what a villa really is

The cat is out, I let it slip that I am writing this blog to a colleague. So from now on, its contents is not to be trusted, since I will be under the supervision of them. But I still aim to entertain so I hope that they and you will enjoy it, otherwise it would not be worth the time :-)

Anyway as a response, I received an email, from a colleague, explaining why parks in Italy is called "villa" and not "parco".
Looking in a italian dictionary (I don't know which), you will find the following description(my colleague wrote):

vìlla: vìlla : s. f. casa sontuosa, signorile, situata in campagna, circondata da grande giardino o da parco

If you don't speak italian, it says (I hope)
That a "Villa" is a luxurious house, situated in the country, surrounded by a big garden or park.

So the reason why the parks - I run around in - is called Villas, is because it was homes of rich and nobles from the past, all the way back to roman times, which had huge magnificent gardens surrounding them.
The houses are still there, in many of these villas, now not owned by nobles or rich people, but museums and the like. The ones which is still in the possession of rich people, is closed to the public.

The reason while I can run around and brag about living in the center and still go for runs in those country houses, is that the present center of Rome, is quite a lot bigger that it was some centuries ago. even though we just live 5 minutes (okay 15 min) away from the walls of Hadrian.

The explaining email finishes in the following way:

"We Italians are lazy: rather than saying "I'm going to Villa Celimontana park", we just say "Villa Celimontana" ;-)"

This is actually also the case for the famous Spanish stair, here in Rome, because the piazza where its ends (or starts, depends if your the positive type) is called piazza di Spagna (the Spanish square), and the stair is actually just the stair at the Spanish square... But maybe the lazy ones, in this case, is in fact the foreigners, because I never heard it from an italian....

Just to make the confusion complete, I should tell you that the pictures is not of neither a villa nor the stair at the Spanish square, but of the forest on our balcony.

Have a nice weekend

I do fit inside a fiat 500

Its not harry potter bigger inside, but it is bigger inside than it seems. And even though I am very much against old polluting cars, this is very fun to drive. This specimen of a fiat 500 (actually owned by some nuns in the sixties) is Sara's love and joy. Which we had taken for a last spin, before it was transported to the village in the mountains for a complete repaint and check-up. It was quite an experience to go for the spin, not only because the small old car suddenly stopped in the middle of one of the main roads of Rome, and I (in the other car) had to gently (as gently you can push one car with another) pushed her for 50 meters and a left turn. This create allot of honking from other friendly Italian drivers, but Also because our license plate suddenly wasn't there any longer. And without going into the story of the old man who ask Sara "who is this man, and why has he taken you number plate" I will just say that we delivered the car at the transport company, were we parked the car inside a truck.

But as I wanted to say, I do actually fit inside a fiat 500.

Have a nice day.

My first day home alone

The first of may is a holiday in Italy, where everybody is out demostrating for workers rights... NOT, but anyway its a holiday. For me it was not like a usual holiday, first because I got up at 5.30 and second because I had to drive Sara to the airport, because she is going to denmark for 14 days to work on article with an alf.



This means that I am here alone in Rome for the first time. To start out, I was very proud that I actually found my way back from the airport, and found a good peaceful parking spot for our car (as show in the picture, its the black one :)).

After checking four times that I remembered to lock the car, I went for a run, which I had cleverly planned to stop in front of an ice cream shop. The run was good, I went to a villa (in other countries they are call parks) called Celimontana, which is only up an evil hill from were we live. I was a bit too hot, but good. Sadly the ice cream shop had cleverly chosen to be closed - the usual woman behind the counter doesn't really strike me as the demonstration person, but it was nether the less closed.

The shock of not being able to buy big ice cream gave me enough energy to also take the stairs all eight floors, which my legs are now complaining a bit about.

As a home alone person I tried to make all the things I always want to do but never have the time, which apparently is to lie on the sofa and doing nothing all day, because that's what I have been doing, and well yes eating all the snack sized magnum ice creams in the freezer which my sweet Sara had bought for me.

Now the big decision is whether to go back to the sofa, and watch my fifth episode of "Battlestar Galatica" (season 1) or go out into the world, and maybe go and see the new Spiderman 3, which is on with original language (which is not so common, as I wish). Either I better stop now, not too bore the reader. Miss Sara, already

So long.