Saturday

This week-end has been a pleasant one: I spent it leisurely walking on top of the hills, looking for the best sight of the city, diving into the whirl of alleys, going up to catch my breath and diving again to meddle myself into the rumbling of streets. A quiet sea seen from the surface but agitated and noisy as one goes further down.

The sight from Garibaldi's hill is not bad : one has a wide angle. However as the place wasn't favorable to revery I went down, croosing on my way two acrobats floatting in the air. He shows her how to do, she listens to him with attention, the oak, impassive, supports the sheet which makes them fly.

Hidden garden in the alleys.
Once on the other side of the Tiber, I played at losing myself in the maze of streets. A blue white and red flag helps me to find the place on my map (did I thank you for it, Liz?) : I'm in front of the French embassy, Piazza Farnese, nearby Piazza Campo di Fiori I cross every morning. The place is pleasant, although I prefer the Cyprus embassy in front of the dark French building.
From there I tried to find my way to Villa Medici, where privileged French Academicians can enjoy life in Rome. I haven't found it but policemen looking like corrupt mercenaries and carabinieri, more serious. I need to make myself a fake Press-accreditation to take pictures of those guys : they looked like milicians directly taken from "Tintin and the Picaros", a French comic I invite you to read... However, they weren't waiting for me, french tourist lost in the urban immensities. Once chosen a good observation post, and quickly met by a couple of English from Chester, close by Manchester, a nice city with its own roman ruins, yes young man, I understand I'll watch a Roman demonstration.
Demonstrators arrive at dusk ; it's 5:30pm, this is the terminus. It was a friendly demonstration, there was even a small band (like our "banda" at Toulouse). Slogans for liberation of Palestine and stop of economic and military cooperation between Italy and Israel seemed legitimate but there were those mother fuckers flag burners. I'm not a patriot, I don't think it's one of my main features, however I hate this action : a flag represents, abroad, a whole country, as much idiots as others, and in this way, burning the israelian flag is burning efforts people are doing there in favor of peace, and mix their ashes with the ones of stupid expansionists... As burning the American flag is forgetting that half of the population doesn't support US policy in Mideast : 6 and a half strips and 25 stars don't deserve to be trampled on the pavement.

Policemen haven't charged and I finished my day listening to a jazzband on Via del Corso.