Notte dei Musei

Yesterday was the Notte dei Musei across much of Europe. From 8pm until 2am many museums opened to the public free of charge. Several places offered lectures and concerts in this effort to promote culture.
Yesterday, it rained most of the day, leading the Tiber to break its banks for the third time this year. I had spent the day with a visiting friend hiding out from the rain, when another friend called to tell me she was here. I wondered where "here" was, and she told me that, as we had arranged, she had come to my place to meet me for supper and Mass and "something" (she wasn't quite sure what the something was I had in mind). She was as surprised to find that I wasn't home, as I was surprised to find we were supposed to be meeting. But anyway, she came and joined us where we had been hanging out, and watched the last half of Pontiac Moon with us. Bistra then encouraged us to stay for dinner, but I wanted to go out to the museums. She was surprised with such enthusiasm on such a rainy night, but Selam and I went out.
It must have been about 8:30 when we set out, and we walked to the Castel Sant'Angelo.I was glad that by the time we arrived, the line wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared--in fact, there was no line at all, and we walked straight in. There were indeed lots of people around taking advantage of the free evening, but we were able to walk around where we pleased and find good spots for looking over Rome. From the top, we could see other places that might come up on our agenda if only there were time. For instance, we could see the Palazzo della Giustizia, where one wanted reservations; the Victor Emanuel Monument all lit up; the Palazzo Venezia, lit in a giant floodlight that changed from red to blue to purple.Quite pleasant. And the rain let up for our walk over, and most of our walk through the castle.It started to rain, though, on our way down and out of the castle, and we were quite wet by the time we arrived at our next stop, a little after 10, at the Jewish Museum (known to most of us as the synagogue). There, they gave us a little booklet showing what was happening around town for this event, and gave us a little talk inside the synagogue on the history of Jewish/Catholic relations.
Then we went over to the Galleria Spada and waited in line for about 40 minutes, and still didn't get in. So, it was time for Selam to get back and make curfew, and I was tired and went home to bed.