AHhhh!! I'm melting!

It hardly bears saying, but damn, it is hot.

So much for the only Italian metropolis – today is the feast day for Saints Peter and Paul, a major holiday in Rome. There are wilted tourists wandering around everywhere, trying to figure out why nothing is open. The bars and cafes and most restaurants are doing business, but most Romans are at the beach. Some notable exceptions and non-exceptions: The entire ghetto is closed. Why not? The left-wing (read: communist) bookstore, on the other hand, remains true to its secularism and is open. The only stores on my street open are run by South Asians or Middle Easterners. I was very happy to be able to buy the liters and liters mineral water I need to stay alive in this heat at the grocers’ on the corner. Give them a few centuries and they’ll be taking all the Catholic holidays off too. (Or we’ll find all the shops closed on Muslim holidays – who knows?)

Yesterday I was in Bologna, apartment hunting. I loved it, absolutely. It is a very welcome change – a young university town, lively and mostly lacking in tourists. Most Bologna streets have porticoes over the walkways that kept me shaded but the city was still unbearably hot. It is, apparently, the hottest city in Italy, because of its situation among hills and mountains that block winds. I had no idea I’d be moving from Rome to an even hotter place. Yesterday was difficult and sweaty and all I wanted by mid-afternoon was to be in my own bed, but I made it through my apartment appointments and just barely to the train station on time to find my train was delayed. I was so hot and cranky that it took all my self-restraint and a half hour of Zen breathing exercises for me to not throw something at the fidgety old crank sitting across from me on the train.

So, some promising leads on places to live, but more to see next week.