Prima Domenica, First Sunday

You do know that, on a PC, you can click on any image (except the "title" image) to enlarge it don't you? And once "enlarged" you can use the "arrow keys", left and right, to scroll through all images on that page.  Those will be bigger but not as big as they get.  The blog software and your browser (like Internet Explorer) are cooperating to fit the image on your screen.  However the images are actually much larger than that.  In any browser I use I can "right click" on the image and choose "open image in new tab/window" or something like that.  In the new tab/window your browser is again attempting to fit the image on your screen but, in the browsers I use, you will note that moving your mouse pointer over the picture will show a plus (+) sign.  Clicking on the image will show it to you "full size".  Clicking again will again "fit" the image.  

On a phone, at least my Android phone, the above is unnecessary; the original "clicked on" image is available for "pinch zooming".

Try it on the street scene below; it makes a difference.

While I'm not too sure about the Italian in the title of this post it certainly is our first Sunday.

A view leaning out our living/dining room window looking towards the piazza on the left and the Colosseum at the end.

First some housekeeping.

When I woke up at 6:30am this morning it was 60F.  I threw open the living/dining room window and let air in and me out; it was delightful. The temperatures should continue in this wonderful range until the end of the month.

Next, and this is really important, fruit.  I haven't talked that much about fruit but I'm here to tell you it occupies a considerable amount of our intellectual bandwidth.  We have bought a lot of fruit and the worst it has been is very good, the best is orgasmic.  Cantaloupe, peaches, a variety of plums, all dead ripe; can't say enough.  And it isn't like we lucked into finding the only good fruiteria in Rome.  It's wherever we shop.

Alora, 6:30am this morning.  I sat for an hour or so and Nancy still wasn't up and then she awoke while I was getting cleaned up.  She wanted to hang so I set out on my own to the tabacchi on the square. I returned to put my teeth in. (I'm pretty new at this dentures thing.) The tabacchi was closed so I turned towards the Metro entrance, stopping on the way at another hole in the wall cafe for an americano and brioche.  Then into the Metro, up the hill, to the first stop, Termini.

A spot of civility in the heart of the city

Santa Maria Maggiore and its campanile (bell tower).

A selected detail.  I'm sparing you and your bandwidth all of them but the facade is crowded.

Deeply inset into the facade

Detail of the campanile and its clock

From there I wound around, noting the location of museums we'll visit later, and ended up in front of Santa Maria Maggiore.  I sat there for a while.  This whole area was my stomping ground on an earlier visit.  I stopped for a cafe at my then "regular" coffee shop then just drifted back down the hill.

The ultimate city car, an electric Renault Twizzy with dual seating fore and aft.

This left me back in Monti where I walked around a bit into strange corners then back to the piazza where I thought Nancy might be.  She wasn't so back to the apartment where the door was unlocked as Nancy had just come in from the piazza.  I'm tellin' ya, twin souls.  Two minds with but a single thought as someone said.

Back in the apartment, an email from Kelly the artist setting up an appointment for a morning tea next Tuesday; that'll be exciting.

So much for the morning; hopefully more later.

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Well, I would say much more.

Nancy was speaking at a meeting tonight so we thought we'd kill the afternoon by going to the Museo Nazionale Romano. or at least one of them. This contains Rome's collection of classical artifacts and is in fact a set of five museums.  We went to what we presume to be one of the major sites in Palazzo Massimo. A couple of reasons for this; first it IS one of the bigger collections and it also is across the street from the Termini Metro stop, convenient.

 

Nancy had picked this museum out earlier as it had a (well deserved as it turns out) reputation for fine classical era mosaics.  And sculpture.  And frescoes.  Okay, the frescoes weren't really that great but having any painted plaster after a couple of millennia is pretty neat. Between Nancy and myself we have a couple of hundred pictures from the museum, far too many for a blog.  Let's just say that the hours we spent there were well worth it.

The people watching was pretty interesting too.

It was still a few hours before Nancy's talk but we were so close to the meeting place that we again went to the bar across the street to have coffee and snacks and to read until the meeting time. This was largely uneventful other than a pigeon having explosive diarrhea all over (a) our coffee (b) the sidewalk (c) our table (d) my pants (e) my shirt, and (f) my head. It then had the temerity to fly down to the sidewalk to observe its handiwork.

Nancy then gave a creditable talk and led an interesting discussion in this hour and a half long session.  Afterwards several of us went out for dinner which if nothing else introduced us to a very good pizza place.

Nancy has assembled around a dozen of her bags since arriving and hopes to find a store to sell them so it was handy that on the way home we found a box to present them in.  She, I, and the box stopped for a gelato and then homewards.

So, I would call that a pretty full day.