In Rome I

Thursday, June 17, 6:00am – What a day and a half…

After our nap on Tuesday afternoon we met up with Sheila and David to go forage for dinner. I don’t know if it was typical Rome weather or not but when we walked back out into the city looking for dinner we were greeted with cloudy skies and the occasional drops of rain. Along the way we found the Trevi Fountain – quite the impressive place. Marble gods and sea creatures of immense size rising out of the ocean with water pouring everywhere. I thought the building was the patronage of a Pope so you have to wonder what the pagan gods were doing in the scene but somehow it works…

We ended up at a small, sidewalk café (go figure) for dinner. Couldn’t have asked for a more perfect first dinner in Rome: orchiette with a tomato zucchini sauce, gnocchi with a Ligurian pesto sauce, a pizza of carbonara plus a pizza with prosciutto, tomato and mozzarella. Add to the equation a wonderful bottle of Vermentino (Sardinia), one of Nero D’Avola (Sicily) a little light rain on the umbrella, a huge appetite and a little jet lag and it was perfect. Or I thought so anyway. If you know Jill you know that dinner is not complete without dessert and in Rome that means only one thing to Jill: gelato! During the day we couldn’t get away from the little gelato places scattered around where ever you looked. That night, however, was a different story – we kept running into the places fronted by the Nestle signs greeting us with things like the Shreck III novelty ice cream food products that we have in WalMart back home! We did however stumble into a ‘supermarket’ about the size of a large walk in closet where we found of a beautiful display of cured meats and regional cheeses right next to the Disney characters and High School Musical shaped dried pasta. The gelato search turned out well in the end. We (I use the term loosely because neither of the men were involved in this) finally asked for directions and were sent to a perfect little gelato place that had gelato of many flavors, soy gelato of fewer flavors, ices, toppings, etc. And for €2.5 you could get three flavors in a little paper cup that held about a pint! Jill was in heaven…

That night ended in the hotel bar where – believe it or not – they didn’t even have four glasses of red wine available. But we made do with a bottle of August Ridge 2007 Nebbiolo carried all the way across the sea to be shared with the wine loving natives of Umbria. Sorry, but we were in need.

More to come.

Ciao! John