Traffic Jams

Well the tourist season has started here in Roma - not that it every really ends you just get crowded season, more crowded season and most crowded season. We are now at the more crowded stage. Our friend Marc-Auriele is visiting and last week he and I took in some of the major sites and became part of the more crowded. Fortunately it rained a good deal of the time and that kept crowds at manageable levels. Yesterday and Today with the temperatures hitting 30c both the heat and the crowds became unbearable. Here's a few samples of what its been like this week:

A sunny and hot Roman afternoon and the crowds are all around Fontana Trevi looking for that opportunity to threw in the traditional coin like Dorothy Malone or jump in for a swim like Anita Ekberg. Oh what the hell I can't be the only one who remembers Dorothy Malone and Anita Ekberg can I?

I managed to catch a cold standing in the rain at the Colesseo so I sent Marc-Auriele out on his own today. He decided for his last day in Roma he'd pop into the Museo Vaticani and headed out around 0900. When he finally go there at 1030 - morning traffic was, how shall we say, living hell - he discovered:

The line up started at the old Museum entrance, down the block - a good length of Vatican City defense wall....

.. around the corner, along another wall, around a corner and almost all the way down to Piazza del Risorgimento - a distance of approximately 825 metres or one half mile. He decided to forgo the Sistine Chapel but ended up at the wonderful Museo Massimo.

And he took this little film of the crowds waiting to get into San Pietro - frankly I'm glad we went last Wednesday, even if we did get soaked. Today the line started at the left side of the Basilica circled all the way around the circumference of the Piazza to the the entrance on the right side of the Basilica proper.



Not only the tourist sites have been jammed - Via Nomantana our main road to get home from town was a nightmare last night. True and honest gridlock!

No this isn't a parking lot its a major intersection of our beloved Roma.

27 maggio - San Augustino di Canterbury