Jamikins and Bikerscott's Long Weekend in Rome
The photos are fabulous! Cant wait for the next instalment...
Mar 29th, 2016 | 11:58 AM
#49
Joined: Jan 2014
Posts: 4,833
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Sitting at LAX waiting for our flight to San Miguel de Allende and reading your report. I wish we were able to hope over to Rome for a long weekend. Thank you for sharing you long weekend the writing and the pictures from you both are great.
Mar 29th, 2016 | 05:09 PM
#55
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 601
Likes: 0
I am thoroughly enjoying your trip report -- thanks for posting. My husband and I will be in Rome in late August and would be interested in learning the name of the company that caters food and wine tastings that you mentioned.
Mar 30th, 2016 | 03:26 AM
#56
Original Poster
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 541
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Day Three – Food, a Mountain of Broken Crockery, and More Food
Another day of sleeping in was very nice. Jamie got restless at 9:30 but lovely girl that she is, she went into the other room to read and let me lie in until 10:30 again. Life has been incredibly hectic lately, so these few days of as much sleep as we can handle has been amazing.
More photos and reading on the little terrace in the sun while drinking espresso and listening to some music is an excellent way to start a day while on holiday, I highly recommend it. This schedule allows time to prepare for an epic lunch if you have one planned, and at the very least to come to the sort of mental equilibrium that’s required to deal with hordes of annoying tourists (I acknowledge the irony the fact that we ourselves are annoying tourists, but it’s different in some ineffable manner). We had the epic lunch sort of afternoon planned, rather than the tourist horde scenario.
A few years ago we ventured out of Trastevere to a suburb on the other side of the river called Testaccio to visit the Nuovo Mercato di Testaccio (new market of Testaccio). We weren’t overly impressed – it was very much a locals’ market which is good, but there wasn’t much around for us. Even more disappointing at the time was our attempt to find lunch. Again, very much a locals’ lunch scene with quite a few restaurants that looked good but all fully booked with no room for walk-ins, which I can’t fault them for.
This time we’d planned ahead better – we skipped the market entirely and just went for lunch. Jamie had read good reviews of Flavio al Velavevodetto in Testaccio, so we were booked for a 1pm Sunday lunch. We seem to be mis-timing the meals on the trip, as yet again we were the first to arrive. Flavio al Velavevodetto is built into the side of the Monte dei Cocci, which is a relatively large hill in Tastaccio. Interestingly, it’s completely artificial, and is composed almost entirely of broken amphorae from the Roman Empire and covers 20,000 square metres (or 220,00 sq ft for our non-metric friends). That’s a LOT of amphorae. I like to think that they were full of wine because that’s something I can get behind, but they were actually used for olive oil which is slightly less interesting (to me).
The back wall of the restaurant is built into the hill of pottery shards, and nearly the entire wall is glass so you can see the remains of the amphorae. This is theoretically interesting, but one can only really look at a pile of broken terra cotta and be entertained for so long. Fortunately, as our interest in the wall waned, the Italians arrived for lunch. We were the only tourists in for lunch as far as we could tell, and were provided with the huge entertainment of sitting in the middle of a large number of families out for their Easter Sunday meal. I can tell you that a Roman family can get through some food.
It was a special menu for the day, and we both started with artichokes – they seem to be in season as they were everywhere in Rome on this trip. The traditional Roman Jewish style of presenting them is to deep fry them, the normally inedible outer leaves included. The outer leaves turn into something that is similar in texture to a salty potato chip, but with so much more flavour. The centre ends up being perfectly cooked and tasty.
The alternative starter was something we had to look up, and I’m glad we did as I nearly ordered it. According to the internet, Coratella is the Italian word for the organs inside the thoracic (chest) cavity of small animals like lambs, chickens and rabbits. I will eat pretty much anything once, but this is a bridge too far. Most of the rest of the restaurant ordered it and while it didn’t look any better than it sounds, they all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.
It being a special holiday lunch, we had the full three courses – antipasta, primi and secondi. My pasta dish was a tasty tagliatelle with wild boar ragu, while Jamie had an incredibly good rigatoni with cheese and pepper with added pork jowl (cacao e pepe con guinciale). Mine was tasty, hers was incredible. We finished with deep-fried breaded meatballs for Jamie (good, but a bit dry) and a lamb dish for me – it had a very odd sauce of egg yolk and lemon (agnello brodettato) – it was good, but I don’t know that I’d go out of my way for it again.
