What's the weather?

I’ve been in Rome for 4 weeks now, and the weather has been far from pleasant the entire trip. I’d say 20 days out of those 4 weeks it has rained, even if only for a short amount of time. Have I talked about the weather yet? I don’t think I have, but I apologize if I have touched upon this subject before, I’m beginning to get my ideas for topics confused with my actual topics I’ve used.

The rain is a bit unpredictable. It will be beautiful out in the morning, blue skies with minimal clouds, and by the time I leave the Vatican office it is raining pretty steadily. Two hours later it will be beautiful out again.

I now live strictly by these guidelines: If it is raining out currently, bring an umbrella; If it is not raining but you think it looks like it will, bring an umbrella; And lastly, if it is not raining, and looks like a beautiful day with no chance of rain, bring an umbrella.

Earlier in my trip I wasn’t adhering to these guidelines and found out the hard way. One of our first weekends here we went to the Coliseum for a tour. Remember all those pictures? Yep, no rain while touring the Coliseum. Afterwards some of us decided to go to Via Del Corso to walk around and maybe go into some stores. Coming out of one of the stores we were faced with torrential downpours. We ran to a café and tried to wait it out. It didn’t stop. Between 4 or 5 of us we had 2 umbrellas, and we dared to make the trip back home after being stuck in the café and surrounding stores for a couple hours. Needless to say I was soaking wet, head to toe.

Another funny thing about rain here is that the second a single drop of rain falls to the ground, the umbrella guys are all over the streets. The umbrella guys are immigrants who sell umbrellas. They stand on one particular part of a street and every person that passes who doesn’t have an umbrella they try to get to buy one. There is an umbrella guy just about every 20 feet, and though they see you refused to buy one from the last 10 salesmen, they will try and push an umbrella on you nonetheless. On a day similar to the one I mentioned above, Nate and I got caught in some rain, and when faced with one of these umbrella guys we decided to buy some umbrellas. He wanted 6 euro for the bigger umbrellas he had. We got him down to 8 euro for 2, so 4 each. Let me warn you, for anyone coming to Rome, these umbrellas are of the lowest quality possible. Nate’s is not completely broken and useless, and mine, though still working, feels flimsy and has had rust on one of the arms since the 2^nd time I used it. So do yourself a favor and buy a real umbrella from a real store.

Through all the rain we have had a few beautiful days here. Days where I was able to walk around in a long sleeve shirt and enjoy the sites. I’ve heard this is their wet season, so we’ll tough it out and hope for better weather in the next two months.

I’ve got some exciting plans for tomorrow, so be sure to check back tomorrow for a post all about that. I think I’ll keep it a secret for now, just to keep you all interested. Lets hope for good weather tomorrow, it would be very beneficial for the plans.