GT-4 Maybe Roma Is A Place

Planning Breakfast At 1722 Of A Sunday

 

It was my turn to sleep (and sleep, and sleep) today, a desperately needed rest after the sleep deprived fever dream of a ferry trip and roaming the moonlit streets of Civitavecchia following the scent of taxi driver. All the animals come out at night. After a lie-in themselves, the girls headed out to see the Coliseum, a 5min walk away from the hotel. 

S was like a kid in the sweet shop of antiquities in Rome. Her favourite series of books (ever?) features a litany of Roman references. Rome is like an archaeological dig with a city somehow operating within it.

Banksy's Howling At The Satellite Dish

I arose at dusk like a werewolf, mindless with cravings for the full moon of a Roman Pizza. 

Primary Behavioural Characteristics of Werewolves: Loss of Control | Animalistic Instincts. Feral, driven by instinct | Hunting, dominance, and survival | Unable to distinguish friend from foe | Heightened aggression | Violent outbursts, territorial defence | Supernatural senses and reflexes. Transformation Triggers:  Traditionally the full moon triggers transformation. Also emotional stress, rage. Behaviour often changes leading up to or during the full moon (restlessness, mood swings, increased strength) | Dual Nature / Psychological Conflict  - the internal struggle between the human and the beast. Often portrayed with themes of guilt, fear of harming others, or repression of violent tendencies | Solitary vs. Social behaviour. Some werewolves are lone predators, hiding their curse. 

First daytime impressions of Roma in the Summertime? A city about to erupt, bubbling like a Vesuvian ragu in an ancient pot made of discarded plumbing and old Vespa parts, stirred by the gods with the splintered spokes of old chariot wheels, the pungent whiff of antiquity rising from its bowels. And lots of tourists. 

Romans live their lives on the outside a lot, the sidewalks busier than the clogged city arteries themselves, with buying and selling and moving and preening and living. 

I have to be honest, I hadn’t done my historical homework on Roma (or any of the cities really), slammed as I was in the lead up tour managing this Grand Tour thing. How was the Tour? Graaaaand. So I found myself strolling past very massive, very impressive white marble landmarks with very little context.

“Awww, thatsa nice!”

I’d done my research on Roman Pizza though. I’ll chat to you again on the mesmerising folly of attempting to reserve a table in an Italian restaurant from anywhere other than the reception of the restaurant itself. My TastyBase (database of tasty places) told me the top rated pizza places in Rome. 

 

Turns out 2 were closed for the Summer holidays while we were there, one had no reservation functionality on their website (a common curse) and wouldn’t answer their phone (even more common) and one had no website or phone listed anywhere. So we ended up suffering the indignity of spending our evening eating the 5th (maybe even the 6th) best pizza in Rome…. eyeroll! Pizza re’ it was called, located in the Trastevere neighbourhood….. and it was still jaw droppingly, eye poppingly excellent. 

Camembert Wolf

Think of the first bite of the freshest batch loaf heel over and over and over and over. A duvet day for the mouthfeel. And that’s just the crust. The sauce, the cheese, the oil, the herbs and flavourings? All excellent and indulgently complementary of the artistry of the dough. And it is art. And the wine flowed in celebration. 

Even in the earliest conversations around “Must Dos” when starting to plan the bones of the trip, pizza in Roma featured heavily, particularly from S. So it was fulfilling in many ways to tick that one off so tastily and so comprehensively. 

S Agrees While Having A Pizza Aneurysm

Honestly, Pizza could have its own dedicated, picture filled post. I think we had pizza 4 nights on this trip and all of them were consistently outstanding in different ways. Sated by pizza, the werewolf had a reaction to the half-life of nightshades and/or the fermentation in the crust and went rogue. 

There’s a recurring theme on these trips where we eat, drink, sleep and travel of the best, and then in some of the most photogenic locations on the planet we experience photo refusal. It has long boggled the lupine brain. If you ever have to plead beg and cajole to take a photo in a beautiful place there’s a bend in the universe of things. Supporting the creativity of others, even when its uncomfortable to do so is a generous act. 