There wasn’t much that we wanted to see in Testaccio so we got slightly lost trying an alternative and off-map route back to Trastevere. I vaguely remember wandering around getting lost with paper maps, but it’s so much easier to do it with our iPhones. We both have unlimited data roaming, so don’t have to worry about the amount of maps we were looking at or the searches of recipe sites to figure out what were were/might be eating.
Once we got back to Trastevere we felt that an afternoon beverage was in order. We’re a bit embarrassed to admit that we sat at the incredibly naff “Long Island Night Café” on Via della Lungaretta, but in our defence they have an outdoor couch in the sun that was free, so we camped out for a bit. There were two chairs across from the couch, and after we’d been there for a while, a couple asked if they could sit in the chairs. We said yes, of course, feel free.
They turned out to be a very chatty and slightly strange couple who we ended up sharing a bottle of wine with. He was originally from Naples and more than a little drunk, and she was Polish – they’d been living in Rome for the last four years. They were entertaining and very nice, but a bit intense. Marko in particular seemed to want to take us under his wing and show us what Italian hospitality is – he demanded that we cancel our dinner reservations and go back to their flat so he could cook us spaghetti vongole that evening. As the afternoon progressed it got stranger and stranger. The point at which we decided it was time to go was when I went to the washroom – when I came back I’d lost my seat on the couch to the girl who’d parked herself next to Jamie.
We extricated ourselves from the situation and walked back to the flat to get changed for dinner. Jamie wanted to take photos of Rome at night from the top of the hill in Trastevere, and had found a restaurant at the top that got quite good reviews.
The walk was shorter than we’d expected, and the view not quite as good as we’d hoped (at least for photos). We spent a bit of time looking out over the city trying to work out what things were – definitely a different way to see Rome than wandering around the maze of streets. It doesn’t look as big as it feels when you’re lost in it. We were very early for dinner so tried to find a café for a coffee or other beverage, but there isn’t much up at the top of the hill. The few places we did find were closed, so we took our chances and tried the restaurant an hour before our reservation time.
Fortunately, there were both open and had a table for us, so we got stuck into yet another tasting menu. This may have been a mistake as we were still a bit full from lunch, but we have trouble resisting a good menu. Dinner was excellent, although not quite as refined as the previous night. Standout dishes included a really scallop with artichoke and carbonara which was absolutely COVERED in shaved truffles. To be honest we were feeling a bit sick by the time we were finished desert, top tip is to only have one massive Italian meal per day…
We walked back to the viewpoint to see if it was more photogenic at night and discovered it turns into a prime location for Roman youngsters to make out in the dark under the trees. The view was good but still difficult to photograph, and it became increasingly awkward standing there with all the hormones clearly flying around (the guys selling roses seemed like they were onto a winner though).
We trudged/rolled back down the hill to our little piazza for a nightcap of a bottle of wine at Sloppy Sam’s American Bar – again, we’re not proud of this, but it was convenient and had a table on the piazza. We learned from the waitress (who was from just outside Birmingham) that the area was thronged with young people because there’s an American university just up the street – after two nights it explained so much about the area. We eventually went to bed, still very full and somewhat sad that it was our last night in the Eternal city.
Day Four – Storm Havoc
We had to actually set an alarm to get us up at 8:30. We’d grown accustomed to the 10:30 lie-ins so that hour just seemed rude, but we had to pack up and be ready to leave for 10:00 when Simonetta would be coming back to collect the keys. We left our bags in the flat and headed out into the light drizzle for our last morning in Rome – our car service was picking us up at 2pm to take us back to the airport.
We spent a very relaxed morning having coffee and wandering around Trastevere until it was noon – at that point lunch beckoned. There are two restaurants side by side on our little piazza, and we’d tried one our first day – it had been incredibly busy but full of tourists, whereas the other restaurant seemed a bit quieter but more locals. We went for the second this time and were treated to a fully chaotic and entertaining lunch service. It transpired that the owner had given his entire staff a rant in the morning, and they were all a bit annoyed with him by lunch. The food was good, very filling, and not overly expensive. Again it seemed mostly locals who’d booked in advance, most walk-ups were being turned away. We spent a good two hours lingering over our food before collecting our bags and catching a ride back to the airport.
This is the point at which all the careful travel planning went out the window. Storm Katie had rolled through the UK overnight and shut both Gatwick and Heathrow for the morning due to incredibly strong winds. The storm had died down by the afternoon but the flight scheduled were completely broken, so we were looking at an undefined delay with a warning from the check-in agent that the flight might be cancelled.
