want a bite?: Our Summer Family trip to Italy Day One Wednesday June 4th 2008

Day One "The beginning"
Wednesday June 4, 2008

Usually I pull an all-nighter trying to get out of town. It’s just the way I work. I try to cram so much stuff into the days before I leave that honestly I am exhausted as I get on the airplane. This ensures that I have a great plane ride, as I am incoherent and usually snoring. I’m sure annoying everyone around me. Luckily I wake up refreshed at my new adventure and then I’m off again, exploring everything.

This trip however, was different; instead of cramming for a day or two, lets just say I’ve been cramming for a week or two or almost really three. I was trying to get my greenhouse done and planted before I left. Sometimes I wonder if I have any sense of how long things take. In my family we refer to it as our “multiple”. So if my dad says he’ll be here in 15 minutes, you know to times that number by at least 3. His multiple is never lower than 3 and can be as high as 20. So at 3 times his 15 minutes, he will really end up where he says he will in about 45 minutes. We even jokingly ask, “what’s your multiple today?”

Growing up we knew about the multiple. My dad would optimistically say, “Oh, that will take about 2 days to do”, which in the end always ended up taking at least two weeks, sometimes two months, and even sometimes two years. Like laying our hardwood floors. It was a family project that lasted years. No wonder my mother went insane.

Anyway, as you can see this is just part of my genetic makeup. My sister and both my brothers have this defect too. In fact my dad’s 10 brothers and sisters all have it, so it definitely must be a learned behavior. Although I can admit that I have the behavior, most of my family can’t.

So back to the huge project I tried to start before I left. Literally, since the first week of May I plowed all my efforts into getting this thing out of the ground. In the end, it seemed I hadn’t exercised or slept for weeks; between researching seed varieties, growing conditions, Utah climates, greenhouse requirements, local building permits, presoaking seeds, planning the actual planting layout, buying everything I needed, constructing the actual garden and then planting all the beds.

I found myself longing for just a few more hours before getting on the flight. I had found a way to get most of it done, but Brit & I were in the garden planting, with a spotlight that night until about 2:30 am. But one thing about Brit, he needs his sleep to function. I knew I would be paying the price later for keeping him up so late. He, like most, doesn’t do well on an empty tank. But I continued working until we left at 6:00 am. Photographing and documenting what we had accomplished, our first garden. He was, and always is, a great sport when it comes to my obsessive-compulsive behavior.

There were a few things I didn’t get done, but with a little help from my good friends, they finished all the things I couldn’t. Thanks guys! Anyway, we are all now looking forward to a yummy garden harvest.

As we boarded the plane, I decided to take it easy for the first couple of days of our trip and just relax. On the plane I slept the whole way to Atlanta, never even made a peep. Then on the way to Rome, I slept most of the time. At the Rome airport Brit asked how much money we should convert. I can honestly say that I must have been brain dead, and we haven’t traveled for a while and so our skills were rusty. I told him we should just convert all of it at the conversion place at the airport.

What was I thinking? I forgot they end up charging you like 11% commission. So besides the fact that the dollar is so weak against the euro and we lost a third of the value in exchanging to the euro, we added on top of that another 11% lost to commission. I felt like we were newby travelers again. Why didn’t we remember to just take cash out of the ATM. It gives you the local currency, with just a ATM fee charge from home and no commission cuts. It also gives you the best rates ever, since the banks negotiate them. Prego?

Already flustered by our banking errors, we weren’t thinking again and we exacerbated our problems. We decided to take the train instead of taking a taxi from the airport, which we usually do. We thought would just ride the metro and that would get us there quicker. What were we thinking? Visions of a previous trip came back to haunt me.

When I was in London with some friends a while back, I not only had to carry my bag up and down all the subway stairs, since they don’t always have an escalator or elevator, but I had to help the other helpless person that was with me carry her bag, since it was so heavy… she was too good to carry her own bag, and just couldn’t do it. It was so heavy and there were so many stairs. The flashback was horrific and I wanted to replay the last 2 hours and just get a taxi straight from the airport.

