Rome Weekend - Day 2

The best way to leave a restaurant is reluctantly. I was all too keen to leave Ristorante Il Peperone at Via Veneto, 97 tonight. The food was fine; the service was poor. The roles seemed to be divided between  a mixture of unhappy Asians and their extremely detached Italian superiors. None was attentive, lacking even the basic skill of offering dessert after a suitable pause following the main course. So inattentive were they that, even in a quiet restaurant, they forgot to charge for our desserts and coffee. Only because I feared arrest if they somehow blamed us for this oversight I brought it to their attention and their remedy was not to amend the bill but to produce a second, leading to two credit card transactions. Still, there was no repeat of last night's attempted scam.

Rome and Paris have a lot in common. Both are beautiful cities. Both are inhabited by people who believe they have style which they do not and both have countless examples of stunningly selfish parking. Double parking is virtually mandatory and triple parking is not unheard of. I can only imagine that all the perpetrators belong to the 'I'm only going to be a few minutes' club. This caveat of course makes ones vehicle much less of an obstacle as does leaving on ones hazard flashers in the UK. A streak of selfishness bordering frequently on lawlessness runs through the Italian psyche. On Roma Termini station where smoking is banned, it is hard to avoid smokers the most daring of whom are finishing their cigarettes not only on the platforms but actually in train doorways with only the ash beyond the plane of the carriage's boundary.

It was a beautiful day in Rome but still required a coat. As in many cities, the canyons formed by closely spaced buildings can be cold as well as dark. These same conditions made photography more challenging. The greater challenge though lies in achieving some originality in one of the most photographed cities on earth. I think I have done that in some of my Flickr photostream. It took a while to get motivated. I found the buses unexciting, a feeling with which most of you are probably already familiar. Motivation was difficult too at Roma Termini station. Although the concourse area is developed and clean, the station infrastructure of (presumably) 60s concrete shows visible decay. Wider decay is evident in the shameful external condition of many of the trains including locomotives. Toilet facilities at 70c per use were woefully inadequate, a downstairs closure apparently leaving limited capacity and consequent queues for facilities on which the Euros collected had not obviously been spent.

We had Metro tickets but the easiest way to get around and see as much as possible is on foot. We walked a long way. The Colosseum and Forum were of course busy but some of the side streets were surprisingly tranquil and pleasant. In one such we found a good buffet lunch which revived us enough to continue the uphill walk to the hotel. Breakfast at the hotel is taken on the 7th floor which has a roof garden. That was open during breakfast but closed in the afternoon which I found surprising and mean. I doubt that the motivation was Health and Safety - this is Italy.

Rome, I suppose, is no more representative of Italy at large than London is of England or Britain but it certainly is expensive. Although, like London, there is no season as such with a constant stream of tourists, I felt there were signs of strain on the economy.