We paid for access to the VIP lounge near our gate and waited. And waited. And waited. Three hours after our scheduled departure time, we finally got airborne and had a relatively turbulent trip back home. We decided on the way home that we would have rather stayed in Rome and not had to come home and go back to work the following day – relaxing in Roman piazzas all day, eating great food, drinking far too much good wine…there are worse ways to live…we’ll have to wait for our next Roman holiday I guess…
Another day of sleeping in was very nice. Jamie got restless at 9:30 but lovely girl that she is, she went into the other room to read and let me lie in until 10:30 again. Life has been incredibly hectic lately, so these few days of as much sleep as we can handle has been amazing.
More photos and reading on the little terrace in the sun while drinking espresso and listening to some music is an excellent way to start a day while on holiday, I highly recommend it. This schedule allows time to prepare for an epic lunch if you have one planned, and at the very least to come to the sort of mental equilibrium that’s required to deal with hordes of annoying tourists (I acknowledge the irony the fact that we ourselves are annoying tourists, but it’s different in some ineffable manner). We had the epic lunch sort of afternoon planned, rather than the tourist horde scenario.
A few years ago we ventured out of Trastevere to a suburb on the other side of the river called Testaccio to visit the Nuovo Mercato di Testaccio (new market of Testaccio). We weren’t overly impressed – it was very much a locals’ market which is good, but there wasn’t much around for us. Even more disappointing at the time was our attempt to find lunch. Again, very much a locals’ lunch scene with quite a few restaurants that looked good but all fully booked with no room for walk-ins, which I can’t fault them for.
This time we’d planned ahead better – we skipped the market entirely and just went for lunch. Jamie had read good reviews of Flavio al Velavevodetto in Testaccio, so we were booked for a 1pm Sunday lunch. We seem to be mis-timing the meals on the trip, as yet again we were the first to arrive. Flavio al Velavevodetto is built into the side of the Monte dei Cocci, which is a relatively large hill in Tastaccio. Interestingly, it’s completely artificial, and is composed almost entirely of broken amphorae from the Roman Empire and covers 20,000 square metres (or 220,00 sq ft for our non-metric friends). That’s a LOT of amphorae. I like to think that they were full of wine because that’s something I can get behind, but they were actually used for olive oil which is slightly less interesting (to me).
The back wall of the restaurant is built into the hill of pottery shards, and nearly the entire wall is glass so you can see the remains of the amphorae. This is theoretically interesting, but one can only really look at a pile of broken terra cotta and be entertained for so long. Fortunately, as our interest in the wall waned, the Italians arrived for lunch. We were the only tourists in for lunch as far as we could tell, and were provided with the huge entertainment of sitting in the middle of a large number of families out for their Easter Sunday meal. I can tell you that a Roman family can get through some food.
It was a special menu for the day, and we both started with artichokes – they seem to be in season as they were everywhere in Rome on this trip. The traditional Roman Jewish style of presenting them is to deep fry them, the normally inedible outer leaves included. The outer leaves turn into something that is similar in texture to a salty potato chip, but with so much more flavour. The centre ends up being perfectly cooked and tasty.
The alternative starter was something we had to look up, and I’m glad we did as I nearly ordered it. According to the internet, Coratella is the Italian word for the organs inside the thoracic (chest) cavity of small animals like lambs, chickens and rabbits. I will eat pretty much anything once, but this is a bridge too far. Most of the rest of the restaurant ordered it and while it didn’t look any better than it sounds, they all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.
It being a special holiday lunch, we had the full three courses – antipasta, primi and secondi. My pasta dish was a tasty tagliatelle with wild boar ragu, while Jamie had an incredibly good rigatoni with cheese and pepper with added pork jowl (cacao e pepe con guinciale). Mine was tasty, hers was incredible. We finished with deep-fried breaded meatballs for Jamie (good, but a bit dry) and a lamb dish for me – it had a very odd sauce of egg yolk and lemon (agnello brodettato) – it was good, but I don’t know that I’d go out of my way for it again.
There wasn’t much that we wanted to see in Testaccio so we got slightly lost trying an alternative and off-map route back to Trastevere. I vaguely remember wandering around getting lost with paper maps, but it’s so much easier to do it with our iPhones. We both have unlimited data roaming, so don’t have to worry about the amount of maps we were looking at or the searches of recipe sites to figure out what were were/might be eating.
Once we got back to Trastevere we felt that an afternoon beverage was in order. We’re a bit embarrassed to admit that we sat at the incredibly naff “Long Island Night Café” on Via della Lungaretta, but in our defence they have an outdoor couch in the sun that was free, so we camped out for a bit. There were two chairs across from the couch, and after we’d been there for a while, a couple asked if they could sit in the chairs. We said yes, of course, feel free.