In an ungenerous act, I skipped the Trevi fountain and groomed my hindquarters demented and alone, watching the sunset on the steps of Santa Maria in Aracoeli - constructed in 1348 to thank the Virgin Mary for ending the Black Death. Back to the hotel. Slept poorly and fever dreamt a TM retirement plan. 

"Even when you don't know / Even when you don't / You feel / You feel"

So cute: A typical local Roman family heading out for apertivos

Mon 4th
We had tickets for The Vatican museum and Sistine Chapel for 1130 so we said we’d use the morning to grab breakfast and wander Peter’s Square. When the Tastybase fails, ChatGPT can sometimes be useful, in a pinch like. It came up trumps this morning with a recommendation to visit Roscioli’s café and bakery (the place with the great font) located somewhere between the Coliseum and Peter’s Square. 

Subtle Product Placement - note the font

I get special pleasure from visiting a place, particularly a pastry place, where there’s wares on display which you’ve never seen or experienced before, likely never even heard of, but that you know will be ridiculously amazing and worth the embarrassment of pointing and drooling to indicate your selection to the waiter. “GARCON! JAMBON POR FAVOR!” And inevitably….. “MUY MUY JAMBON POR FAVOR. RAPIDO!” 

The counter at Roscioli's

"I wan' that'wun..."

Apparently this place is a bit of an institution in Rome it “offers a superb espresso bar experience with an excellent pastry and bakery section including maritozzi and suppli from the famed Roscioli brand” Quality coffee, quality treats, shit you can eat but not pronounce, no messing. So good we used the point-and-drool technique to acquire several take-away items from the Roscioli bakery next door for our lunch. 

 

"In Italy, a salumeria is a shop that specializes in salumi - cured meats and cold cuts (from salare, “to salt”). What you’ll find in a salumeria: Salumi: prosciutto, salami, mortadella, speck, pancetta, coppa, bresaola, etc. Often formaggi (cheeses) as well, since they’re natural companions to cured meats. Many salumerie also sell bread, wine, preserves, and other high-quality local products. In some regions, they double as a deli, preparing sandwiches (panini) with the meats and cheeses they sell. Cultural role: A salumeria is part of the everyday Italian food landscape, the place locals go not only to buy ingredients but also to enjoy the ritual of choosing meats and cheeses for family meals, gatherings, or an aperitivo spread. It’s a cousin to the alimentari (general grocery shop), but more specialized in cured products" We'll visit another beautiful salumeria for picnic provisions in Florence.

Come On Pilgrims!

"The Tennessee Stud was long and lean....."

The big JC followed me back from Nashville. 

I’m not going to bash on Massively Multiplayer Organised Religions, please god. It is what it is and has been forever. I guess even if politics is not your thing you can still enjoy the sights and the civic architecture on a visit to Washington DC. The Vatican is most certainly the beating heart of Christianity and flaunts its centuries of status and lucrative returns on darkly astute investments on its sleeve. I definitely wasn’t expecting the processions of group tours singing hymns, bands of colour co-ordinated t-shirted pilgrims from all over the world singing, swaying, clogging up footpaths. Queues like we hadn’t experienced elsewhere, you know those queues you might see in Disneyland or a popular chipper in Cork at twilight, quewues that double, triple back on each other multiple times? Even the entrances for those with pre-booked tickets had lengthy queues. The corridors of the museums themselves were also rammed, with multiple guided tours at any one time in many languages in flight in any given room. That's less culture for me and more horticulture, livestock being processed through a zoo. 

I get it’s a bit rich - we, tourists in our bones ourselves, choosing to travel to one of the most visited attractions on the planet in the middle of August, sniveling about crowds. There were crowds most places, but these were remarkable, unceasing crowds, everywhere all at once. We made a couple of attempts to enter the museum 30mins, then 15mins early only for the computer to belch a guttural Nuh-Uh. You could only enter 15mins before the time allotted on your ticket. We skulked off to find cheap shade in some kind of food market away from the crowds and inhaled cheap coffee and contraband Rosciolis. We figured out that Kanye West is lying low after some recent controversies by tending a vegetable stall at the back of the Vatican. 

