wad ah wanduh'full wehhhld

I love how anything OLD here gets crumbly and then sprouts flowers! This is a shot from right outside my apartment. Not too shabby, eh? Beats pictures of herpes simplex and varicella zoster, eh, Nigel?

So it is not OFFICIALLY tourist season, but I don't know how it could get worse! The traffic from the Church to my place was AMAZING! These people are ingenious drivers, though, I have to hand it to 'em. In Rome when the light goes RED, people making left turns quickly try to fill up the intersection so no one with a green light can pass. Its a sly way of making their trip shorter. The people with the green light don't, of course, WAIT for the miscreants to get out of their way- they go on ahead and get as close as possible to the intersection-blockers, shouting cool words which I haven't learned yet, and gesturing wildly with their hands (not just middle fingers, but noses and elbows, too). Some of the smaller cars can actually make it THROUGH this tangle. That's lucky for them, unless they have to go into the oncoming traffic to accomplish it, in which case they come bumper to bumper with the bus. Then we all have to stop. The obvious solution to this whole mess, as the enlightened 20% have discovered, is for everyone to blare their horns for as long intervals as possible. Unfortunately, it hasn't caught on yet so its only 1 in 5 cars using their horn with no effect. Maybe the ratio will go higher as the weather gets hotter and people are able to think more rationally in their vehicles.

I'm VERY glad I don't have to drive in Rome!