They turned out to be a very chatty and slightly strange couple who we ended up sharing a bottle of wine with. He was originally from Naples and more than a little drunk, and she was Polish – they’d been living in Rome for the last four years. They were entertaining and very nice, but a bit intense. Marko in particular seemed to want to take us under his wing and show us what Italian hospitality is – he demanded that we cancel our dinner reservations and go back to their flat so he could cook us spaghetti vongole that evening. As the afternoon progressed it got stranger and stranger. The point at which we decided it was time to go was when I went to the washroom – when I came back I’d lost my seat on the couch to the girl who’d parked herself next to Jamie.
We extricated ourselves from the situation and walked back to the flat to get changed for dinner. Jamie wanted to take photos of Rome at night from the top of the hill in Trastevere, and had found a restaurant at the top that got quite good reviews.
The walk was shorter than we’d expected, and the view not quite as good as we’d hoped (at least for photos). We spent a bit of time looking out over the city trying to work out what things were – definitely a different way to see Rome than wandering around the maze of streets. It doesn’t look as big as it feels when you’re lost in it. We were very early for dinner so tried to find a café for a coffee or other beverage, but there isn’t much up at the top of the hill. The few places we did find were closed, so we took our chances and tried the restaurant an hour before our reservation time.
Fortunately, there were both open and had a table for us, so we got stuck into yet another tasting menu. This may have been a mistake as we were still a bit full from lunch, but we have trouble resisting a good menu. Dinner was excellent, although not quite as refined as the previous night. Standout dishes included a really scallop with artichoke and carbonara which was absolutely COVERED in shaved truffles. To be honest we were feeling a bit sick by the time we were finished desert, top tip is to only have one massive Italian meal per day…
We walked back to the viewpoint to see if it was more photogenic at night and discovered it turns into a prime location for Roman youngsters to make out in the dark under the trees. The view was good but still difficult to photograph, and it became increasingly awkward standing there with all the hormones clearly flying around (the guys selling roses seemed like they were onto a winner though).
We trudged/rolled back down the hill to our little piazza for a nightcap of a bottle of wine at Sloppy Sam’s American Bar – again, we’re not proud of this, but it was convenient and had a table on the piazza. We learned from the waitress (who was from just outside Birmingham) that the area was thronged with young people because there’s an American university just up the street – after two nights it explained so much about the area. We eventually went to bed, still very full and somewhat sad that it was our last night in the Eternal city.
Day Four – Storm Havoc
We had to actually set an alarm to get us up at 8:30. We’d grown accustomed to the 10:30 lie-ins so that hour just seemed rude, but we had to pack up and be ready to leave for 10:00 when Simonetta would be coming back to collect the keys. We left our bags in the flat and headed out into the light drizzle for our last morning in Rome – our car service was picking us up at 2pm to take us back to the airport.
We spent a very relaxed morning having coffee and wandering around Trastevere until it was noon – at that point lunch beckoned. There are two restaurants side by side on our little piazza, and we’d tried one our first day – it had been incredibly busy but full of tourists, whereas the other restaurant seemed a bit quieter but more locals. We went for the second this time and were treated to a fully chaotic and entertaining lunch service. It transpired that the owner had given his entire staff a rant in the morning, and they were all a bit annoyed with him by lunch. The food was good, very filling, and not overly expensive. Again it seemed mostly locals who’d booked in advance, most walk-ups were being turned away. We spent a good two hours lingering over our food before collecting our bags and catching a ride back to the airport.
This is the point at which all the careful travel planning went out the window. Storm Katie had rolled through the UK overnight and shut both Gatwick and Heathrow for the morning due to incredibly strong winds. The storm had died down by the afternoon but the flight scheduled were completely broken, so we were looking at an undefined delay with a warning from the check-in agent that the flight might be cancelled.
We paid for access to the VIP lounge near our gate and waited. And waited. And waited. Three hours after our scheduled departure time, we finally got airborne and had a relatively turbulent trip back home. We decided on the way home that we would have rather stayed in Rome and not had to come home and go back to work the following day – relaxing in Roman piazzas all day, eating great food, drinking far too much good wine…there are worse ways to live…we’ll have to wait for our next Roman holiday I guess…
Mar 30th, 2016 | 12:08 PM
#60
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 10,329
Likes: 0
Glad everyone enjoyed the report.
Here is the wine tasting place
http://www.winetastingrome.com
Can't believe it went by so quickly!
Here is the wine tasting place
http://www.winetastingrome.com
Can't believe it went by so quickly!