Instead we navigated through the airport to find the train station. Bought the tickets and then found out there was a shuttle that would have taken us right to our hotel. Oh well, we already paid for the train fair we might as well use them. Wrong!

Waited 40 minutes for the next train to come. Hauled our bags in and out of the train. Rested on the train for another 30 minutes. Got to Terminal Station in Rome, finally found the Metro to take us to our hotel, went down, down, down into the earth on escalators. The whole time I’m thinking, we are going to have to come up, up, up and there better be escalators on the other end. Of course, there weren’t any, just stairs, stairs, stairs. We schlepped up all our bags, tired and beat.

Then, once we emerge from the deep earth, did we know where we are going? Of course not, we were staying at a new hotel for us, in a quiet neighborhood, Rome can be very loud at night. So we start going one way, then we realize we are going the wrong way, turn around again. Hey wait, we brought a GPS with us, lets use that, our brain must really be dead! Another 15 minutes goes by and now we are fighting about how to use the brand new GPS. I had actually read the directions, and had played with it, where Brit just thought he knew how the GPS worked. We are both tired and beat. And the GPS had “poor signal quality”. It didn’t talk about that in the directions! What happens if you didn’t print out a map, because you relied on the techno brain? The whole time I’m thinking, “Why didn’t we take a taxi?”

We walk dragging our bags at this point, needing water, nourishment, and a bathroom, which we know will not be easy to find in Rome. (Another trip story with Monica & Christian) Finally after what seems to be miles, we get to our hotel. Hotel Lancelot, a quaint hotel in a great quiet location with great Metro and Bus access right next to the Coliseum. We have a huge room #55, it is so nice and a large balcony with a view to a castle on one side, and the Coliseum the other way. So pretty!

So, after unpacking, we’re off to our favorite spots. First we went to our favorite pizza spot in Rome. Alice’s!

I noticed this time they have little straw seats to sit on. After having gone there on our first trip to Rome, we longed for that yummy pizza. Being even more of a foodie, now, I was asking all kinds of questions. Their pizza sandwiches looked so good. Proscuitto, mortadella, and ham was inside and look so good. They had so many more types than I remembered last time. Maybe it was because we actually went at lunch-time this time. We got some red cabbage pizza that was good, sausage or speck with cheese and mushrooms, eggplant, and the zucchini flower pizza.

They use a putty knife to cut the pizzas. The pans looked like heavy cast iron pans. They put them right in the ovens and it looked like it made the pizza’s really crispy. The flavor of the eggplant pizza with parsley, olive oil, and crushed red chili pepper was excellent.

Smoked salmon with fresh mozzarella, and lettuce was good too. Another yummy combination was asparagus that they cut in half with proscuitto and mozzarella. The paper thin sliced potato pizza had about three layers of very thin sliced potatoes sprinkled with rosemary, pepper, salt, olive oil and lardo was my favorite.

I found out why the pizza is so good. Lard, yes lard, not in the dough, but on the pizza. Yes I’ll say it again, lard, well maybe I should say it in Italian. Lardo di Collonata, a special type of white ham. It really is just fat, but like I always say, “Fat means Flavor” and boy is this stuff good. You wouldn’t normally even know it is on there, since it melts right into the pizza, but since I asked, they told me. How do they make this…? We’ll I found out.

They were very nice. And there were so many pizzas to choose from. Pizza to them is like a sandwich to us. They even eat it like a sandwich. They cut their piece from long rectangular squares and then fold it in half and then wrap it up. Just like a subway sandwich, but much tastier. And the bread is so thin so you don’t feel like a big dough ball afterwards.

Off to find gelato… and it is the best around the Trevi fountain. Gelato di San Crispino is just right around the corner from the fountain and supposedly has the best gelato. Well have to taste a bunch and make sure that is still true! We’ve gone here before and it is good.

You can’t see the gelato here. It is like a laboratory and they don’t want any air getting into the gelato. They don’t give samples either, unless you have already bought a cup or two. So do you want a Cono o Coppetta? In a small cup they will fit in three flavors so that is great for sampling.

