colosseum. Here is the typical shot that every photographer has to take of the Colosseum.


And to prove that, here's Marjorie taking that shot, while saying she is about to take that shot.


But other things kept interesting us, like this tourguide using a Segway to take his tourists through Rome.

Or this Italian marble flooring probably not available at your local Home Depot.


Or the contrast between the film advertised on this bus (I originally typed "Bust", which is a good description of the film Beowulf) and the Colosseum, since the Colosseum predates Beowulf, the oldest poem in something recognizable as the English language, by many centuries.


So we decided to follow the rubble of the streets of Rome



I have it on the good authority of a certain Minnesota Jew that they're filled with it.