A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to Forum

10/22/2009

As beautiful of a day yesterday was as ugly of a day today was. We woke up to a drizzly, rainy weather that only got worse as the morning went on. This was a huge bummer since it was Katherine and my last day of sightseeing together. Really we have been moderately lucky with weather on this trip. Just a few bad days here and there, which is not bad for a whole month. The hostel we are staying at has ended up being middle of the road. The perks of it is that it is right on a beach, it has a great breakfast, and there is a kinda room service cleaning deal that happens. The negatives of it is that is does take a pretty long time to get in and out of the city and the walls are really thick so the wireless is super terrible, also in the stormy weather the rain leaked into our room a little bit.

Our first stop on our agenda for the day was back to the Vatican to go see St. Peter’s Basilica. We were unaware that it was free to go into yesterday when we were touring the Sistine Chapel, which was not free, and heard that it was really worth seeing. We took the subway to the Vatican this time, which made a little more sense to me and my sense of direction and made me feel a little more confident. We had to go through metal detectors in order to get in and they were not allowing pocketknives. There was a trashcan right by the metal detectors that had a ton of pocketknives in it. I was luckily able to sneak mine past the security person, which shows what a good job they are doing. I was really glad that we did go back to the Vatican to see this church because it really was something, also I don’t think we had gone in one church, cathedral, or basilica all trip. Normally I feel like they are something that once you have seen one you have seen them all, but St. Peters was absolutely beautiful. When we first walked into the Basilica there was a choir singing that really did sound angelic. I just settled myself up against a giant marble column and admired the magnificent, detailed, ornate decorations.

When we left St. Peters, it was pouring down rain. At this point I realized that my rain jacket has lost the majority of its waterproofing and the rain was going through my jacket and making my shirt damp. Luckily I had my umbrella and used it for the second time this trip. It is proving to be worth the trouble of carrying it along on this trip. Yesterday we had bought 24 hour metro tickets. We learned the hard way that 24 hours really doesn’t mean 24 hours, just a simple day pass that cuts off at 12. So today we decided we would just buy two one way tickets to get in and out of the city and then move about the city by either walking or hopping on busses, which nobody ever pays for. So we hopped on a bus to get out of the pouring rain and go to the Coliseum.

By the time we got to the Coliseum, the weather was miserable. Since it is just ruins, which you can see from the pictures on the post card, and we didn’t want to take advantage of the free access to Palantino Hill due to the rain, we decided to forget about paying to get into the monument and just admire it from a far and under some shelter. At this point we had also been texting Sara, Patricia’s daughter, about meeting up. The plan was to meet at 2 at the Coliseum metro station. This worked well for us because we were pretty much already there, so we killed 45 minutes hanging out in the front entranceway of the Coliseum metro station. As we were waiting for 2, I was looking at post cards. The majority of the cards with ruins on them show pictures of cats in the ruins. I noticed this also, there are a lot of cats hanging out in the ruins. This just tickles me.

We met up with Sara and went in search of a place where we could get a drink or something to eat and get out of the rain. After our experience at the “snack bar” yesterday, those were out of the running for acceptable places to stop and eventually settled on a pastria (I am totally butchering the spelling of that). Pastrias, which sell delicious baked goods, drinks, in addition to regular food, are money and cheaper than most of the other ristorantes that we passed and extremely delicious. We had a very pleasant time chatting with Sara. She is currently looking for work as an actress in Rome. She does to cinema, but prefers theater and was trained in London, where she is considering going back to soon if things don’t work out in Rome. Once we sat down, Katherine and I both became famished and both ordered four cheese gnocchi, which ended up being incredible. For dessert we topped it off with two deserts. I got one cream filled puff and another chocolate pudding like filled puff, both were to die for, but the last puff just about set me over the line.

Sara told us about a film festival that is currently going on in Rome and a good film, which was in English, and playing at five. The theater ended up being a bit of a walk down the main shopping street, but since the rain had cleared up we decided to go for it. It was a nice walk for window-shopping. There were some big names on the street, which was cool to look into. On the walk, I noticed that you never see euro coins dropped on the street. I wish that was not the case. The movie was called Skellig, featured Tim Roth, and was based off a book. It was a little bit of a children’s movie, but still extremely enjoyable and cute. There were a couple of moments I got some good goose bumps going on. I was very glad we spent the afternoon doing the things we did because how often did can you say that you hung out with an actress in Rome and then went to see a feature in a film festival.

Since it was Katherine’s last night in Italy and in Europe, we had decided that we would do a really big, nice, good final dinner. The first time we asked the main desk for a recommendation on a good restaurant around the hostel they pointed us to a restaurant that ended up being called “Eat and Go”. Needless to say, I deemed them a completely unacceptable source of restaurant information. So I emailed my friend Wheeler, who studied abroad in Rome one summer, to see if he had any suggestions. He did and was able to give me the coordinates of the restaurant, which I could then find on a map. The restaurant was actually located right near where we had lunch with Sara, so we walked back down the fashion street and headed towards Ristorante Mario’s.

Talk about a hidden treasure! Mario’s was fantastic. Katherine kept saying that she felt like she should write Wheeler a thank you note. It was really that good. Mario’s was this cute little place tucked back behind the Roman Forum. Our waiter was great and loved waiting on us. He knew English pretty well so we could converse with him. I think it is so funny how much national pride Italians have. Our waiter just loved being Italian and also told us that he goes to Texas to buy his winter jackets because around March, with the sales, he can get them for 70% off. Since it never gets cold in Texas a lot of people don’t buy the jackets unless they are going somewhere cold, the stores still sell them, and there are a lot of choices left for the sale. I might have to try that. For dinner, Katherine and I went back to our old ways of splitting (but this time done up big) and shared an antipasti platter that consisted of procuitto, coppa, tomato, mozzarella, basil, melon. We also ordered Parmesan to add to that. Then we had some bruscetta that was literally some of the best bruscetta I have had in Italy. The restaurant that I worked in in Colorado had some phenomenal bruscetta that I still haven’t been able to find anything over here that compares to it, but Mario’s was close. This is probably because Via’s bruscetta was loaded with garlic and I really haven’t had that much garlic over here yet, which is a huge bummer for my love affair with garlic. Then we split one fantastic lasagna and a side of spinach, which our waiter got made for us special. For dessert, I had tiramisu (which is creeping up to a favorite of mine) and Katherine had a white truffle ice cream deal. We both had a half-liter of wine. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and on top of all the greatness mentioned above, it was probably the cheapest best quality food that we have come across while eating out.

After making the trek back to our hostel, Katherine get everything ready to get up and go to the airport in the morning. She left me with the phone in case of emergencies and her watch, since mine has been broken forever, in addition to a few other odds and ends. We could here the weather start to pick up again as we said goodnight for the last time.