Driving School Apparently didn't work

After getting a feel for the roads and getting a couple of pretty good maps Bob and I set out for Caltegirone today. We drove right to it without getting lost at all. I wanted a special ceramic pot for my African violet and one for a gift. Caltegirone is the "city of ceramics" and is a lovely town. There are walls that are hundreds of years old (and look it) with insets or lovely urns atop made of ceramic. The picture really doesn't do it justice but you might get the idea.

We found a place to park....in front of a car and a motor cycle. Made sure traffic could get through (it was a narrow street) and took off for our day of shopping. After finding a couple of things we liked, we decided to get the car and go on down the street. As we came to the piazza (kind of a wide intersection with shopping) we noticed the police directing traffic away from the street where we were going. We said, "I wonder if there was an accident down there?"

No........not an accident. As we walked down the street some young men sitting at a table said, "Punto? Roma?" (Kind of car---liscense place from Rome, meaning rental). We said yes and they said something with the word problemo in it. Oops. As we came down the road we saw police lights flashing. Double oops.

Well, as explained to us by the police (who didn't do badly speaking English), we had parked in a no parking zone. Gotten a bus caught by not being able to get past our car (or back up the street) and held up traffic in Caltegirone for an hour. We got there just as the tow truck was backing up to take our car. We were so thankful that 1) someone hadn't smashed our car, 2) that we weren't arrested and 3) we got there before they towed the car away, that we gladly paid the 35 euro charge to the tow truck driver---apologized to the policemen again and again and will pay the fine for parking on Monday when the post office is open.

The second picture is just my feeble attempt at "art photography". I'll never be great but this caught my attention. The line and age of the steps, the green of the plants.....