Sunday 4 May: Laundry at long last!

Okay, it’s my fault I let it go so long. I haven’t done laundry since before Beth came, so it’s been two and half weeks. I was wearing my last clean pair of socks and boxers, and down to drying off with a hand towel. The last time I was at the lavanderia I had asked if they were open on Sundays. They told me that they were the only place in Rome that was even open on Easter and Christmas that wasn’t a church. Since there only eight machines, and apparently all of Rome west of the Tiber and south of the Vatican does their laundry there, it’s a good idea to get there early unless you want to wait for hours just to start. On Saturday nights, Trastevere parties until 5 am rather than the usual 3. I got up at 6 after an hour’s nap, drank four stovetop espressos, and headed down Via de San Francesco a Ripa to the laundromat. I beat everyone there except the painter, busy at work perched on a dilapidated latter that looked like it might have been left over from when Michelangelo did the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

The inside of the lavanderia is bright yellow, and there’s a cute mural over the washers with life-size windows, clothes hanging out to dry on lines strung between them (I should get a close line and dry mine that way; Trastevere is filled with drying laundry most days of the week). I’ll take a picture next time I go. So I start to load my clothes into two machines (which luckily hold 40 pounds each), and the painter meanwhile casually props his rickety ladder on top of the machines, climbs up carrying his 4-inch brush and bucket of bright yellow paint, and starts to paint right above me and every article of clothing I have in Italy. I had visions of spending the next few months running around with yellow spatters all over my clothes, but I worried needlessly. With his big brush, the guy deftly painted the wall over the machines, going right up to the mural without getting any yellow on the art and without spilling a drop.

I finally finished my laundry, and spent the rest of the morning putting it away and cleaning the apartment. In the afternoon, I went across the Tiber and did what Romans do on Sunday afternoon: I hung out, strolling around, enjoying the beautiful scenery and stopping a couple of times for a caffè. I have to admit, I do love la dolce vita!