Transit of Venus

Rory - Got day passes for the Roman transit system, a steal at 4 euros a day for each of us. Took it out to Renzo Piano's Auditorium: three adjacent concert halls, quite organic looking, each building more than a little resembling a whale (very like a whale, or so said Polonius). The shapes said whale, the colouring and finish could be whale, in fact the skin covering the three halls was very like a whale's skin. Taking shade under the overhang where the skin separated from the building, we could look up and see the skeleton. We saw a sequence of laminated, curved wood ribs -- a ribcage -- holding the skin on. There were even little intentional tears in the skin here and there, perhaps to ventilate areas or to offer hidden views.



Learned that the Standards Trio with Jack deJohnette, Gary Peacock and Keith Jarrett would be playing inside one of the whales that very night, though for a princely sum. Learned also that a Scottish pop star with an Italian name and a sometimes Jamaican accent would be playing that night, at more plebian prices, in the open-air amphitheatre nestled among the whales and backing onto an excavated floorplan of a house from millennia past. We went for the pop, bought tickets for the Paolo Nutella show that night, and got back on the bus in search of antique treasure. Incidentally, the bus to and from the Auditorium has no number, but rather just a letter. It is the M bus and that stands for Music. First city bus that any of us had ever seen named for music. Co-incidentally, while riding the M, we crossed paths with a bus called the 310 Muse; then later, the extravagantly named 90 EXPRESS L.go LABIA.
L.go? Let's go? L.go would be short for Largo. Our dictionary defines largo as a small piazza. But it gives a couple of alternate definitions too: wide,and open sea. The Roman bus poetry was getting a little too intense. We never got on the 90 EXPRESS.