Well, it came to town and not without incident. My house is but a short stroll to via Veneto (the one in CDP, not the one in Rome!) and so yesterday at about 4 o’clock I did the stroll and found that the street was separated from the sidewalk by barriers carrying ads, as you can see.

This work was started at about 7 in the morning. I decided not to walk the last 900 meters to the finish line (il arrivo), figuring that it would be very crowded there, whereas right here looked to be a good place for my picture taking, so I took up position outside the pharmacy and, as you can see, there are not many spectators at 4 in the afternoon.

Time goes by and people show up but most walk past my position in the direction of the finish line; I hold my ground. Another holding her ground is Azzurra, my friendly pharmacist, who never wants to see a prescription for my various drug needs.

Eventually we are treated to a parade of cars in the livery of the sponsors, and a local entrant in the penny-farthing class entertained us.

Then, about one hour after I had taken up my position the real event comes into view, cyclist racers in their multi-hued team uniforms go swishing by at an amazing speed and after about 30 seconds it was all over.

I was clicking away on my iPad camera as fast as I could and sorting through later I found that I had actually caught the pink-jerseyed super star, Albert Contador, on a couple of photos. In the photo he is the second from the right wearing the pink jersey.

He was not in the leading group at this point 900 meters from the finish. Another person of note in this photo is the portly gent nearest to me on the sidewalk. This is Gingi who sells me bread (from the mountains, of course) and other basic needs.

Contador had the misfortune to catch up to the front few in the last mad dash for the line and was brought down by another rider who had been felled by a jerk with a big telephoto lens leaning over the barrier and losing control. This idiot is a local professional photographer, I am told. His desire to get a great picture caused the withdrawal of one rider with multiple fractures in an arm and a dislocated shoulder for Contador, who ended up with the new pink jersey that he cannot get over his head because of the pain in his shoulder!

At this juncture I strolled back home and one hour later on my way to my aperitivo I marveled at how fast the barriers had been taken away (presumably to the next day’s arrivo) and the street restored to normalcy.

Footnote: the photos were all taken using my iPad Mini and what surprised me was that I can take photos as fast as I can press my thumb on the button, as distinct from the mini digital cameras that I used previously, which had multi-milliseconds of annoying shutter delay. Moreover, in the Contador picture the riders were flashing by at more than 30 mph and yet they look as if they are as stationary as the buildings in the background, so fast is the exposure!