Now we can finally say..."When in Rome..."

10/20/2009

Today we set the alarm for 8 and then said we were going to snooze till nine, but it was pretty loud in our dorm and we ended up getting up before the second alarm went off. We packed up our stuff, went downstairs, checked out and left our luggage in the luggage room while we walked around the city for the morning. We had plans to meet up with Tyler and Joe at a highly recommended restaurant called Mario’s at 12:30. Before we left the hostel, we both got a cute little cup of hot chocolate from a hot beverage vending machine. It was 60 cents and did the trick.

As we were walking around we came across the market that we found on Saturday night. Apparently it is a Tuesday/Saturday thing, maybe more day but I didn’t really look into it. We ended up looking at scarves. I was pretty proud of myself and my bargaining skills. I got three scarves for like 16.78. I used a trick that Scott and his buddies do. They just dig into their pocket and say that this is all they have and normally the vendors will accept it. We were originally looking for a food market that we had heard about, so we asked the vendor where it was. He told us to turn around and it was in a warehouse that we were standing right next to. This food market was by far the least impressive, but it still had free samples. I wanted to get a briosh for breakfast and when I went to pay for it with a 20 euro bill, they guy told me that he couldn’t break that and to just take the pastry for free. What luck I have been having with getting deals!

We continued walking. We looked into going to the top of the Duomo but it was very expensive. I figured I could get the same view for the Piazza de Michelangelo. As we were debating on the steps of the cathedral, we saw Scott and his buddies again with all of their packs and gear on their backs. I was glad that I was able to say a proper goodbye. They were heading towards Venice. Next we looked into the Uffizi gallery, but that also was very expensive. The only major thing that I would have liked to see in there that I heard of was the birth of Venus. If I really want to see it, I can always go back when Im in Florence with my mom. Next we headed over to the area where we walked by the art lady on Sunday. After much deliberating and talking with her, she also gave us some great deals on multiple pieces of art. We still had a little bit of time before we were supposed to meet up with Tyler, so we popped into a Café to warm up and have some hot drinks.

We walked over to find Mario’s and it literally is a hole in the wall kinda of place. The front door and window are collaged with write-ups of the restaurant praising it. There were some seriously prestigious sources too like Bon Appetite and Food and Wine Magazine. I was starting to get the idea that this is a world-renowned restaurant that I was about to eat in. Mario’s deal is that it is only open for lunch. There is normally a line out the door and you usually share tables because the little dining area is jammed packed. The menu changes daily, which you figure out because it is hand written on a piece of placemat paper on display outside and then the waiter comes and verbally tells you what is on the menu for the day. Also everything is amazing, so you really cant go wrong. They are well known for their reasonably priced and out of this world tasting humongous Florentine steak. Tyler said that you reiterated the fact that really cant go wrong with anything you order, but he also helped with advising us along the way. I ordered their bread soup for my first course and then the four of us split the Florentine steak. I have honestly never seen a steak this big in my entire life and it was delicious. Florentine people like to cook steak on the rare side, which I totally dig. Tyler says he thinks Florence has the best steaks in the world and I might have to agree with him after this experience.

After lunch, the four of us walked back to the hostel where we said our goodbyes and then Katherine and I picked up our packs and headed to the train station. We used the self-serve ticket reservation machines for the first time, which worked ok other than the fact that it reserved seats for us in very different cars. When we got on the train, we realized it was fully booked and we would have to sit in our assigned seats. I slept the entire 2-hour train ride to Rome. After looking at the directions to our hostel, we realized that getting there might be a little complicated and our hostel is definitely out of the main area of Rome. We had to take the metro, then a train, then a bus, and then walk a little to get to our hostel. The hostel happens to be located directly on a beach of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and really not near Rome although technically it is considered to be. I am hoping that this works out ok because we can just get up and go into the city for the day and come back to a nice, quiet, relaxing beach place. This hostel got great reviews, supposedly has a great breakfast, looks ok nice, and hopefully will be fine. It looked really good on paper when we were booking it. We shall find out. We are sharing a 4-bed girls dorm with one other girl from Canada, who is traveling by herself and seems nice enough. The room is ok and the internet access is below par, but oh well

We got in on the later side and unpacked. For dinner, we walked along the boardwalk and ended up at a place that’s name translated into Fried Green Tomatoes. You can only imagine how whack it was. I ended up getting bruschetta, a green salad that was literally only three types of lettuce, and focattia bread. It was not very satisfying, but my quarter liter of wine was cheaper than water and diet coke on the menu so that was cool. We got back to the hostel kinda late and they were showing the movie Crash, which we caught the last half of. I like that movie because if makes you think about how many people you can really impact in your life just by happenstance.

Tomorrow we will have a busy day touring Rome. At last we can finally say…”When in Rome…”