I Pini di Roma

I'm sitting at the edge of Rome's Central Park, the Borghese Gardens. The Pines of Rome are on impressive display here, and they scent the mildly polluted air with hot summer as cicadas croak in the bushes and bosky dells behind me.

Chalk this up as another lost photo op. I'm a bad b logger, too, I guess, because I should exploit more the varied possibilities of the medium. But, need I remind you, flaneurs do not occupy themselves with such things. A word picture or two is all I require. My job is to see, accept, appreciate. Or deplore, as the case may be. Fortunately, the flaneur is realist enough to know it isn't in his purview or his power to change anything.

Some random observations from rolling round Rome:

• they no longer show pointy-toed men's shoes in the shop windows. - no one beats the Germans for ugliness in sandals. - the English may be the most unattractive people in Europe. Or the Germans.
• Americans often look very neat. Also uptight. - everyone wears shorts nowadays. But American men do NOT wear those silly pedal pusher things. - Roman traffic is fairly heavy but, contrary to what you've heard, the drivers are not crazy aggressive. - I had a correct if rather bland Cantine Tollo Pecorino at dinner last night. €14. We ate very nicely at a favorite trattoria near the Pantheon, Osteria del Sostegno. The somm knows his stuff and looks like Hank Azaria. - we saw Katia at the bar Night + Day in the Piazza della Rotonda. I wrote about her a few months ago. She's a waitress there, a very sweet young woman. She recognized me when I walked. It felt like being home. - I've begun talking to myself in Italian. It feels like being home.

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