A glorious day. A bike ride beckoned, and as ever I need a goal. People rave about Pizzarium’s pizza as if it were manna from heaven, and it’s far enough away to give me the idea that I might even deserve the slice when I got there. So off I went, detouring via Piazza San Cosimato for supplies of t...

Rome, like Paris before it, has a green bike scheme in the centre of the city. Lots of bike racks, lots of bikes, and you pay 50 cents for each half hour or part thereof. Nifty. Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. You have to have a special smart card to unlock a bike and return it to a rack, and...

I cycled down to the Castel Sant’Angelo this evening because I’d seen a poster in the local bar advertising fireworks at 9:00 pm. Today being the Feast of SS Peter and Paul and a holiday here in Rome, that seemed entirely likely. In the event, an hour later, no fireworks had happened. I’ll have to c...

Yesterday was full-on tourist travel day. Summer Palace first thing in the morning. Then the Great Wall. Then lunch in an authentically exotic restaurant hard by the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park. Then the Forbidden City and finally Tiananmen Square. Nothing I could say about any of those places wou...

This is odd. Last night I went on the Critical Mass Rome bike ride again, and it was a very pleasant, sedate affair. We pedaled slowly along the Lungotevere and up the via Cavour (and elsewhere) notably to give people on motorized two-wheelers a hard time.