the great leap forwards

View from the terrace, December 2007 (cameraphone).

I'm not going to go in depth here, because I vowed to spend only fifteen minutes a day on the computer, but the Rome that I have loved for the last ten years and have been to at least ten times in the last ten years seems to be changing.

Wine bars, remodeled coffee shops, chain stores and supermercatis everywhere are changing the face of Rome, a city I love for the fact it seems resilient to change.

Change is hard, especially for me.

Is a tarted up coffee shop going to make me spend more time there? A new supermercati does not make provisioning (the one hour spent daily to acquire milk, clementines, fughi and carciofi as well as scrumming for bread) any easier really. It just makes it more modern and in some ways more impersonal. The vendors in the food market change yearly it seems, with fewer and fewer food people and more and more scarves, handbag vendors and touristy tat.

The lack of goods, such as today's foray to find napkins (cloth) took hours because the good kitchen supply shop near where we stay is gone. We managed to secure very lovely placemats, but heaven forbid that one can find a cloth napkin that matches. TH and scoured the streets (not such a bad task) and finally found napkins, first white and then a cheery festive red that matched.

Tomorrow, our friends R&K arrive. TH will do the traditional meeting them at the local train station and then the fun really begins. We hope to be able to show them our Rome, some touristy, some not so.