Now, I sort of viewed it as an adventure -- an outing unto itself -- to see first hand how the system works. In fact, I didn't need to be anywhere until 11am, so I had from 9 to 11 to pick up my mail. Sounds reasonable? I actually didn't know exactly where the Poste was, so I carefully navigated my way walking the twisting streets in our neighborhood. Upon arrival, you are confronted with a large machine which prompts you to take a ticket. However, there are three different types of tickets depending on the business you have to transact. The list of things you can do at the Italian post office is LONG. You can pay bills, you can re-register your stay as a foreigner, you can get passports, you can send or receive mail, you can register your vehicle, and on and on and on. So, after I figured out which ticket I need, I took my number. Now the good thing about the Italian post office is that it's like a waiting room with seats. Which brings me to the bad news which is that you are expected to wait. This morning, there were not enough seats for all the people at the Poste. My "business" had to do with mail service. You would think that would be the quickest and easiest queue as it is the most straighforward. But no. The queue for fiscal affairs seemed to move right along whereas the queue for postal business didn't move at all. This was primarily due to the fact that only two agents were handling postal business, while five were handling fiscal affairs, and one of the two was dealing with one client for the entire 50 minutes I was there. The man was filling out paperwork and the agent was entering data into the computer for nearly an hour..actually it could have been much longer but I wasn't around to see. Meanwhile, the others in the postal queue were all wondering, as was I, what the heck was going on?!? Apparently, even mailing things seems to take quite a bit of time. When I entered the Poste, I was #33 for Postal business and the current client being served was #19. Fifty minutes later, they were serving #25! Can you believe it. Only six clients in nearly an hour. By the time is was 10:15am, I decided I'd have to pick up my mail another day. I still had to get home, eat breakfast, and get to the Mario Praz Museum by 11.
To complicate matters further, there had been an accident in our neighborhood this morning. Sadly, a fatal one, and traffic essentially ground to a halt. Our residential street, Michele Mercati, was completely backed up as people were trying to work around the scene of the accident on Aldrovandi. Anyways, I was glad to be on foot but expected it may take longer to get to town today.
The AWAR group had organized a private tour of the Mario Praz Museum today. Mario Praz (1896 - 1982) was an Italian professor of English literature and an avid collector. The apartment where he lived at the end of his life had been donated as a museum, and it was an opportunity to see how the man lived. I found the collection unremarkable, and discovered the man was a bizarre eccentric. He collected, but he collected strange and uninspiring paintings and trinkets, there were just many of them.
Happily, the whole tour was only an hour and then I was off to roam the streets of Rome. I passed by the Basilica di Sant Agostino which had been closed earlier in the week, so I went in to check it out. Then I found myself walking up Via del Corso, which was convenient for me to run a few errands. Josh and I met at home for lunch. He had been checking out another gallery this morning.
Tonight, Charlotte was going to a friend's house to sleepover after swim practice; Morris was coming over to babysit for Olivia and Avery; and Josh and I were going out to dinner. By the time Morris came over and we'd sat at the table with the kids, nibbling on their dinner, it was raining hard and we were both ambivalent about going out. If we could only lock ourselves in our room and watch a movie -- uninterrupted -- that would be great. But, that would never happen.
While we somewhat reluctantly got dressed and left for dinner, it turned out to be a great night and a lot of fun. We went to Osteria al Pegno, which is the restaurant where we had eaten with my parents when they had visited and to which we'd been looking forward to returning. The restaurant was closed in January for renovations, but it we didn't notice anything different about the place. Apparently, they had repainted. The owner remembered us. He recommended a terrific half-bottle of wine, a Syrah from Lazio. It was so good I wised we'd had a whole bottle. We had a great table and we remembered why we really liked the ambiance and charm of this place. All the food was amazing although I was a tad disappointed by the tiramisu. Last time we were here, the tiramisu was so good that we dubbed it the best in Rome. We've been sampling tiramisu everywhere we go to see if we could find one that is better or at least comparable, and thus far we'd failed. Maybe, the tiramisu I recalled was better in my mind than in reality...but, it was still darned good. We were treated to a limoncello by our host. After our rich meal, the digestive was well-received. In the end, our bill was 43euros!! I have to admit, I like that part too.
The rain had stopped; the street were empty; Rome at night was beautiful. We had Piazza Navona all to ourselves.
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