Just missed him...

Girls hadn’t brought ID to prove they were student aged and entitled to the purchased discount price tickets. We also discovered that mini skirts and short shorts would be refused entry to Sistine Chapel. Hassled by several vendors ogling the girls legs in short skirts, M eventually relented and bought 2 sarongs from an ice cream van of all places. 2 tights don’t make a sarong. Que sarong sarong. 

"Slowly, Slowly - Hmmm?"

I hadn’t slept much the previous evening, and so weary was I as a result, after a 2 and a half hour guided tour by Simone which added very little to my understanding of anything really that I missed Michelangelo’s famous Creation Of Adam bit on the Sistine Chapel. I was “Done Son”, by the time I got there. Edited excerpts from our tour guide: “Famious! hmm? Chimmery! Heh? Nice-a naked people. Hmm? Probablya nightmare. Hah? Don’t be scary! Slowly slowly we will going to the special starcase? Yes” We were like tourist putty in his stained glass windoor. 

This hat is watermarked on ALL of my Sistine museum memories

Another 15mins being led through corridors lined with a bunch of very random modern paintings by artists like Dali. Felt like a kind of flex from a corporation with limitless pocket-depth ala Bank Of Ireland showing uncurated selections of their art collection in the lobby of corporate HQ. And what is the Vatican if not a corporate HQ inanyways? 

 

 

We exited through the giftshop and sat and ate our uncurated variety of delicious Roscioli Unpronounceables.

Geological Waves | My Favourite Photo Of The Trip

 

Rosciological Waves

We circled back via the green door of the Percy Jackson place where S took lots of photos.  Here's the bacsktory S provided me: "In 'The Mark of Athena' - Book3 of Rick Riordan’s Heroes Of Olympus series - the characters visit Rome as part of their quest. One of the main characters, Annabeth follows The Mark Of Athena, a vision leading her to recover a sacred statue of Athena (the Athena Parthenos) in Rome to help unite Roman and Greek demigods. Many key scenes of the book take place in famous sites in Rome such as the underground catacombs, the Pantheon, the River Tiber and the Coliseum. Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus at a hidden shrine to Athena underground in Rome, close to the Museo del Risorgimento which had a chasm beneath its floor leading directly to the Underworld. The shrine was a lair of the monster Arachne. The green door pictured here is the door they used to get into the shrine”

Back to the hotel for an hour, the girls went shopping, I went taking photos and we convened at a delicious Japanese sushi place 30mins away for dinner. It was called Tora and in a running Dishes of Fishes theme, my fish dish was one of the best I’ve ever tasted. 

 

I asked the server how fresh was the fish, pointing at the item on the menu “Black Cod Saikyou” (aka Gindara Saikyo Yaki). She went and checked with the chef and said it had been marinating for 3 days to “deeply infuse the flavour”. Not the answer I was hoping to hear but sure, hell yeah says I -  Histamine Toxicity be damned. 

It was utterly divine, the fish flaking off in delectable sections, almost melting on the fork before it even makes it in to your mouth. Turns out that calling it cod is a cod. It’s a rich buttery fish which is not actually a cod but a deep sea white fish called a sablefish. 

By all accounts the girls’ sushi and katsu were equally delicious, rounded off by some mochi mochi. Not sure Italy ever colonised Japan, but if they did they’d have awarded that fish dish the Oppressor’s Tastiest Morsel award. I was privileged to have been poisoned by it.

A beautiful summer evening stroll back to the hotel. Polo Pantaloni. Gas that my cultural highlights on a day I finally visit the Sistine Chapel are an espresso bar with mind bending pastries and a Japanese fish dish. Remember pastry fish? And pastry snakes? Ah.