When in Rome, eat where the Romans eat
Friendly advice, observation make Italy trip special
Wednesday, March 29; and Thursday, March 30
Corinne and I, newly married in December, set out for Rome, Italy, for a little one-onone time.
Our overnight Alitalia (Italy's most popular carrier) flight left Boston at 10:45 p.m. destined non-stop to Rome. Flying time is 7 hours and 50 minutes; economy class service costs $496 per passenger round trip. Flight amenities included free movies, a chicken dinner and a morning breakfast croissant. Arrival was on schedule at 12:40 Thursday afternoon. After clearing customs, we found our shuttle bus from the airport to downtown and arrived an hour later.
Our accommodations at Hotel Elysee, just six blocks away, offered a basic bed, bathroom, TV, wireless Internet, desk and closet space. The price included a light breakfast of assorted pastries, croissants, rolls, juice and coffee. The room tariff was $66 per night.
Rome weather this time of year is warm with daytime temperatures in the 70s; nighttime is in the low 60s.
After settling into our modest living quarters, we set out for our first Roman dinner. Having noticed a Radisson Hotel on our walk to find our hotel, we chose its seventhfloor rooftop restaurant overlooking the residential neighborhood at sunset. The Radisson Blu Restaurant offers both a modern and traditional menu of selections. We opened our dinner with an antipasti of meats, three cheeses, olives, marinated onions and fresh hard-crusted breads.
Corinne selected carbonara with egg and prosciutto. At the recommendation of the chef, I selected Gemelli pasta with oven-dried tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms and celery. Our dessert was black forest gateau. Again at the recommendation of the head waiter, our wine was a Marina Cvetic red blend. Meal total was 55 euros, the Europe-wide currency.
Friday, March 31
After a catch-up night on sleep, we ventured out on our first day of sightseeing. There is a website-based tour operator called Viator that offers dependable, reasonably priced excursions in major cities. Having used it previously, I engaged Viator services in Italy. To get around Rome, the hop-on, hop-off bus is easy to use.
There are usually 10 well-known locations where you pay one price and go anywhere, all day, and as often as you wish. Since our hotel was next to the Termini train terminal, it was easy to access the bus as the train station was among the pickup locations. The local bus vendor is called City Roma Sightseeing. Running every 10 minutes, it was easy to spot the brightly decorated coaches that deliver tourists to Rome's best known sights of antiquity. So yes, the bus stopped at the Coliseum, the Panthenon, the Vatican, Circle Maximus, Spanish steps, Trevi Fountain, and several well-known eating and shopping piazzas. The service is well worth the $17-per-day fare to go to the high spots around town.
The highlight of the day was another Viator offering: the 10-stop food tour. It consisted of meeting a tour guide and following her to 10 local neighborhood shops. Our gracious, knowledgeable hostess, Margherita, met us in the Piazza Campo de' Fiori open air market to begin the threehour experience.
The first treat was local thin-crusted margarita pizza with fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella; next stop was a bakery for a traditional ricotta cheese-stuffed cannoli, then on to another shop for an Italianstyle rice ball with tomato and mozzarella. Next we stopped for cappaichino at a coffee shop that had over 150 years of continuous operation; then a sample of a pungent pecorino Romano cheese from a shop that produces its own cheese on its own farm, again with a 300-year-old history.
Marguerite then introduced us to a deli known for their prochuitto, veal with sage and ham; sheep's cheese and black pepper, miniature artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, pickled onions and assorted flatbreads; turning another corner on to a side street, our guide offered a historical narrative on Rome's history and neighborhood development. We come across a card game in the middle of the piazza. The six men around the table couldn’t care less about the two tourists from Rhode Island passing by. Next we enter a new restaurant opened only a month ago. The owner, Frank, explained he uses only three ingredients per menu offering to protect the taste of his food. Pastrami was one of the items that day, but the meatballs in a marinara sauce were what we tasted.
On the way back to our bus stop, Maurgiruite crossed us over the Tiber River on Rome's oldest pedestrian bridge, which was built in 62 BC and is still in use. The Pons Fabricius is constructed from two wide arches supported by a central pillar in the middle of the river. The bus drops us at the train station, and we walk back to the hotel and settle in.
