We are settling in. Yesterday we had our leasing lady, Gabrielle, come by to show us again how to turn on the heat and work the stove and elevator. I nearly froze to death the night before.
Now we start the fun dealing with the Italian governmental red tape, for which they are infamous. We went to the post office and took a number. One number is for the paper work we need to get our residence permit. Another number for the line to open a bank account. We got to the front of the line for the permit packet and the woman has no idea what we are talking about. Fortunately, we had met a lovely lady who does translations for diplomats and the G8 and she came to our aid. The clerk knew exactly what she was talking about and gave us our packets….all in Italian. With pages and pages of instructions. Now we have to go to a CAF office to pay them to translate it all for us and help us fill it out. Then the post office mails it to the Police (30€). The police review it and send us a letter telling where and when to show up with all the paperwork we had for the Visa…and more. They take all of that, plus more Euros, and eventually will mail us our Elective Residence Permit. When we go back to the CAF – did I mention how all of the offices are closed from 22Dec to 7Jan for Xmas Holiday- we have to have our address. We have the street name and building number, but no one seems to know the apartment number or which mailbox is ours.
We had Chinese food for lunch, wonderful noodles and crispy duck. Then we went shopping at the Todis store. Lots cheaper than our local little markets. It’s a good thing we weren’t hungry when we got there…as we nearly bought out the store on full stomachs.
We can’t find a Crock Pot here in Rome. If we were more entrepreneurial, we would be having them made for Italy.
The weather is nice here…sunshine and cool…not real cold.
We are doing lots of walking checking out our ‘hood’. Everyone has been so nice.
We have done a couple of loads of wash. No dryer (or oven) because of high electricity use. We have drying racks and it takes forever to dry our stuff.
Andy’s hitting the wine…its after 5 here. I’m going to do a little quilting and relax. More later…