Caught! A Small Drama in Piazza San Silvestro

It was early evening when we passed through Piazza San Silvestro.  Not long ago it would have been full of buses and people waiting for them, but the piazza has been reinvented, its function as a bus depot eliminated, and what we found was a huge empty space, filled with rubble and machinery, surrounded by a plastic and chain-link fence.  To serve businesses on the piazza--including the restaurant at far right, above--the sidewalks remained accessible. 

As we were walking by, a young woman mounted her scooter and, cautiously, but on the sidewalk, and with a shopping bag over one arm, headed north on the east side of the piazza.  Scooters using the sidewalk for a few yards, to find a place to park, are commonplace in Rome, but this woman's sidewalk journey was a longer one than usual: a whole block of sidewalk to cover before she reached a usable street. 

She didn't make it.  As luck would have it, as she neared the end of the block and was passing in front of the restaurant (with outside tables, also on the sidewalk), a police officer approached and--from what we could observe from afar--ordered her to turn around and walk the scooter back to where she had begun her sidewalk ride.  No ticket, but embarrassing.

Bill

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Title: Caught! A Small Drama in Piazza San Silvestro
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