Sunday morning is rather interesting in le Est de Trastevere. There is a massive street market on Viale de Portuguense (Portuguese street) right behind our flat complex. It runs parallel to the river and was completely covered by the market. Adam and I walked the entire length of the market and saw just about everything imaginable for sale. Pets, snack foods, clothes, toiletries, shoes, coats, soccer apparel, books, nuts, antiquities, decorations, furniture... And it goes on and on and on. I do want to go there next Sunday and grab myself a jacket and a pair of shoes. I'm not sure if they are things that would make it through customs very well because many of the objects appear to be from dubious origins, but at least they are cheap! It was the first real experience of culture shock because everyone was hocking their wares in loud voices and singling out tourists trying to get them to buy whatever they were selling. This is where speaking English can get you accosted by several people trying to sell you junk you don't want or need with the voice volume stuck at full. After a while Adam and I just bumped each other and nodded in a direction instead of talking, which kept most of the vendors away from us. We also made it without being getting our pockets picked! Supposedly there is a lot of petty theft there, but there were other tourists there who were far less discreet than Adam and I, so we were less of a target.
After the shear madness of the market, Adam and I walked the river channel. We walked down from street level and walked next to the Tiber river. It has gone down several feet since we arrived several days ago, and probably will be back up whenever it rains again. (This probably won't be soon because todays weather was 70 and sunny. I can feel like I got a little sun on my cheeks.) It was very cool and fresh feeling down by the water, and was very calming after the mob in the market. The river also was very scenic. We walked until the Isla Tibernica (Tiber Island) and got back onto the street level near Trastevere. Next Adam and I looked for a lunch spot, and ran into la Casa di Dante. The actual home of Dante, where he wrote his famous works and gave birth to the Italian language! It was closed though, so we perused the nearby restaurants to see what we could find for a lunch. Many of the street restaurants were a costly, and the places we could afford were massively packed with people watching Serie A football. In some places middle aged men were standing in the street just pretending to read a menu or socialize, when they were actually just watching the game.
We eventually just went to Viale de Trastevere and grabbed some pizza by the gram. (It is like buying meat at a meat market. They just weigh it and have a fixed rate per gram. Or you can just buy the whole thing for 5 Euro.) Posted below are some pictures of this mornings walk about and things we saw. I did not get a good picture of La Casa di Dante but hey, I will go by it at least twice a day for the next 4 months.
Ciao...
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