Saturday, April 1
Today is Vatican day. And being Italy's number one attraction, you have to be prepared for huge crowds and delays. We finally St. Peter's Square ready to present our Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum prepaid vouchers for immediate entrance. Just to find the entrance to the museum is another 1.5-mile walk around the perimeter of Vatican City. We did skip the line with our vouchers, but still waited for security clearance, only to join a throng of people climbing endless stairs to get to the sights of the Vatican. Watching a Rick Steve's PBS video would have been more interesting and less chaotic. Clearly, there must have been 30,000 people in the area on this Saturday afternoon, and it was still considered off season. Was the Sistine Chapel beautiful? Yes, but the crowd rushing through it made it difficult to feel a spiritual connection.
The Vatican is one of the most heavily secured places in the world.
The storage facility houses a wealth of forms, official documents and ledgers from the Catholic Church. The archives are set apart from the Vatican library, and ownership is passed down from pope to pope.
I would only think there is a better way to visit this site. Perhaps an escorted, private tour originating from your hotel to the Vatican might be the answer. Corinne was able to pull aside from the throngs of people pushing through the museum and purchase a gold medal of the Madonna for her friend Susan. Eventually, we made it through the maze called the Vatican museum, but not without a pushing, bodyto-body movement through the corridors and stairwells.
After a long, unemotional day, we cleared the exit and walked another two miles back to our bus meeting point. In another 40 minutes, we are back to our central hotel location. Now dusk, we asked our amicable hotel owner Marzia for dining options. She insisted that the Nuovo Canes, on the same street as the hotel Via Cairoli, should be our Saturday night out on the town. Just 200 yards away, the Nuovo Canes was a delight.
To our good fortune we sat next to a conductor for the Itairail line who had stopped by for dinner before his overnight shift on the railroad, and he recommended several dishes, including deep fried, in olive oil, whole artichokes where you peel off the leaves and enjoy like the "blooming onions" so popular at Autumnfest. Another recommendation was roasted lamb that tasted so much like steak to me when I sampled it. The accompanying recommended pasta dishes were equally outstanding.
By 8:30 p.m., the restaurant was crowded with locals; we, the only tourists, knew this place was the real deal away from the tourist trap eateries found around the Trevi Fountain or Spanish steps neighborhoods.
Sunday, April 2
Corinne and I attended Mass at a church across the street from the hotel. The parish church site dates its religious roots to the 5th century. There were 60 attendees at the 10 a.m. service. Since it’s a neighborhood parish, everything is spoken in Italian. We noticed parishioners coming and going during the service, much less formal than our American custom.
Later in the day, we visited the National Museum. Again, like so many of Rome's attractions, it is just a 15-minute walk from Hotel Elysee. On the first Sunday of the month, public museums are free to the public, so we enjoyed an afternoon of viewing both Greek and Roman antiquities in this world-renowned showplace. A special display on what makes anthropology a living science confronts visitors as they enter.
Looking for the "real Roman dining experience" led us to Il Padellaccio2 Ristorante and Pizzeria just a few blocks away from the hotel. I ordered the house specialty, lasagna al forno, while Corinne enjoyed spaghetti ala carbonara with egg, bacon and black pepper. Our appetizer was a four-cheese pizza, recommended by the head waiter.
The wine was simple: a carafe of house red that could be seen across the dining room as the wine of choice by the locals. To add ambience to the setting, an accordionist-vocalist serenaded the dining room patrons to traditional melodies of the country. A chocolate mousse with whipped cream was shared by the newlyweds. Our bill was $50 before gratuity. We slowly made our way back to the hotel after our close to three-hour dining adventure.
Monday, April 3
Aday I recommend for only the adventurous. Rising at 6:30 a.m., we swallowed a quick coffee as we scooted down the street to the train station to spend the day in Venice. Not an easy jaunt. The 3-hour-and30-minute ride is like going from Providence to New York and back in one day. We did it anyway. Traveling on La Freccia, one of several Italian rail companies offering highspeed rail service, we arrived in Venice at noon; jumped on a local boat to get to Piazza San Marco to connect with a walking tour, gondola ride (of course) and a local meal of Venetian thin-crust pizza and spaghetti Bolognese.
Our knowledgeable tour guide filled us in on regional history, gondoliers and their lifestyle and the constant battle of Mother Nature, water tides and keeping Venice from falling into itself. Engineers will find the strategy to keep the city functioning against the "tides" of nature fascinating. No cars, no buses, no bikes; in Venice you either walk or ride in a boat, period.
