People Pics

Tidying up at San Gregorio after the high Mass of Pentecost



After Mass, we went to the German restaurant where Cardinal Ratzinger used to have his lunch. We sat at his table where there is a small plaque and a photo in his honour.


Buona Festa!


Tea on the Piazza Farnese with some seminarian friends.


An English seminarian. Part of the up-and-coming Manchester Oratory. They will be having their first public solemn Vespers on the Feast of St. Philip this year. I'm going.

I don't remember a time in the last ten years at least that I have been as relaxed and happy as I was on Pentecost Sunday in Rome. Nothing in Rome is done quickly (or efficiently). One simply does not hurry.

The Palazzo Farnese is now the French embassy and has a nice wide stone bench to sit on and pass the time of day watching the Romans in the wide open piazza. The order of the day was loafing and pfaffing about Rome, walking very slowly looking at things. We strolled off to Mass. We mosied over to the German place for lunch. We sauntered about getting gelatto then loafed around at the Farnese palazzo chatting about this and that, lapsing into periods of rather sleepy silence. It's the Roman way.


The bathtub shaped thing in the fountain in the Piazza Farnese was originally from the Baths of Caracalla.


Another Madonella.


Yet another Madonella.


The foot of Isis, all that remains of a great temple to her.


The fountain in the Piazza Panteon at six thirty am.

On the morning of my last day, I was up at quarter past five. By six twenty, all my things were ready to go and I went out for a last stroll about. This is about the time when the Carabinieri start manning the many little police watch towers around. They all seem to go to the same cafe for their morning coffee and bun.


This young chap was in the cafe at about 6:30 Monday morning getting his coffee and bun for breakfast with a lot of his fellow Carabinieri. I asked if I could take his picture and he said, gesturing to his face, "I'm not so good looking in the morning".

I showed him the picture, saying, "Very handsome". And he was.


The garden of the sisters whose women's hostel I stayed in.