...and water covered the face of the earth

Today was a very wet day.

More 7am church bells. At least it's Sunday so they're expected. I could probably sleep through the bells, but Emma's talking about the bells ensures I wake up.

That's not the real problem. The real problem is I have a cold. Sore throat, runny nose, mild headache.

Plus the sky is grey, and the ever-reliable BBC Weather predicts rain.

If we need a final excuse not to run all over town, we need to do our laundry. Rarely have I been so grateful for domestic chores.

So when Emma asks if we can have a quiet day I don't argue. Great idea.

After breakfast* we grab our washing and umbrellas and head off to the laundromat, which turns into an interesting experience. Like most things Italian it's a highly social process, with lots of chatting.

Procedures are different too. There's a guy on crutches with a broken foot** and a big smile supervising the place. He not only gives change, he feeds the coins into the washing machine - actually, he feeds the one Euro coin in three times. 

The rain finally comes, pelting down. And stops just as we're leaving. Lucky. 

We spend the rest of the day dodging rain. Every time we go inside it hammers down, and stops before we go out again. With luck like this I really should be buying lottery tickets.

It's Simon's last night in Rome, so in the evening we meet him and his friends Robin and Pepe for dinner, at the restaurant in Travestere we liked so much our first night in Rome. As it's raining and I have a cold we decide it might be worthwhile to take a taxi. As we're English-speaking tourists the taxi driver decides it might be worthwhile to take the artificially extended tourist route.

No point letting it ruin the evening. Or the annoying guy who wanders in selling roses or scarves or something.

(Italy is full of people all selling the same crap. The same scarves, handbags, squishy plastic heads... and the instant it rains, umbrellas, produced as if by magic.)

Dinner's great, especially the fried artichokes which were a big hit the first time, and the spaghetti carbonara. We order enough for four, and get platters that could feed eight. Maybe twelve.

After the meal it starts to drizzle. Emma shared her umbrella with Simon, and asked him, "when are you going to get your own?"

"I'm waiting for some Indian dude to sell me one," he said as we turned the corner, " - and here he is."

Which he was materialising as if by magic. Spooky.

Then Emma spotted a taxi, and grabbed it, cutting our goodbye period down to seconds. Good idea, because we're really going to miss him and long goodbyes - well, you know.

So quick hugs and goodbyes, and we're off. Although there may have been a few misty eyes during the ride to the hotel.

* At breakfast we talk to a nice American family from Michigan we met in the lift the previous day. She's a nurse, he' 's a cop, their daughter turned twelve the day before (we sang the "Happy Birthday plus one day to you" song), and they also have a son living in Rome who's studying electrical engineering and acting as tour guide. They're heading off to Florence by today.

By car. Brave

** The broken foot is probably not a requirement for the job...