Friday, January 21, 2011

An Off Day

We unexpectedly had Thursday off as Paola and Franco had errands to run in Rieto.  Julie and I planned to trips to local markets to browse and shop.  Not two of my favorite things, but when in Rome....Well we wern't in Rome, we stayed local as I said, and it rained.  And it was cold.  As we walked in Poggio Mierteto, we got drenched by a passing motorist who was flying down the street and hit one of several puddles and just nailed us.  I was ready to pack it in, but the bus wasn't coming back till 12:30 and it was currently 9:30.  3 hours to shop and browse in a in a town with one grocery store, a pizza shop, a pastry shop, hair salon, sport cafe and auto garage.  The store we actually wanted to go to went flying by as our bus driver again was practicing for the Italian Gran Prix and failed to stop for us coming down the hill.

So we had some pizza and rotissery chicken at the pizza shop.  Went to the grocery store for food and such. Went to the local sports club cafe, had an expresso, shot the breeze, thought about playing one of the 6 slot machines at the cafe, then thought better about it.  It was 11:00.  Had another idea to go into Rome, but with a large bag of groceries, thought twice about that too.  Hmm, what to do. 

Before I came to Casperia, I spoke to Greg, a former student who attended school here. He told me, "I had to rent a car, I was going crazy."  I can understand the sentiment there.

We walked back to the bus stop, stopping along the way at the pastry shop and got some bread and sweets.  Finally, 12:30 came and we waited for the bus back to Casperia.  It was 15 minutes late, as usual, but we decided to try on the way back to hit the store we intended to visit coming down the hill.  We actually got this driver to stop for us.  Julie was looking for a particular cooking implement that Paola uses to grill bread and was told that it was no longer made.  Disappointed, we waited another 20 minutes for the bus back to Casperia.   Got back to town, thawed out a bit and decided to watch the third installment of the Bourne movies on Julie's Mac.  Afterwords, I made chicken soup from some of our purchased food, ate a few brownies we had made on Wednesday, read a bit and called it a day.

If I only had a car, I could have visited the auto garage and while waiting get a hair cut at the salon. 

Oh well, four for six ain't bad!

1 comment:

Greg Simms said...

Hey Tom, on days like that you need to first find and rent a car online, then take the train to Fiumicino and pick it up. Drive very slow and cautious until you're used to driving on the Italian roads. You won't believe the freedom it gives you!