And the sun does come up. In Rome! Today we are going to the Museo Nazionale Romano. But first we have to have lunch. From the taxi I see orange trees all over the place.
Trip Advisor sends us to Matriciana. This is not a tourist restaurant. The customers are all local business people having lunch.
We are sitting outside looking at the fascist Opera house across the street.
We get a bottle of wine then order some pasta.
As I’m sitting there sipping wine I watch the businesspeople walking by. Everyone in Rome is beautiful.
They are also really well dressed.
Not in the overdone self-conscious way you see in Paris, but way more
stylish than Barcelona where people dress like Americans. I am very happy to say I have not seen one
woman wearing boots here. Why don’t women
know how awful boots are? Attention
females: boots are fine if you are walking in the snow, or you have them
covered up with your jeans, but that is all. Do not ever wear boots. They look stupid and bad. And hats. Don’t ever wear hats. Unless you are having lunch with the Queen of
England.
Anyway, the pasta shows up. Lynnette gets an amazing one with broccoli, I get a pretty good cacio e pepe, and Mark has his first really good carbonara. I see him leave his body for a little while.
Great restaurant.
We get to the museum and run into a scene from an Almodovar movie. A tourist from Brazil is trying to buy tickets to get in. The plump, horrible little woman running the ticket office is behind a bullet proof glass window, and has a large microphone in front of her. Loudly she screeches at the man in Italian, knowing full well he cannot understand her. He’s just trying it get a discount for his grandmother and small children. The wretched woman knows this, but she just wants to scream over the loudspeaker and embarrass the man. Finally, in tears, the poor man gives up and pays full price.
After two trips here I have to say that Italians are the nicest people I have ever met. If you try to speak any Italian to them they are going to bend over backwards to help you out. Not this hag. Clearly she has some French DNA in her. What a bitch. I make a mental note to start a Twitter campaign against her when I get home.
This museum is good. The old Roman frescoes here are amazing. They were able to save an entire room from some old Roman home.
.
.
. All over the museum there are tiny little faces and scenes:
Awesome.
The museum also has some statues. Here is a sample:
Yes, I did set off the alarm getting behind that last statue. It was worth it.
When we leave the museum I see this business across the street. I don’t think a comment is necessary.
Next we go to a couple of nearby churches.
Super creepy doors:
There is one of those Dan Brown lines in the floor:
This is not an especially Catholic statue:
This is Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Theresa":
You have to pay to make the light turn on over the statue. Great piece of art, I guess, but this is really just a rape story. No means no, Mr. Angel. Very disturbing.
..............
Tonight, no pasta. I want seafood. We walk across the street to this restaurant called Acqua Salata:
They don’t really speak English. We get some Negronis and wait for menus. They never come. Turns out they just opened a couple days before and their menus are not ready yet. Our poor struggling waiter finally calls over the owner.
Between pointing and grunting we all think we have ordered some local wine and that they will just bring out plates of seafood for us. Gnocchi with seafood, a plate of tuna and swordfish carpaccio, octopus, squid, mussels, mystery seafood I have not known before. It just keeps coming and coming.
It’s AWESOME!
Finally, we are full to the gills and we are ready to leave. Then two giant whole fish come out. We are too full to even move, but politely we nibble and push the fish around enough not to offend the owner.
So full. Gotta go to sleep now.
...............................
Today we are going to The Forum, the old Roman heart of the city. We have to stand in line to get in. These funny guys are walking around selling everything you could want: water, sunglasses, sun block, Rick Steves books, umbrellas. Lynnette decides she wants a pink umbrella. The guyswants 10 euros for it. She
We get in and walk around for a while. The ruins are cool, and it's fun to think about the history here, but I think we blew it by not getting a guide. I know we are missing a lot. Here are some photos:
We sure timed this right. As we are leaving literally hundreds of people are queued up at the entrance waiting to get in.
We're hungry so we try to use Google Maps to find a place that Trip Advisor recommended. Of course we get lost, again. Finally we just go into a restaurant we see. We are the only tourists here, the waiter does not speak English, and the menus are in Italian. I don't know if it's my French or that we have been here for a while, but I actually don't have any problem figuring out the menu. We end up ordering this seafood mega sampler. Much like the fish feast from last night, this is gobs of glorious seafood.
Yes there was octopus here. Yes I ate some. Yes it was good. Yes I feel bad. And yes, this was AWESOME!
After lunch we decide to go see the Trevi Foundation during the day. It's crazy busy here.
Lynnette realizes suddenly that she left her credit card back at the restaurant. We find this super cool lesbian cab driver who zooms us back to the restaurant. En route she and Mark sing along with the radio. Alan Parsons Project, Eye In The Sky. So annoying.
..................
Dinner tonight is at a restaurant around the corner. It was an odd evening.
The place seems to be run by a woman and her husband. She does all the work, and he sits there and drinks beer. She's not the best hostess.
There is a lot of drama going on in the dining room. A young man meeting his girlfriend's parents for the first time, an older gay man introducing his two boyfriends to his son, all sorts of regular human crap.
We are making fun of everyone when the two people at the table next to us get up to leave. They are American and have obviously heard all the snotty things we were saying. They must have agreed though because they give us their half bottle of undrunk wine. I won't forget this and I do the same thing later on the Amalfi Coast.
I have some amazing Bucatini all'Amatriciana:
Then I get this tuna with salsa verde.
AWESOME!
Tomorrow, Campo de' Fiori and the Coliseum!
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