The Squamidian Report – June 3 / 17
Issue #784
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Well now, I'm certainly glad that Greg is back and able to type again,
especially since I haven't been able to come up with much for this
week. Greg's documentation of his trip to Italy makes for great reading
and takes a whole lot of pressure off of me. I know, that sounds kind
of self serving on my part but you get what you get.
Actually, there was one thing of interest this week now that I think of
it. I helped Ryan get his Harley running. Due to his very busy life,
his poor bike had sat un-ridden and out of mind for a very long time.
The battery was stone cold dead and that meant the one-board computer
system had been sitting without power for who knows how long. We picked
up a new battery and installed it, turned the ignition on and it fired
up almost instantly. Gotta love those Harley's, they are pretty well
bullet proof.
And now, enjoy Greg's first installment of his trip.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
I hope you all missed the Ontarion as much as I did writing it! It was
a wonderful month as well as a painful one for me but it’s history now
so I can get on with my usual routine! As
I’m sure you all know by now, Carole, Adam and I spent the first two
weeks of May in Rome Italy.
We hopped a plane in Toronto on May 3rd and flew non-stop to Rome. It
took just a little over eight hours to fly a distance of more than
7,800 km. It was a smooth flight with only a few bumps along the way. I
like to fly with my seatbelt on anyway so I never really noticed any
roughness. The worst part of the flight was the crappy Air Canada food!
We were served either a hot chicken meal or a hot “Italian” meal both
about the size of a deck of cards and by the time they got to our row
with the food cart they were out of chicken! So, “Italian” it was and
it wasn’t the most appealing of meals to say the least. Oh well, I
guess it could have been worse; it could have been McDonald’s!
LOL! We took off from Pearson late afternoon and landed in Rome
mid morning. We had arranged for a limo service to meet us at the
airport and take us directly to the apartment we had rented in the
center of Rome. We were a block from the Tiber River and within walking
distance of all the famous bridges that cross it. Adam and Carole had
done a load of research when planning the trip and could not have
picked a more central place to locate our stay in Rome. We opted for
the rental of an apartment rather than staying in a Hotel. Not only was
the price more appealing but also the space and convenience was a
premium. We had two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a living/TV area and
an eat-in kitchen. The apartment was located on the second floor,
overlooking a restaurant on the first floor. The owner was also the
owner of the restaurant and had at one time lived in the apartment. To
get to the apartment was a simple climb up one flight of stairs
directly into the living area of the flat. We really enjoyed the stay
in these quarters as it afforded us privacy as well as convenience. We
prepared our own breakfast each morning and did not have to deal with
the rush of keeping with a hotel schedule for rising in the morning and
getting down to breakfast. We could sit in our pj’s and enjoy breakfast
at our leisure. That allowed us to set up our schedule for the day and
set out sight seeing at whatever time we chose. We had decided to be
our own tour guides during our stay and not have to keep up with a
heard of bus riders trying to see the sights and listen to a tour guide
speaking broken English! LOL! The access to our apartment was from a
courtyard within the building that contained the restaurant. So we
didn’t have to walk through the establishment to enter our
accommodations. Once we got settled, we started to explore what turned
out to be the most beautiful city any of us have ever seen! We were
located right in the heart of Rome and found we could walk to any
attraction in the city within a half hour or less. The first day we
decided to just walk the neighbourhood and take in the local sights. We
found that we were only two blocks from the famous Tiber River. Adam
had his GPS activated in his I-phone for Europe so we had no problem
locating the attractions and finding our way to any of them. The first
famous sight we walked to was literally a two-minute walk around the
corner from our flat. It was “The Piazza Navona”! We actually happened
upon it by dumb luck, as we hadn’t actually set out to find any
particular tourist attraction that first day. We turned the corner two
minutes from our front door and “WOW!” there it was, one of the most
beautiful “squares” in Rome! Suddenly there it was in all its splendor!
Like a set out of a Hollywood movie it absolutely glowed in the Italian
sunshine. It was a cobblestone area about the size of two football
fields, ringed by a two-lane cobblestone roadway and populated by three
giant fountains of marble equally spaced along the center of the
rectangular “square”. The open space surrounding the fountains was
taken up by sightseers like us as well as by dozens of artists and
musicians busking for coinage as well as selling their works of art to
the tourists. The streets of Rome for the most part are narrow and
lined on both sides by three to four story combination residential
apartments with stores of all kinds located side by side, one about
every 20 feet or so.
These streets are all paved with cobblestones and very few of them have
sidewalks. Most of the sidewalks are simply white lines painted about
5’ out from the storefronts. The narrow streets are indeed narrow and
yet they still allow cars, trucks and scooters (thousands of scooters)
to use them every day. People walk anywhere on the streets and must
move aside when a vehicle approaches from either front or rear. It’s up
to the pedestrians to move for the traffic! On these side streets the
cobblestones make walking very difficult and you have to be careful not
to twist an ankle! As I said, there are tiny stores everywhere and you
can buy anything from jewelry to leather goods to ice cream at the turn
of your head! The traffic is another amazing phenomena in Rome! There
are thousands of tiny cars everywhere! It seams that the majority of
people that frequent the plethora of side streets in this amazing city
either walk or ride scooters. The city doesn’t seem to have any traffic
rules. Well, maybe a few like they do obey “One Way” signs “sometimes”
however they drive their vehicles with no care for the other driver and
little care for pedestrians! Most of the cars and trucks are a maximum
of a foot apart in any direction and at any speed. They can drive as
fast as traffic will permit and they can park anywhere and in any
direction they wish! There were cars and scooters parked along the
curbs of most of the streets both wide and narrow and if a parking
space isn’t long enough to accommodate your vehicle lengthwise, you
simply park in the space, facing nose first to the curb. Most of the
cars are so small that when facing the curb the tail end doesn’t impede
the flow of traffic on the street. It’s crazy to think that a city of
three million people can operate this way but it works quite well in
Rome! From what we saw while in Rome, there are few if any parking
meters anywhere! If you don’t like the direction you are driving, you
simply make a U-turn whenever! We saw no accidents but did witness a
couple of incidents of “road rage” and Adam saw one where the two
drivers actually came to blows in the middle of the street. A scooter
had been knocked on its side by a small car and after a couple of good
Samaritans lifted the scooter off the driver, he said something to the
offending car driver. I guess it must have been something insulting and
the car driver ran across the street and started beating the heck out
of the scooter guy! I guess that’s just the way they settle traffic
disputes in Italy!
On another day when we were visiting the square where Caesar was
stabbed to death by 25 of his cabinet members plus his loyal friend
Brutus, we watched as a cab driver and another driver of a full sized
Jeep got out of their vehicles and were having words. I guess the cabby
had cut the Jeep driver off and the Jeep driver ran up to the cabby and
started roughing him up and tried to shove him back into his cab
through the roof! LOL! That didn’t work too well and they simply
settled it by swearing at each other and making hand gestures! There
was never a dull moment in Rome!
I think I’ll stop at this point for the first episode of our trip to
Italy! Don’t want to blab it all in one weekly! LOL! Thanks for tuning
in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The
Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
Who had a pigeon poop on his shoulder while visiting the Trevi Fountain in Rome?
After tossing a coin in the fountain for good luck the pigeon picked my
shoulder to poop on for added good luck! LOL! Lucky Me!
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
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