White Women, Sleepless Nights, Big Nudes

A summary of my trip so far?  No, Carnac.  That's the name of the Helmut Newton exhibition I went to on Saturday night that just opened at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni.  (See http://english.palazzoesposizioni.it/categorie/introduction-helmut-newton.)

An iconic Newton photo.

The museum.

The exhibition was good.  I mean, a good proportion of it consisted of his iconic photos of very attractive nude women.  So, all in all, not too bad.  But my head wasn’t in it.  I was thrown for a loop at the outset when I learned that Helmut Newton was not the same person as Helmut Kohl; never really mentally recovered from that.  (I tried to pass it off on a linguistic misunderstanding due to my poor Italian.  None of the English-speaking expats I was with bought it.) 

Even better was the post-museum plans.  I went with a totally fun group of expats -- many of them work for a UN agency here -- for my first sushi in Rome (giaponesse food is trendy here) and then back to one of their apartments for cocktails.  This is the coolest couple ever!  The woman is an incredibly talented artist who is working on a huge new multi-media project that relates to the Italian legal system, and the man -- besides working for the UN -- is a cocktail aficionado who had a huge collection of spirits and liqueurs.  He made some rum-based cocktails with lemon juice and green chartreuse that were out of this world.  It was a late night.    

Trivia Question:  Can you think of a third famous Helmut?  This would make for an epic game of "Who Gets the Cot!"