A rainy Sunday? ...and other Italian tales

The weather here really is incredible. Today was supposed to be a rainy day and it only rained for about 20 minutes. Then an hour or two later the sun came out and it's another gorgeous day.

Still, the threat of rain thwarted our beach plans for the day. Instead we ventured out to the Vatican and the Piazza San Pietro. We would have taken a peak inside St. Peter's but the line for the security check point practically went around the entire perimeter of the Piazza. In any event, we had just wanted to get a sense of the place and its massive scale - and that we did.

It was lunchtime and everyone was hungry so we drove around the corner to Trastevere for a bite. We were really in the mood for one of those scrumptious, thin crust individual pizzas. Unfortunately for us, one thing about Italy is that

Pizza is served for dinner only. All those trattorias with the wood burning ovens don't even start to fire them up until around 7pm. We are so often in the mood for pizza at lunchtime, it's a shame. You can buy pre-cut pizza at a "bar" which is like a fast food place, but those pizzas are never really that good. So we settled on the usual - pasta. We ordered a couple of traditional Roman starters for the kids like suppli (the delicious fried rice balls with cheese inside), Baccala (fried cod fish) and fried zucchini flowers. All went over extremely well.

After lunch we strolled around Trastevere which we quickly discovered was much more pleasant for walking around in the afternoon than it had been during our last visit in the evening.

We visited Santa Maria in Trastevere, the old church in the main piazza and even the kids were in to it. Another beautiful church. I asked Olivia if she has seen so much art in one place at one time. She was mesmerized by the ceiling frescos and paintings and sculptures inside.

Josh suggested we drive up to the Gianicolo area to Piazza Garibaldi. I had never been there and was amazed at the beauty and lushness of the area. From the top of the hill - Piazza Garibaldi - there is a jaw-dropping view of all of Rome lying just across the Tevere. This is definitely a place I'd like to return to and explore more.

Before leaving for Italy, I had read a book by Tim Parks called "Italian Neighbors" about a British couple who moved to the small town of Montecchio in the Veneto region. While the story recounts their experience in a small, provincial town and not an urban setting like Rome, there are certain similarities. In particular, the author describes one of his neighbors who is always running the TV too loudly (and another with a barking dog). Well, he could have just as easily been describing our neighbor.

Behind our villa is an apartment building where one of the tenants has his or her television on pretty much ALL the time and it is on so loud that it echoes throughout the neighborhood streets. Fortunately, we don't have too many windows on to the back of the house with the exception of the master bath window. We like to leave this window open (for various reasons you can imagine) and thus are always treated to whatever happens to be playing on the RAI. Owing to the thick walls of the villa, once in the bedroom with the bathroom door closed,

it is quiet, so the loud TV playing neighbor is more of a curiosity than a nuisance. This morning, I took a brief walk around the neighborhood to get a closer look. It seemed the shutters on all the windows were all pulled down. Could this be a deserted apartment with a timer on the TV so that it comes on at all hours giving the impression someone lives there? That might be too progressive a technology around here. So the loud TV playing neighbor remains a mystery but one I vow to solve!

Another mystery in Italy that has been plaguing us (really it's just been plaguing me but, as my interpreter, Josh is involved by association) is the 90 euros that went missing from our new Italian bank account after we wired euros over from the States. Yesterday we received a confirmation of the wire in the mail (dated September 2nd - that's the Italian Postal Service for you) detailing the fees that Unicredito charged us to take our money. Yes that is right, the banks here really don't want your money because then they have the onerous task of figuring out what to do with it (apparently they don't like to actually lend it). So here is how it works. You pay a quarterly fee for the privilege of having an account (this may partially explain why Italians are known for keeping cash under the mattress - the other reason, of course, being the national sport of tax evasion). You do not receive any interest on the account. Then you pay $20 for the privilege of having an ATM card so that you can actually access the cash you have deposited. But that is better than having to go to the branch during "banking hours" and waiting to pay a fee to conduct a transaction with a teller (yes, you read that right, you pay a fee to interact with a live person). Then to top it all off they want to take 90 euros in order to do you the favor of RECEIVING your money. The worst part is, they don't tell you that they are taking it. In fact, when inquiring, they blame the bank that sent the wire (in this case JP Morgan).

As one might imagine, none of this went over too well with me. Strategically, I asked Josh to pay a personal visit to the branch manager, an attractive female. While I was happy to see a woman managing the branch when we opened our account there (although the low cut top and high heels were a different look), I thought she might be more receptive to an Italian-speaking male, than me. She told Josh she would look in to the matter but - and this is a quote - "no one works for free." When she got back to Josh the following week, she agreed to credit our account the "entire" Unicredito wire fee of 50 euros but explained that JP Morgan was responsible for the balance. I was relatively pleased with this resolution until a) JP Morgan insisted that they did not take a fee from the wire (it had been taken out of our US account) and b) the Unicredito wire confirmation showed up in the mail yesterday detailing the fees paid to Unicredito and totaling 89.84 euros. So now, I don't know if the branch manager is an idiot or a liar. But, at least she is not working for free. Welcome to Italy!

Ok, so I spoke too soon. We won't be eating dinner outside tonight. It is raining again.