Meeting, Fabric, and Hurricane Worries

The usual if somewhat belated start to the morning.  Then we decided to catch the 12:45pm meeting at St. Andrews.  We still had a bit of time though so we took the Metro up to a whole new stop, Barberini!

This dropped us off at Piazza Barberini with its Fontanta del Tritone, the Triton Fountain. There's a drought here so many of the fountains are turned off including this one.

Then it was back up the now familiar Via Delle Quatro Fontane, approached from a different angle this time.

We arrived early at the meeting and had a bit of a chat, then the meeting, mostly with tourists but a few expats, and out again.

And then back down the hill, passing Palazzo Barberini.  This houses an art collection about which the guide uses the word "baroque" prominently.  This isn't particularly to Nancy's or my taste. Other than the delightful foreground the palazzo seemed a little grubby; this and the ten Euro entry fee deterred us from entering. Said Euros were better spent on a cafe and then some excellent gelatto around the piazza.

We were delaying because, before leaving Florida, we had noted a few well reviewed fabric stores in Rome.  This afternoon we targeted one not too far away but it closed for a siesta from noon until 3:30pm.  When we had finally killed enough time we took the Metro, again to a new station, Vittorio Emanuele, just beyond Termini.  The walk to the store involved a jog around the piazza or park there, a multi-ethnic are that has improved a lot since last I was here.  The store itself was small and to my mind slightly grubby although Nancy said the fabrics were top dollar (or Euro) and jammed into stacks up to the ceiling.  Due to the nature of the place however Nancy wasn't comfortable asking them to pull out rolls for examination.

Therefore we just walked back down the hill; the road the store is on (after changing names multiple times) led directly to our neighborhood where we stopped again for a dolci. Thence back to the apartment.

At some point in the afternoon several hundred motorcycles queued up at one end of our street and then with much vroom-vroom-ing and beeping roared off toward the Colosseum. Don't ask me.

Throughout the last couple of days we have of course been keeping our eye on Hurricane Irma which has apparently decided to, in the next day or two, target our houses. Nancy has been poring over all the news articles. I am pretty much of the "they said evacuate; I just did it sooner and further" school. At any rate the next few days will tell.

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We went out to dinner to a place pretty much off the tourist trail, one fronting the east or "back" side of the forums of Augustine and Trajan. Along the way we spotted a place just labeled "Ceramica", Ceramics, which wan't a store selling plates but one that actually creates ceramic objects (I'll let Nancy decide as to their art-worthiness) the way Nancy does.  We had to stop in and chat for a bit.

Dinner was excellent, grilled lamb shanks with roasted potatoes for me.  We decided however to have dessert back closer to "home" at a place we'd been before.  As we turned towards the restaurant I spied an open shop that looked interesting.

The woman was a micro-mosaicist; she creates mosaics from sticks of glass little thicker than threads; fascinating. You don't just bump into ceramicists and micro-mosaicists wandering the streets of Bradenton.

And then dessert and on to bed.