The Sunday morning markets

The next morning we went to the Sunday morning  flower, food and flea markets in Campo Fiore and Trastevere. There were still setting up  the booths when we first arrived.  The plants and flowers were amazing. The candy booths, interesting. The fruit and vegetable booths were gorgeous.

I bought miniature strawberries just because they were so doggone cute. They were the size of large blueberries. The lemons were enormous, which was no surprise as  the citrus fruits that hung from the tress on the window sills and patios all over Rome were huge. Most of the fruits and vegetables and the flowers and plants were recognizable to me. The candy was not. The nut brittles, nougats and meringues were familiar but some of the others were not. My sister made me stop staring at them before one of us bought some. I took a photograph so that I could check them out later and at least learn their names. And for the record, I never did eat a single piece of that candy.

The only real glitch in the trip occurred soon after we arrived at the market in Trastevere...Porta Portese, on Sunday mornings hosts a huge flea market that extends from Porta Portese to Viale di Trastevere..an open air flea market every Sunday in Trastevere.  strands of coral, antique linens, puppies, junk, everything!!                                       
We had been so busy with the Vatican and Scavi tours the day before and had headed out so early this particular day that we did not get our money exchanged. We reasoned that we could just find an ATM near the market and withdraw what we needed for the day.

Sister had just stepped up to the machine and inserted her card when a nicely dressed man who seemed to come out of no where leaned in and said to her "that man over there is copying your card." At first it didn't register but a glance over her should revealed a man with some little machine in his hand standing some short distance away. The transaction was quickly cancelled and the card removed from the machine. She had not even entered her pin number so we were pretty sure it was ok. But she worried all day long about her identity being compromised. It stole some of the fun we would otherwise have had plus none of us could buy much of  anything as we had to save what money we had for a taxi to the colosseum. We still had fun looking at things, especially the antiques.