2004-04-09 Lunch on the Via del Corso
Today, I decided to head out into the city alone. I boarded the 44 bus near our hotel to the Piazza Venezia at the heart of town. I then jumped on the 95, and took it to the end of its line, north of the border of the Old City. I decided to walk from the nearby Piazza del Popolo the entire length of the Via Del Corso, the main artery of Rome, back to its end at the Piazza Venezia.
I just stopped for lunch at a pizzeria, and forked over the extra Euro to sit at the table and write. My original plan was to grab lunch and eat while listening to the small accordion band by the Popolo, but I decided to take a load off, people watch, and write a bit between bites of spinach.
The Corso is one of the few roads in this town that runs straight for any significant length of time. I can stand out in the street and see both ends at once. Thus, tourists flock to its normalcy. I’ve mostly been photographing the natives, in order to better understand what makes an Italian, but I think someone should shoot a book called “tourists.” Foreigners madly fumbling with maps, taking pictures of the monuments, getting frustrated at the language barrier. Yesterday Tara and I merrily observed from the bus a German trying to photograph the Temple of Hercules Victor He was having a heck of a time, with his handbag stuck around his ankle. His acrobatic feats to remove it and flip it up onto the bench left us rolling in the aisles, but it happened too quickly to photograph.
I realize yet another limit of photography… some things happen faster than you can find the right lens, set up the shot, focus, and snap the shutter. Some memories are destined to be just that, photos of the mind. Luckily, the highest resolution photo cannot match the mind, whose film is 3D and records five senses instead of just one.
Tags: Archives, photo, photography, piazza venezia, rome, via del corso