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8:18pm on Saturday, 7th August, 2010:

The Last of Rome

Anecdote

Here is the final batch of bloggable pictures we took on our holidays in Rome.

First up, there's an army of men dressed as legionaries around most tourist attractions. Some are old and fat, some are young and tattooed, but all want money from you if you take a photo of them. Of course, if they don't know you're taking their photo...


We went to the Trevi "three coins in the" fountain to throw a coin in each, and found it a lot busier than it was 25 years ago. Just as we were getting ready, though, this guy took out an old car radio aerial with a magnet on the end:

He stopped when a police officer blew her whistle at him. Not much of a punishment, I'd have thought...

This tramp was in the same place the whole time of our stay, so much so that we used him as a landmark ("cross the road at the tramp"):

We didn't approach him, though, the smell of stale urine was too strong.

Just before the Isola Tiberina, there's a little breakwater to control the flow of the river. It creates a back eddy of water:

I'd like to think that this is a clever idea to trap river rubbish, so it can easily be plucked out and taken for recycling every morning. However, judging by the amount of flotsam there (the above is just a short section of it) they don't remove it quite every morning.

On a bridge to the island itself I spotted this:

It's a set of padlocks padlocking themselves to a street lamp. As cheap, harmless acts of civic vandalism go, I think it works.

It looked like a regular café by the side of the river, but up close:

Those are hookahs. When in Rome, do as the Romans do when they're in Cairo.

These are the Farnese Gardens:

Looks as if they could do with some more Farnese gardeners.

Rome has one of those municipal bike share schemes:

I saw several of these bike parks, and they were all empty. Oh, except one that had three broken bikes in it. That's the trouble with them: people don't make symmetric journeys, so some are empty and some, presumably, are full. Or maybe Rome simply doesn't have enough bikes for its scheme, that would also explain it...

Finally, this shop wasn't far from our hotel:

It's a tanning shop. You go there to get a tan. Except, it's in Rome. All Romans have tans anyway. They get the sun there. Why would they want a tanning shop? Maybe it's for tourists who sleep through the day or something...

And that was Rome.


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