One sidebar to the trip; a group of sixth-graders and their teachers approached us at the Venice train station for a field trip learning experience. Their mission was to learn our country of origin and whether we knew our national anthem and were willing to sing it for their video class. We agreed. I rendered a dismal, inaccurate, out of tune version of the national anthem. Corinne, a Canadian citizen, sung something close to, but not quite, “O' Canada.”
By 7 p.m., we were back on the train, which traveled at speeds of about 150 mph, headed to Rome with everything we needed to know about Venice now part of us. By 11:10, our train pulls into Termini Station in downtown Rome. We bought a Eurail pass for train travel. Not a good move. Buying a ticket direct from the railroad online or in the train station is cheaper and a lot less complicated. But we all learn from trial and error. So, are European trains with newer equipment, high-speed rails, lots of service to many places and frequency of trains, better than USA Amtrak? Yes.
Tuesday, April 4
We designated Tuesday as a shopping, exploring and eating day. Using the retail district between our hotel and Termini Station, Corinne set out to buy some Italian jewelry, footwear and fashion wear. I, on the other hand, found a bar, sip- ping Moretti beer, popping down deep-fried rice balls with marinara sauce and watching the Italian language version of CNN; most of which I had to guess what they were talking about.
For lunch, we copied what other Italian couples were enjoying: a simple wine, bread and cheese plate with olives and grapes.
Next we bought a ticket to ride one of the city's 1950sstyle electrified street cars. The ride took us through residential neighborhoods and offered a glimpse of Roman city life away from the central core. There were no tourists on this line; strictly working class folks going to work or school. For the $1.50 fare, the jaunt up and down the line was a rare offbeat experience.
For our last full meal in Rome, we selected Tempo de Minerva. Filled with patrons from the neighborhood, we felt the choice was on target. Known for "typical Italian dishes," we ordered what the locals at nearby tables ordered; spaghetti and meatballs for Corinne while I settled on tortellini with gorgonzola cheese. We also had an eggplant parmesan appetizer, local red wine, bread and mineral water. We shared the house specialty dessert, tiramisu. A short walk back to the hotel ended our relaxing day.
Wednesday, April 5
This is travel day. Flying for eight hours is tiresome, but today we must do it with a connection. So we get up at 6 a.m. for hotel checkout. Although hotel accommodations are prepaid, a cash city tax of $4 per day per guest is collected. We pay $48. Just what city services were offered for that tax was unannounced, but it was not for trash or street litter removal.
We board the airport bus shuttle. One hour later, we begin to navigate the Fiumicino (Rome) Airport to find our KLM flight departure area. We are told that airport ground crew workers are staging a "work slowdown" that will delay our departure. We are told strikes, demonstrations and delays are part of Rome's day-to-day routine. KLM Flight 1598 (KLM is the state airline of the Dutch Netherlands) finally lifts off the runway about 30 minutes behind schedule on its way to Amsterdam.
After an uneventful flight from Rome to Amsterdam, we slowly made our way through customs, immigration interrogation and finally to our connecting gate. And there a welcome site: Delta Airlines was providing the last leg of our trip home. It was good to hear English again. Delta international performance was outstanding. Excellent cabin service, a full-course dinner was served, inflight complimentary movies, another meal five hours later, and spacious seats. Flight time Amsterdam to Boston: 7 hours and 4 minutes. We arrived at Logan at 4:30 p.m. for our ride back to Woonsocket.
So how did I like Italy? Traveling at our age is a double-edged sword. The sights are nostalgic, the food wonderful, the history is powerful and the Italian people are warm and friendly. So we had to pace ourselves to keep up with our busy itinerary. I recommend Italy as a vacation bucket list goal.
Politically, Italy is in crisis with an immigration problem overwhelming the cities with crime, unemployment and urban decay. Only the remote countryside resembles the Italy we've imagined. Those opinions were openly articulated by conversations with hotel employees competing for jobs with noncitizens of Italy. The tension among the native Italians to the outside immigration question is evident, and landing back in the USA and leaving Italy's issues to itself was not such a bad thing after all.
When planning a Rome adventure, I recommend the two books I bought to position yourself in the right area to access the sights easier. Fodor's "25 Best Rome" must-see sights offer tips on lodging, dining, churches and palaces. Rome is like New York and can be a dangerous place for tourists, so the book offers tips on avoiding muggings, scams and tourist traps.