Stay at home - yeah right!

Our street Via Paluzzuolo - our place is on the right down the end near the umbrellas - you might have to click to enlarge the photo.

Well so much for the stay at home thing! I suddenly realised that today was Saturday - which means everything (just about) closes at lunchtime and is potentially not open tomorrow! Food was required to see us through as the rats are eating like elephants! Drinks not so much a problem, a lot of the little trattorias will be open and they sell drinks - but not really sure about anything else and didn't want to be caught short. This time we set off early - the weather was great - 24C and a bit cloudy, hasn't actually gotten much warmer - maybe 28 now, cloud is keeping the temp down.

These are the garbage bins

We started our journey by taking out the garbage. Now most people know about how narrow the streets are in places like this - so obviously you don't get big buses or garbage trucks coming down the street to empty rubbish bins, right? I had actually not thought before about how the process of garbage collection works in an area like this. Our street is about 1 1/2 cars wide - that is, one car can comfortably fit on the road with a small "path" about 1 person wide on each side - bins would get in the way...... so there are garbage "stations". Silver enclosed boxes that periodically appear in little alcoves or along the street - some for general waste and others for recyclables. The nearest one to our place is 300m down the street. You step on a foot pedal and they open, you deposit the garbage and let go of pedal - done! What happens then I have no idea as there doesn't seem to be a way to collect it from street level.

This was the lane - I dare you to drive down it!

While I'm talking about small streets we found a really little lane just near the garbage station, you wouldn't want a car bigger than a matchbox to go down there - either that or REALLY good spatial awareness so as not to scratch the car! Meanwhile the boys had their mouths open in surprise when they saw their first "tiny" bus in the street around the corner today. About half the length of a normal bus and shorter in height - they were flabbergasted....... and then we saw the car with only 3 wheels! One of my memories from Italy as a child was these 3 wheeled cars/trucks - but they are not so prevalent here now - instead the 'half car' seems much more popular. It is a car that is as wide as a small hatchback - but is cut off just behind the front seats - these things can park nose in to the curb and are as long as a normal car is wide! I have a new appreciation for exactly how much space we have in Australia!

The 'half car' 

The 3 wheeled truck that was the focus of the boy's attention.

Anyway we walked down to the river today - it is 3 blocks from here - the boys thought the bridges were great and there was a weir/wall out into the river as well, which they both wanted to immediately walk out onto! We walked down along the river a bit for me to show them how far we need to walk to get to the English speaking Church tomorrow morning. They wanted to cross over the bridges and keep going - but that will have to wait until tomorrow. We continued back up to Mercato Centrale again - this time we went inside - it is a market - fruit, deli, cheese, wine, pasta (fresh & dried), bread, flowers, spices, dried fruit, butchers, fish mongers...... just about everything you could need fresh food wise - we did most of our shopping here - which meant a quick stop at the supermarket for things like frozen peas and then home for lunch.

View across the river

To the left

To the right

A view from inside Mercato Centrale