Dear Internet,

... still here, in Rome. For the most part it's been rainy ... the norm for November. Before we lived here it seemed we always visited in November for some reason & usually it amounted to day after day of rain. Nothing like the winter of 2010 when the Tiber almost flooded its banks, but the river is now above the running/bike path & rising ...

Mostly we've just been flâneuring & eating our way across Rome these past few days ... revisiting old haunts but also trying to find things we never saw, or seeing them in a new light. Won't bore you with the reminiscing (or bitching) about the good old days, but will just shut up & show visuals or angles that you, dear Internet, might not have recorded in your recesses ...

piazza Popolo in the rain

above Popolo

walked under this eagle with tits (on via Giulia) 100s of times before but didn't notice until now

Massini sculpture (Cleopatra) in Modern Art museum

... 1 of 1000s of unique nasoni (this one in Borgo Pio we think)

... this one in Spanish steps area

painting by Marcello Avenali (also Modern Art museum)

... & lets us not forget the father of Futurism, Filippo Marinetti

The current exhibit at the Galeria d'Arte Moderna (where the above were spotted) profiles various Italian writers & poets (including Pirandello, who we talked about in the last post), with either art by or about them.

Piazza Popolo as seen from under the fountain

«typical Italian products» says the sign in the window

graffiti removal as art #335

billboard #335

architectural angle #335

equestrian statue #335

deep into villa Borghese

INT. shot

distressed meme #335 (thinker on toilet)

piazza Verdi (building where Luca Arnaudo works)

street level catenarys (Piazza Verdi)

gateway to Quartiere Coppedè

Not sure we ever mentioned it here, but the Quartiere Coppedè is one of the best kept secrets of Rome (if you are into architecture anyway), a whole neighborhood designed by the eccentric Gino Coppedè ... like the mutant brainchild of Gaudí (but more practical & livable) & Escher.

complete with external chandeliers

a Coppedè building as seen from the entrance of another Coppedè building

in fact Coppedè reminds us some of Luigi Serafini, who designed the plate that holds this cacio e pepe (consumed at Armando al Pantheon)

other Escheresque buildings to be found

(this one seemingly an excavation in progress 3 stories down below the street)

... & the countless shops

... & elaborate interiors if you start snooping around inside

«street without an exit»

street texture #335

getting near to our old hood

eyes in Circo Massimo (& the tip of FAO at right where J was working all week)

cat in front of bakery #335

San Saba neighborhood

Porto San Paolo

with piramide under reconstruction

agave skull

Testaccio slaughterhouse

a totem to street art

Cinema America still abandoned after all these years ...

some sort of veteran's graveyard that is still never open

rubble cat

new bridge & gasometro

At this point we were venturing into new territory. Before this was the end of the road on our downriver runs, but it seems they finally finished this pedestrian bridge spanning the Tiber from Portuense to the gasometro. Of course the bridge dead ends on the other side (typically Italian), but offers some nice views into this abandoned industrial area around the gasometri (the shells of cylindrical tanks that someone told me once were used to measure air tho that sounds ludicrous). And now the path continues on downriver on the Portuense side (for who knows how long ... perhaps today we'll run down & see for ourselves).

giant concrete funnels

gasometro complex

a homey ogre? or a street artist that calls himself Hogre ...

now back on Portuense side in the pedestrian tunnel under the train tracks near Trastevere station

tire shop along via Portuense

Porta Portese

Not pictured is the glorious din of starlings we awake to each morning, chattering as they make their plans until all at once they shut up & take wing & then all you hear is the sound of millions of wings quietly swooshing, darkening the sky for a good minute or two until the entire swarm emtpies from the trees ... & of course each evening we've been divining their murmurations, from the Aventino or one of the bridges, but we've already said our piece about that ...