Their flavors are very pure and unadulterated. We had read about the honey gelato that we didn’t try last time, the one they are famous for. First I got the honey and grapefruit. The grapefruit sorbet was awesome and so was the honey.

Brit got the cioccolato and honey. Their Valrrona chocolate was the best chocolate I had ever had.

Back for a second round what to choose now?
I got a sample of the licorice root, it was way to strong for me and I love licorice. So I went for the pistacho, chocolate meringue, and lemon. The pistachio was to die for, the taste was incredible. The meringue was kind of crunchy and the lemon was really stron.

Brit’s seconds were straticella and crema.

After we were full we walked around a little and then rode the bus back to our hotel. We took a tiny nap and got on the internet and began mapping out tomorrow. We really hadn’t made any reservations or plans, except for our hotel the night before we left so we had a lot of stuff we needed to figure out. Where did we want to go and what did we want to do for the next couple days.

We tried to make early reservations but restaurants don’t even open until 7:45 or 8:00 pm. So we had them make a reservation for us at a place called “Paris in Trastevere” We got dressed and ready and took a taxi there since we were done. The sunset was really beautiful with the skyline.

First we ordered still water, no gas.; otherwise you’ll get sparkling water and Brit especially doesn’t like that. Water is expensive at the restaurants, as much as a glass of wine, so we drink it sparingly. As a comparison, you can my 12 large bottles for 2.50 euros and at the restaurant one bottle is 4 to 6 euros.

The bread basket looked good so we were excited for what might be coming.

We ordered the antipasti Gran Fritto vegetale con baccala which included zucchini blossoms, mozzarella cheese, a piece of stockfish, zuchinni strips and a potato croquette, and the famous jewish fried artichoke. They actually smash them and then fry them. The petals start tasting like potato chips because they become crispy,

In a side note, historically the Jews had to live in the worst land in the city. Only artichokes would grow on this land, and the other Romans thought that they were inedible. But the Jews found that when they were fried they became edible, so the joke was on the Romans.

The gnocchi was excellent and so was the taglionlini with the zuchinni flowers. The chicory I had never had and it was steamed and then fried in flavored garlic oil and a bit of crushed red pepper. I loved it. The asparagus was excellent too. This is what we ordered:

Gran Frito Vegetale con baccala

Fried Mushed Yummy Fried Artichoke

Pasta e Ceci- Chickpea Soup with noodles

Rigatoni alla carbonara

Gnocchetti alla fontina- Gnocchi in fontina cheese sauce

Tagliolini scampetti e fiori di zucca- Thin noodles small scampi and zucchini pumpkin

Scaloppina ai fungi porcini- Veal Medallions with porcini mushrooms

Polpette di vitella fritte con cicoria- Veal meatballs with cicory

Chicory

Asparagi- Asparagus with lemon and olive oil

Zuppa Inglaise-A type of Trifle

Crème Caramelle- a flan

Palle di ricotta fritte- Fried ricotta cheese ball with chocolate inside.

Pesche al limone- Peaches with lemon, which I sent back because they were hard

We were so tired, but are trying to stay awake to combat the jet lag.

We were laughing and having fun, we were getting giddy. I love Brit’s laugh.

Herbie the love bug showed up at dinner.

We walked home it was really nice out. The city is so pretty lite up at night.

There was a busy restaurant on the way with lots of locals. A good sign, that looked great “Hostaria del Moro da Tony”. We’ll have to go there someday, but right now we are stuffed to the gills. As we waked, I forgot how much smoking there was over here.

There was a yummy looking patisserre, that we stopped at and bought some treats for the morning. I was looking for some Ricciarelli Cookies. I want to find some before I leave Italy.

A yummy looking sandwich called Baccanale that we should come back to.

We also saw their famous water fountains that are just in the middle of a plaza or street. It is always running and they were built way back in olden days. People use them just like a drinking fountain and they are safe to drink from.