Linda Mathieu's experiences living as an American expat in France
As expected, they have extended our confinement here in Paris (this was written on April 29) but we don’t have an actual date of when it might end. If we stay at or below 3000 new cases a day, we might be able to get out more normally starting the end of May. Testing will be available for anyone with symptoms. It’s a strange and confusing time. Again, here are some photos, some going back ten years, of voyages we have taken. Those were the days.
Here are just a few of the many photos I took in Rome:
The dome of the Pantheon.
We visited the Trevi Fountain along with thousands of other people and threw in a coin. I could be wrong but there seemed to be a lot more tourists in Rome than I see in Paris.
Near the Spanish Steps (under renovation) is this, the sunken boat fountain.
The strap on my purse broke (I keep too much in my purse, I think) and after looking up the word for shoe repair-calzolaio-and asking at our hotel for the closest one which, it turned out were just sort of general directions and wandering around a bit, we found it. This nice man fixed it on this old trundle sewing machine in two minutes for five Euros. It was nice to see a craftsman at work.
At the end of an ordinary courtyard.
This was in the side chapel at the cathedral in Trastevere, a funky section of Rome across the Tiber River. I can’t find any info on it. Anyone out there know anything about it? I think it was on a tomb.
There serve a lot of pork in Rome, especially hams and charcuterie.
Just one of the many places to eat in Trastevere, a very lively part of Rome.
The Saint Louis Cathedral dedicated to King Louis VIX. It was full of beautiful mosaics.
The last photo I took on Piazza Navona. We had a little time to kill before our flight back to Paris and wandered over there. It was a fun place to sit and watch people. A couple from Norway was sitting next to us on a bench in front of an enormous fountain topped with an Egyptian obelisk and the man pointed out some of the symbols on it and said the Egyptians had had help from extraterrestrials in building their monuments. He said he and his wife had gone to England to see the crop circles also done by aliens, not as I told him, by joking farmers. Who knows?
As I said before, we went to Rome to see some tennis. We both used to play some but never do now. We just like to watch it. The grounds are really nice where the Rome Tennis Open is held.
Mussolini had the grounds built, a sort of sports centre in the Fascist Architecture style. It is no longer called by his name.
There were lots of statues around looking Roman and athletic.
Some of the courts had Roman statues around them.
Some had those wonderful parasol pines. I moved into the shade of them often when the sun got too much for me.
A look at the action.
We saw Gasquet play, a French player. He is a beautiful player with a fantastic backhand, the follow through which you can see here. He easily won this game and then crashed and burned in the next one.
Maurice and I love watching tennis and have traveled to see many tournaments. One of the tournaments that we see on TV every year is in Rome, the Rome Open, and it looks like such a beautiful setting that we decided to make the short trip (from Paris) to Rome to see some of it. I had been in Rome many years ago. I was by myself with two of my children driving all over with no GPS, just a guide book, finding hotels by driving around a city with my kids being my copilot. I don’t remember much of Rome for some reason-just a big rain storm and getting lost on a bus going in the wrong direction and some of the monuments. We met with my ex later in Venice. Anyway,this time it felt like our first time there. We got lost constantly, especially when trying to find our hotel. I learned to use the GPS function on my cell phone which gives you a map of where you are and at the end of the five days, we had our section of Rome pretty much figured out. Our hotel was in the part of Rome which is near Piazza Navona, central to most of what we wanted to see.
Castle San Angelo. We never made it there, just saw it from a distance.
As in all old city centers, there are many alleys and courtyards.
Beautiful painted buildings.
Those lovely Italian colored buildings.
God didn’t help this nun find her way either. I hope her map did.
We took one of those Hop On, Hop Off buses around Rome to see the major sites. This is, of course, the Coloseum. We had both visited this before so this was the closest we got.
More modern architecture.
Many corners, high above, had religious symbols and paintings.