An accident and a demonstration - Rome

Ok the back story to this is, we were on a hop on hop off tour of Rome on our last day, you know just to make sure we didn't miss anything. We got off the bus at circus Maximus took on the imagined sounds of the chariot races, with pictures of Ben hur in our heads and wandered down to the church of our lady of M........ The one where the mouth of truth is, crossed over and walked along the river and across one of the bridges.

It's a very good restaurant area here, so we'd been told. We found a place to have a beer and some lunch, and some respite out of the heat for a while, I don't think we had a day under 38. On our return over the river Tiber we took in the scenery of the Jewish ghetto, ther is a fabulous cheese shop in here, alas due to Australian customs laws couldn't get any back in......perhaps they mail order hmmmm.

We headed back to the bus stop and were just about to cross the road (it's about 6 lanes in a big intersection) when BANG! The first accident we have seen here believe it or not. It wasn't a big one, but the girl was clearly in the right and the man was trying to get her to move her car off to the side. She didn't want to as he had already expletively explained to her that it was her fault.

Whilst this argument was going on we noticed ther was 2 vans full of riot police complete with shields, helmets, batons on the other side of the intersection.

There was a little guy, no more than 5'5 from the carabinieri attempting to stop the traffic, he wanders over to see what was happening, with that the lights have turned red and a motorcycle has sailed through the red light, so he has immediately written down the licience number, with that the motorcycle rider has pulled over and run back to the carabinieri and started admonishing him and demanding not to receive a ticket. The carabinieri....talk to the hand.

We then noticed up the other side another two riot vans had turned up, spewing out similarly attired police, that just stood in a group. The riot police now numbered about 40. The 1 carabinieri,s job it seemed was to stop the traffic going up the hill, now by traffic I mean, tourist coaches, hop on hop off buses, public buses, taxis horses and cars and the many and varied cars and bikes that frequent Rome streets.

Needless to say the drivers would have none of it,,why should they you ask. There was a group of around 700 people marching down the hill in protest of the government.

Suffice to say the riot police did nothing but laugh, the accident was walked around the carabinieri was flustered and Greg and I were in hysterics.