Rome day 1

Tuesday May 14, 2013 Rome- Day 1

We woke up feeling refreshed but it was an odd sort of sleep because of being so tired. You sleep much more solidly - we called it the sleep of the dead. But we're all better now and are doing our morning things getting ready to go out for the day. The apartment is obviously very old. The ceiling beams are rough hewn and likely a lot over 100 years old. There is a center beam that goes across the room that is easily 12 inches x 12 inchs by 10+ feet long and it too was rough hewn from the original true go knows how many years ago. There are old iron bars on the window and swing in shutter windows that open to a small communal courtyard. The room is plenty big and actually much bigger than we would have gotten from any hotel we would have stayed at. We used the web site AirBNB.com to find the place. Lynne does all the looking because her room standards are higher than Chet's so to keep the familial peace she finds the lodgings. The owner of the aparment Serena was super nice and she gave us a lot of archeological recommendations and told us the apartment was her university apartment. She said not to answer the phone and to watch out for the gypsy's since they now dress like everyone else and so they are harder to spot. Apparently (not wanting to bad mouth all gypsy's) some of the gypsy people make their living by taking your stuff. This is nothing new to Rome though. One should keep yourself aware of situations at all times anyway. We aren't sure yet what we'll be doing today. Oh one more thing we also found out that the EU now seems to want to have all electronics and cables out from the bags before the airport inspection. This through us for a loop because we didn't have thme ready to come out so if you go be ready for this. We're going to leave them in our checked bags next time since no one would want to steal them anyway.

We started our day by picking up Roma pass tickets at the Rome tourism center. This gets you to jump the lines at various museums and gives you access to the tranport system of the city. We got them and wandered through the Jewish Ghetto to the Castel Saint Angelo which was the home of the pope during the 14th century.There was an underground passage way from the Vatican to the Castel Saint Angelo also and the building has a fantastic view of all Rome from the top. Some of the oldest history of Rome is found here. We had lunch there which was good but not great of pasta with funghi (mushrooms) and a Prosciuitto Meloni (melon with proscuito ham) which was very good and tasty. After lunch we wandered through the Jewish ghetto. (There are a lot of ancient ruins but not a lot of medieval ruins supposedly because of Benito Mussolini had the medieval ruins destroyed.) Then we wandered to the the Palatine hill area and looked at the ruins of the Forum and tried to visiualized what life would have been like then. We arrived a the Museo Capitolini which is adjacent to the Palatine Hill area and used one of our "free" passes to get in there. This museum is very good and they have a new area to exhibit the mounted guilded bronze horseman. It was displayed in a large area having naturally light glowing on it that really made it shine well. We also saw the "Dying Gaul" sculpture as it was being photographed by a professional photographer for some type of advertisement. We spent about 3 hours here and then finally found the restaurant we had gone to on our last trip here six years ago called Mario's. As Lynne said the name was kind of cheesy but that food was really good. This was the place where we learned about Alici Marinate (Spicy marinated anchovies) and Bottarga (salt cured fish eggs) on pasta which we now have and enjoy regularly. This is like having the ocean right on your pasta. (Doesn't taste like you would think fish eggs tastes like.) We ended up having Alici Marinate, cacio e pepe (spaghetti with cheese & black pepper), pasta with puttanesca sauce, Broccolini and a very fresh salad with Arugula and Chicory in it. It was very good and the whole meal was top notch. We were so glad we found this place again and we had a good time talking to the waiter and he told us that the Bottarga had not sold well there so they had to stop carrying it. Bummer. We topped dinner of with a great Tiramasu cake. And Chet also had a Negroni with dinner which was very good too.

Trajan's Market in Rome

 

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