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Jun. 28th, 2007 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasRome has fountains everywhere. And by "fountains", I mean "big decorative things that throw water into the sky", but I also mean, "water bubblers", aka "drinking fountains". They're of the "always on" model, and some of them are decorative, and some of them are just functional, just arcing a stream of water onto the ground.
The functional ones are kind of a standardized form: a cylinder rising out of the ground, with a curved pipe with water coming out. Perfect for re-filling water bottles, or soaking your head. Not quite as easy for drinking from directly, but there's a hole drilled on the top of the pipe, just where it's bending. Block the water coming out the end, and it squirts out the hole in the top, instead, so you can drink from it that way. All Romans are apparently adept at blocking it just exactly enough to shoot the water exactly high enough to raise it to the level at which they like to drink. I would be very surprised if Roman kids were not also adept at spraying passerby with this trick.
What I saw today, on the way back to the hotel, is that they are also absolutely PERFECT for filling water balloons. You stick the balloon on the end of the pipe, so the water squirts out the top, and block the top hole with your finger, and the water fills the balloon just perfectly.
Our hotel is in Chinatown. I don't know what Rome calls their Chinatown, or if it's even recognized as a neighborhood, but it meant that there was a Chinese import shop a couple blocks from the hotel where we could buy a really, really GOOD pair of compact binoculars for €12. Lis bought a folding fan (green laquered wood slats painted with a flower scene, held together with a green ribbon), which looks really good, for €2. When Mom saw it, she HAD to have one, too, so I took her there and she bought a red one for herself, and a maroon one for THIS family member and another one for THAT family member. . .
Lis wanted me to mention that I finally figured out why Italy does so much with really sexy shoes. See, in Rome, if a woman doesn't have legs that could stop traffic, how else could she cross the street?
The functional ones are kind of a standardized form: a cylinder rising out of the ground, with a curved pipe with water coming out. Perfect for re-filling water bottles, or soaking your head. Not quite as easy for drinking from directly, but there's a hole drilled on the top of the pipe, just where it's bending. Block the water coming out the end, and it squirts out the hole in the top, instead, so you can drink from it that way. All Romans are apparently adept at blocking it just exactly enough to shoot the water exactly high enough to raise it to the level at which they like to drink. I would be very surprised if Roman kids were not also adept at spraying passerby with this trick.
What I saw today, on the way back to the hotel, is that they are also absolutely PERFECT for filling water balloons. You stick the balloon on the end of the pipe, so the water squirts out the top, and block the top hole with your finger, and the water fills the balloon just perfectly.
Our hotel is in Chinatown. I don't know what Rome calls their Chinatown, or if it's even recognized as a neighborhood, but it meant that there was a Chinese import shop a couple blocks from the hotel where we could buy a really, really GOOD pair of compact binoculars for €12. Lis bought a folding fan (green laquered wood slats painted with a flower scene, held together with a green ribbon), which looks really good, for €2. When Mom saw it, she HAD to have one, too, so I took her there and she bought a red one for herself, and a maroon one for THIS family member and another one for THAT family member. . .
Lis wanted me to mention that I finally figured out why Italy does so much with really sexy shoes. See, in Rome, if a woman doesn't have legs that could stop traffic, how else could she cross the street?