Buongiorno Roma!

6/20/2012

The most satisfying thing after taking two flights with extremely long layovers is arriving to your final destination and finding that all of your suitcases have made it there with you. Remember I told you (briefly) about the flight where I threw up on myself? Yeah, my bag didn't make it with me that time. But again, we're not talking about that trip. 


Rome was hot and sunny and so hot. We arrived in the afternoon. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. So instead we all took naps and showers and eventually it was time to go to dinner. Because my mother and I were just in Rome last year it was our job to select all of the restaurants for dinners in Rome. Our first choice was L'Archetto. I believe I wrote about it last year. They have over 100 types of spaghetti sauces, and it's really quite delicious. I'm sure it's not the most authentic thing you can eat in Rome, but the food is great and who doesn't want a plate of spaghetti with any imaginable sauce ever. Last year I had basic bolognese, but this year I had cacio e pepe (a new favorite in my pasta spectrum).

Everyone seemed to like it there, but of course we were all exhausted and sweaty so it was hard to be completely pleased. L'Archetto is extremely close to the Trevi Fountain where I was so happy to meet my roommate Dana, who had already been traveling through Europe with some of her friends and happened to be in Rome at the same time as I was. We were very excited to see one another as it had been well over a month (she left graduation day, 5/12). We threw in our coins with the hopes of returning back to Rome (and I wished for something else, but you know, I'll never tell).

We had gelato all together at San Crispino which is by far the most interesting and delicious gelato I've had in Rome so I recommend it (it's even marked on my map, officially).

It's always nice to walk around a strange city at night, but surprisingly even after a whole year, Rome didn't seem that strange to me. Not that I've explored much beyond Via del Corso and the Spanish Steps after dark, but it was nice to not feel completely lost (well, most of the time).

Roma, Day #3

Monday

Today we started our day at the Colosseum! We decided to do a tour of the ancient things because neither of us are well versed in this type of architecture and history, so we thought it would be the best thing. Our tour guide was a woman from Italy and she was very knowledgable and funny. The nice thing about going on a guided tour is that you skip all of the lines and you see everything you want to see without getting lost or confused. The guidance works like this: everyone has a audio player and a headset in one ear, and then the group is on one channel so we all hear the same thing. All tour groups in Rome (and probably elsewhere) are the same. I think this is better than one person yelling at 30 people, things can get complicated.

So our tour consisted of the Colosseum, which looked like this in the morning:

Then we went to the Palatine Hill (where you can see the forum, and there are also some ruins up there, which looked like this:

And then we walked through the Forum, but by then we were so exhausted that the taking in of information was hard (also I've been having problems with my right leg), so those pictures looked like this:

As you can see, a lot of pictures, but not a lot of explanation. Rome was extremely hot and difficult because of that. But we had a great time.

After our tour we went to the old Jewish Ghetto, which is still full of Jewish shops and Kosher restaurants. We were instructed to go there by a few people, most importantly my Aunt Tania who said we would have whole fried artichokes there that would be incredible. She, as always, was right. As was everyone else who recommended it so thank you!

Whole fried artichoke? Yes! YOU CAN EAT THE WHOLE THING!

We also had falafel and humus and some fried mozzarella things that weren't what we ordered but we ate them and enjoyed them.

After lunch we walked back to our hotel for a breather (I had been working on my paper still).

Then we went to dinner at the restaurant with 114 pasta sauce choices. Yes they were all different (some only slightly different, but it still counts in my book). I had bolognese and mom had shrimp with tomatoes and spinach or rocket, she enjoyed it. We also had a salad that would not stay on our forks, or get to our mouths, so we had a laugh about the slippery salad and I think the people next to us thought we were crazy.

Then we went to the Trevi fountain (because we were told to go at night) and it was really beautiful at night. I believe I had tears in my eyes. We threw pennies over our shoulders as we both want to return to Rome, and that was our night.

Note: Ginger and Cinnamon Gelato = amazing.