Soggy Rome: Rains & the Rising Tiber River

Five plus days of non-stop rains in Rome have slowed life to a crawl. A massive nation-wide strike had been called for Friday, but the Roman portion of it was largely canceled due to what has been declared the worst weather in years. The Tiber river is at the highest level it has been since the 1960s and some of the ancient bridges are considered at risk of being swept away by the rising waters. This morning we finally had a lull in the rains and went out to join the others who were lining the shores of the river, cameras in hand. Here is the Tiber River on the day after it had reached its peak levels:

Here is a shot of how the water normally looks in non-flood level times. The lower lamplit walkway is now completely submerged:



Here is a video i-report, shot in our Trastevere neighborhood last night: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-162314

Italian Fusion Thanksgiving Food & Barcelona Images

Another quick trip outside the pasta zone...The night before departing Rome, we had an Italianized Thanksgiving meal on campus with the students and a mix of American and Italian families. The Italian chefs' translation of this American tradition into something they could wrap their heads around was worth the price of admission alone. To start with, the chefs could not fathom why a bowl of cranberry sauce was needed on the table from the start of the meal and, feeling the necessity of an antipasta course, they transformed the bowl of cranberry sauce into Italianized anitpasta, pairing it with a bowl of olive oil and adding leafy celery stalks for dipping. A meal without a pasta course was equally unthinkable, so we had a course of pumpkin ravioli BEFORE the turkey and potatoes. Delicious...a tradition I want to adopt! The stuffing and pumpkin pie brought us to new terrain: the stuffing was more like sliced pate and the pumpkin pie was more akin to a flat Italian peasant cheese cake tart. Most of us chose to close the meal with tiramisu and espresso instead!

The next AM it was off to Barcelona...Some Barcelona cityscapes below....




Boqueria Market (vegans beware):




Gaudi's La Pedrera (Casa Milà):


Gaudi's unfinished Sagrada Familia :




Tapas!:

Obama-mania: A bar getting outfitted with new signs, not yet a month after the elections.

Nuns at Work

All fall, as the olives ripened on the small orchard on Loyola University's Rome Campus, I wondered who would do the harvesting...if anyone. Last week I learned who does the hard labor: