As two men pass me, one says about his friend’s little dog, “She has to pee pee nice to live in the city.”
An old man is jaywalking, hurrying to get ahead of a fast-approaching trolley, but he trips on one of the concrete knobs designed to keep vehicles off the trolley tracks, and he falls forward across the tracks. The trolley driver brakes hard and there is the screaming of metal, but he stops with still several metres to spare. A few good Samaritans help the old man up and off the tracks, but he is clearly injured. The trolley driver steps out of his cab and makes a phone call, and soon an ambulance arrives.
On the switchbacks and meandering paths up and down from the Citadella, I change my mind about something, so retrace my steps, passing a couple. I hear the woman whisper to the man, “That guy turned around. This must be the wrong way.”
Randomly, a man steps out of a small grocery store with a hooded hawk standing on his gloved wrist. The man walks towards an alley, takes a seat on a bench and massages his aching knee.
As I walk towards the Hospital in the Rock, a medical centre cut out of the stone at the start of the Second World War to provide surgery and medical support for civilians and soldiers, I overhear a tour guide say the hospital was used as a safe place in case of a nuclear attack. I thought that unlikely because of the year it was built and because of its purpose, but I discovered the tour guide was correct. The Hospital in the Rock equipment was upgraded in 1958 to deal with the risk of chemical or nuclear attacks.
I make my first purchase of something other than transportation, accommodation, or food. I buy a hat from an antique and retro store. I accidentally leave my bottle of water in the store near the hat section, and when I come back a couple of hours later, wearing my hat, the clerk sees me, reaches behind his counter, and holds out the water bottle for me.