Vandalism & Theft

Yes, after eleven crime-free summers in Italy, we were both victims and perpetrators this year!
First, the confession of the crime I committed. We were driving to a neighboring town, passing tree after tree with festa posters taped to them. Festas, like weddings, are ubiquitous on summer weekends in Italy. We've gone to a few. Some celebrate meat, others beer (yes, beer), fish, potatoes... you name it. This poster was for a pig festa. While it makes me sad to see this cute drawing of a pig, while the occasion is all about killing it and grilling it, I did picture it framed and hung in my house. The festa, by the way, had come and gone, so these posters were pretty much trash at this point.
So, on the way back, we pulled over and unraveled the tape (which mysteriously didn't pull off any of the poster—nice clean break), all the while, cars whizzing past us on the side of the road.
Here's the tree, and the fruits of my labor:

The pig even looks a little sad :(  I'm not sure I can ever frame and display this :(

Now, for the vandalism story. A real head scratcher. Fred and I had visited the neighboring town of Vetralla, which sadly seemed a little bit down on its luck. We did, however, come upon a mass honoring EMTs, which was cool. At the side of the church there was a door ajar, which Fred naturally decided to take a peek through. He abruptly pulled back and said the door is at the front of the church and the entire congregation was facing him. Oops! They soon began pouring out the front of the church. We watched as the priest said some prayers and blessed a couple of ambulances with holy water and then a photographer took a group shot of them all on the steps of the church. 

Backing up to get them all in the shot, the photographer fell over a planter and everyone cracked up.

But I digress. We left Vetralla via a back road to Tuscania, a lovely picturesque town that we never miss. Fred had read something about some historical site or other on this road. After a few wrong turns, we found an interesting church, and got out of the car to explore. Fred went ahead while I got my camera out of the trunk, leaving my laptop there, and locked the car. I walked to the front of the church, then around to the side, eventually meeting up with Fred and returning to the car. (The church was locked.) The car was out of our line of vision for about seven minutes, tops. When we got back we were standing near the car, and a police car drove through the parking lot and kept going. Then suddenly Fred noticed the passenger fly window had been smashed. We heard nothing, saw nothing, and this church is incredibly isolated. Totally baffling. There was glass all over the dash and even some in the seat. We even wondered if maybe this had happened in Vetralla and we hadn't noticed, but there's no way we would not have noticed this. Nothing was stolen, thank God. We thought maybe there were some reports of vandals along this stretch and the cop was checking things out. Who knows.

We needed a car in the am (this was on a Sunday) to get to Naples, so I was at the car rental place first thing and had this snazzy new RED Ford Fiesta within the hour. The charge was 64 euro. I may or may not do the whole insurance thing because that's about a 40-email/six-month process.

And, what's a post without a cat picture? Discovered this little feline family of four in Vetralla.