Saturday, January 20

Leaving Rome

Don't!!!

Tim: Visited the same museum as a few days ago, just to finish. Marvellous; bought ruinously heavy/expensive books there, one on museum exhibits alone. Will take you through page by page when next I see you.

Polly: It was with much sadness and many kisses that we said goodbye to Senora Olga and her lovely B&B Oasi. Staying with her was like visiting Nonna - nothing was too much trouble, the furniture was covered to protect it from her ancient cats and we were constantly being offered more food. Breakfast consisted of juice, coffee, hot and cold milk, toast, bread, cheese, the knife sharpener
cake, croissant, fruit, pastries and cereals. Mr. Olga (we never caught his name, although we know that he was born in 1932 and doesn't sleep well) would hover throughout the meal, refilling jugs and making sure we were eating enough. Halfway through breakfast Olga herself would appear, exclaiming, 'musica, musica' and put on a damaged Mozart CD that would always stop after the first track. I wondered if this had been going on for months, and she couldn't work out what was wrong with all of her uncultured guests who kept turning it off.


Tim: Polly has cleverly skipped over the part where she bought some shoes. Never mind. Harm's done now, let's move on. We took a Metro and a train packed with schoolkids to Viterbo, then, due to my aversion to the car-bound thieves some call 'taxis' we walked to our hotel through narrow streets. In retrospect, a mistake, it was a fair distance and these cobblestones are shaking the wheels on her suitcase to bits. We napped, then took a look at the town.

Viterbo street
Gee, it was prosperous. Although after dark, its main streets were lined with expensive shops and well filled by ambling locals and the odd fat tourist. When I say, 'main street', I mean 'twisting lane' about 5m wide, closed to cars when the shops are open, that every 300m or so would open up into a piazza about as big as a suburban block. It was quiet splendid. We stopped in at the restaurant just opposite our hotel, nothing special, and had what Polly described Viterbo streetas the best meal she's had in Italy as we watched 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?'

2 comments:

Enzogopher said...

love the hat mum! what did you eat? How small did Tims mouth get when he saw you bought shoes? OOH I'm all excited.
love Ellen
Ps Billy is acting rather odd, he's all whiney even though I played with him and he's been fed. he doesn't look hurt either. hmmm.

Crritic! said...

So where was that "best meal in Italy" of which you speak? Must file that away somewhere.