This may disappoint some of you, but I occasionally smoke a pipe. It started when I bought my first pipe in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was this really cool, ornately carved pipe and I always thought smoking a pipe was kind of classy, in an old man sort of way. And one of my heroes from when I was a little kid smokes a pipe occasionally, so I bought one so I could occasionally smoke with him. When I say occasionally, I mean maybe once a month I will smoke. Anyway, long story short, I now own a pipe from Russia, Macedonia and Italy. Any country I have lived in for longer than two weeks.
What is the point of this story, you ask? Well I am getting there. Because I occasionally smoke, I enjoy looking at pipe stores here in Rome. I had yet to find a good one here in Rome until last night. Matt had noticed some cool pipes in a Tabacchi store window near the Pantheon and so we decided to go check it out. We found the shop and entered and I asked (our entire encounter was in Italian), I think, "Do y'all have pipe's here?"
The lady behind the counter asked me to follow her into the next room and pointed downstairs and said wait and disappeared behind another counter, saying something about a key. I was confused. Matt was confused. Amos was confused. Did she want us to go downstairs? She reappeared and motioned for us to follow her downstairs. We went down into this room with a bunch of locked doors, one of which she unlocked and we followed her in. And my jaw hit the floor.
The room was full of pipes. And when I say full, I mean quite literally, the room was full of pipe and pipe accessories. I was in awe. The price range went from 40 Euro to over 175. I found long stem Gandalf-esque pipes; there were classic pipes, Sherlock Holmes pipes, fold-up pipes, glass pipes, wood, leather... something for everyone, I guess. We felt like celebrities, being allowed in the secret, locked, room full of 1000's of Euro worth of pipes. And that it all I got. Just wanted to share that story and the accompanying picture with you. I will post about how Christmas and Pisa and Florence were later. Hope you enjoy and can appreciate the amazingness of this room with me.
2 comments:
Well....did you buy a pipe or what? By the way, I am not in the slightest bit disappointed. You score points for that with me...as long as you never blow smoke on me, then you'll be in trouble!
Howdy Chris...nice to see that your keeping up with all the best vices while you are in Italy...we played poker yesterday, and I brought my pipe, but didn't have the chance to smoke, cause no one else brought theirs. Anyway, it isn't really a vice, it's just traditional English herbal medicine. Ohh, my future patients are in big trouble.
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