A Wine Down in Roma

For my last 48 hours I had to return to Roma, la cittá eterna of course.  My dear friend Livia is there right now as she gets ready to head up to Briancon again for the winter, and Rome might be the place in Europe that feels most like home. After a delayed flight Livia picked me up at abut 1:30 and we headed back to her mom’s place in Balduina to drop off my stuff.  Then we headed out on a lovely passagiata. 

Livia is a master parker

There is a walking and bike path that is close to Balduina that gives an amazing view of St. Peter’s and Vatican City.  We began by stopping at Alice for some pizza al taglio (yum) and suppli.  I can never remember the difference between suppli and aranciata but this one had risotto but carbonara flavored, which was amazing. Livia talked me into squash blossom and anchovies pizza, then we had mushroom, potato, and straciatella. It was all great, a little sampler in a pizza box for us.  Still don’t know why this hasn’t caught on in the US, or anywhere else for that matter. So we walked through the hills of northern Rome to Parco Monte Ciocci where we sat on the grass and chatted about life. It was a busy Sunday afternoon with lots of classes and activities going on - Parkour, Dance, Pickleball, Biking, lots of energy at the top of the hill.  On our walk down we happened to be walking at the same pace as this young boy riding his bike saying how much faster he rides his bike than his parents. He was the cutest, and also so cool how in Rome it really feels like it is taking a village to raise a child. We stopped at a cafe for a coffee and enjoyed the amazing weather.  I’ll tell you, this trip I have worn winter and summer clothes and everything in between. 

For our evening activity Livia found the traveling Roman Opera, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma!  Basically there is an effort to bring the opera to neighborhoods around Rome to make it more accessible to the community.  So the stage was made from a shipping container and trucked in to a street in a neighborhood about 30 minutes from Livia’s house called Muncipio XIV.  We brought some chairs from her balcony and sat there and watched a great performance of the opera Tosca.  It was of course in Italian but I got the gist of it, and the singling was just amazing. It was a very cool “locals only” experience. 

Once that was over we headed home and Livia’s mom, Silvia, told me I was too thin and said she would make me a meatball or 2, which actually meant 7 meatballs.  I definitely wasn’t hungry after all that pizza earlier but it totally reminded me of my grandmother, who thought everyone was too thin and lived to feed people, ironically named Sylvia. 

Our Monday morning started with a trip to “the best coffee shop in Balduina” for a cornetto and a cappuccino. Livia drinks Italian coffee, which is just one sip of caffeine.  It even seems smaller than an espresso. I got a crema croissant and ordered and paid on my own in Italian… Livia has spoiled me the past couple times I have been here so my Italian is very rusty. The cappuccino is so foamy, I just loved it. 

From there it was time for a road trip to Castelli Romano, which is an area south of Rome by about an hour that is a few hill towns, called borghetti.  The first one, Castel Gandolfo, overlooks this beautiful lake and is the summer place for the Pope. There is one little Main Street with a bunch of restaurants and then the papal palace and gardens, which we tried to find but ended up just walking around it.  It was a lovely walk nonetheless and then we headed back to the car for the next village. 

Our next stop was Ariccia which is famous for the Fraschetta.  This is a type of little restaurant, maybe with the Italian version of tapas.  Because it was Monday there wasn’t a lot open, but there was a little strip of Fraschette that were all open and in heavy recruitment mode.  We decided to go into one, clearly family owned, and they had 2 menu specials - one was basically an appetizer sampler on steroids, and then the other option was an appetizer sampler with a primo and secondo (a pasta dish and a meat dish).  Thank god we just went with the appetizers for 21 euro because it was huge!  We also got a lardo bruschetta and some chicory.  The owner of the restaurant kept talking to us, I think he was a little excited to have an American there. He brought over the English version of his write up about fraschette and also porchetta, which is a special way of smoking pork that this village is known for.  Of course that was one of the delicious appetizers. Then he showed me a picture of Laura Bush eating porchetta, I guess you’ve arrived if you’re feeding a First Lady!  The  Owner liked us so much that they happened to have an extra pasta dish (bucatini all’amatriciana -pasta with red sauce and guanciale) that they asked us if we wanted - how could we say no?  But we walked out sooooo full. 

Our last village we stopped in was Nemi, but it had started to rain as we left the restaurant in Ariccia. We got out of the car in Nemi and started walking around and it promptly started raining.  We went into this trinket shop which was really interesting to see.  An older man just sat in the shop, completely content.  I wondered if he even sold anything in a whole day, but again, just happy to be there and chit chat - the simple life!  The rain got much worse so we sat at a table with a big umbrella and of course ordered a coffee and a little pastry.  This cafe also looked out over a lake below, also surrounded by trees and beautiful. Nemi is known for its fragole - strawberries, and strawberry pastries.  The one we got was just delicious, though the strawberries seemed a little out of season. It was really pouring at this point so we waited for it to let up and headed back to the car for Rome, where it didn’t rain at all. 

Livia had to do some work for her environmental psychology class so after a little chill time, we headed into the City Center for another passagiata through my old stomping grounds.  I lived in Campo di Fiori which was still going string as I remember.  Piazza Navona was beautiful but some scaffolding had a huge billboard up which wasn’t exactly picturesque. We walked by the Pantheon and there was a woman randomly singing opera in the portico of the Pantheon, which was pretty epic.  And finally landed in Piazza di Pietra by Largo Argentina, which was the granddaddy of adaptive reuse - a Greek temple turned into a Roman building and now used for… offices. We had wine and I had a couple Hugos (I developed a liking for this drink in Germany) and we ended up closing the bar.  Our waiter, Luca, was very nice.  We asked him how many of those flying light-up helicopters he thinks the street vendors sell in a day.  He told us he was drunk once and convinced them to sell him one for 1 euro but they are usually 5 euro.  Just tourist after tourist totally loving them, it was crazy, considering how annoying they are.  Anyway, we had a walk back t the car and retired for the evening!  

This morning was pretty chill, Livia’s mom wanted to go for coffee and breakfast so we went back to the same cafe, I stocked up on pizze bianche for the flight home, and headed to the airport.  Apparently we parked next to a big name politician at the airport - Walter Vetroni, and Livia got star struck.  From there, I said goodbye to my wonderful European vacation, and am now on the plane heading back to LA!  Ciao Ciao!!!