Sunday

The weather is better than yersteday, my clothes risking nothing drying outside, I leave my stanza et go to Villa Medici, on heights of the left bank. Piazza di Spagna, a crowd in front of Dior's shop is blocking my way; is it already the beginning of sales? There are too many tifosi of la Lazio di Roma, soccer team, to answer positively. Those guys are there to acclaim a soccer player who came to burn thousands of euros from the millions his contract counts and whom bodyguards, at the time of leaving, violently urged a taxi who was there and wasn't going fast enough for them. To see how a bunch of people can get into a such jubilation for a guy who spends his money in a shop they are almost forbidden to look at makes me sick. While fans scatter or take pictures, the shop assistant reads, once again, the invoice.

Near Campo di Fiori, I buy a caffè et start Tu, mio, a novel written by Erri de Luca, in intalian. My cargo of books has run out ; I'll have to take advantage of Christmas to bring back a new case to Rome .
Piazza de la Fontana di Trevi, people are there with signs "Baci gratis", "Free hugs", "Embrassades gratuites". As I didn't really understand the trick, I dodge the nice girls I meet first, give a friendly pat on the shoulder of a guy a bit too much "enterprising" but eventually fall into the arms of a nice mamma who was blocking me. Why do you do this? Why not? To make you spend a nice day, to make you smile... So it works, grazzie. Yep, it worked, until a dazed policeman pushes me out of the road to give the way to Idon'tknowwhichasshole too hurry to move at the normal Roman traffic's speed. Fortunaitely, I discovered the Rome's ruins, Linaria cymbalaria, I was looking for. Plants don't care about privileges and keep pushing their seeds into mortar's cracks, mortar which will give up, later, under the pressure of the flower... The Villa Medici offers from its balcony and its terrace a wonderful sight on terraces and roofs of Rome : I think its the most beautiful lookout onto the city. Only drawback, it faces the South so it's impossible to take picture of the scene without having a backlighting which will clear all nuances of ochre and raw sienna, and all the details of domes, steeples and antennas. A place reserved for contemplation and which only reminder will be our memory...Back at my place, my landlord says me that bad weather is coming... holy cow