Ciao Bella

ROME. I LOVE ROME. I went for 4 days on my post high school graduation eurotrip with my 8 best friends and I instantly fell in love with the city then and knew I needed to return. We flew from Prague on Tuesday morning and settled into our apartment near the Termini station before we headed out to Piazza Navona (one of my favorite piazzas) for dinner. We happily wined and dined ourselves into food comas and neglected our original plan of going out after and instead walked around towards Campo Di'Fiori and stumbled upon a hookah bar. You can take the girl out of the mediterranean, but you can't take the mediterranean out of the girl (a reference to my Israeli roots). After filling our hookah needs, we got our first gelato of the season and headed on home.

whining and wining

first gelato bliss

i mean..

The next morning we made breakfast in our apartment - Dan cooked us bullets or toad in a pond or what are they called it's an egg cracked into a piece of bread and then fried in a pan. It was delicious. And not Italian at all. We took the tram from our apartment to the Termini station and then the metro from there to the Colosseum. We were able to take a few pictures before it started to downpour so we decided to seek out gelato to kill the time. And that we did.

Elyssa, Carly, Dan and me at the Colosseum!

We were getting overwhelmed by the amount of tourists at the Colosseum so we hopped on the metro and went to another equally touristy location: the Spanish Steps. It was on and off raining so we quickly walked up one side and then quickly walked down the other side to get the full experience.

spick and spanish

We then headed over to the Trevi Fountain and quickly threw our coins into the fountain before we actually got downpoured on. Like pouring rain downpour.

We ran out of the rain as fast as our little legs could carry us and we dried off and ate pasta and wine and then set out in the newfound sun for an afternoon of more gelato and shopping. We spent a long time in a leather goods store getting presents for people and just touching all the soft bags. Then I had gelato number two of the day from San Crispino - happiness expressed below.

great pistachio and chocolate combo

We walked with our gelato and picked up some more touristy souvenirs to bring back home with us and wound up at a shoe store near Via Del Corso and each of us got a pair of shoes that we wore out that night. We headed to the Pantheon and sat on the fountain just taking in the scene. I somehow managed to capture this very scenic picture of a bride and groom on my iphone and here it is in color and black and white I couldn't decide which one I liked better:

i should charge for these pics

not a bad view

We relaxed on the steps and then walked back to the apartment (mostly because we didn't know where to pick up the tram going away from the Termini station) and had our own bruschetta and mozzarella and wine of course. We were a little slow in getting ourselves ready so by the time we headed out to dinner it was already 10 pm. But the food at Dar Poeta in Trastevere was phenomenal. We shared pizzas and got pitchers of the house red wine and made sure to save room for the nutella ricotta calzone (name drop: Claudia) for dessert. I think I had died and gone to heaven. It was so delicious and there was no chance we were going out drinking after eating all that food. So we decided to walk off a little bit of dinner and I brought everyone to the apartment I had stayed in on my high school eurotrip and got really nostalgic. And I obviously got another gelato before we headed home.

Carly, Allie, Elyssa, and me with my gelato

the view from where we were sitting in the above picture

The next day we cooked breakfast again and set out to the Roman Forum, where we mistakenly waited on line for nearly an hour - didn't realize we were on the line for people waiting to buy tickets and we had already paid when we bought the tickets the day before for the Colosseum. Anyway we worked on our tans so it was fine and we watched a boy get pooped on by a pigeon - really entertaining. We explored the forum and then headed to the Vittorio Emanuelle monument (another favorite landmark of mine) before continuing up to Piazza Navona for lunch at Cul De Sac.

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood 

this is the memorial for any and all dead soldiers

more moscato please

caprese and charcuterie

Since we were full from lunch we walked around Piazza Navona before heading to Frigidarium for gelato, a place where they are smart enough to dip your gelato in hard chocolate shell (white or dark). I realized I had been to this gelato place when I came after high school and it made me really happy for some reason. I mean I could live in Piazza Navona and be eternally happy.

I own Navona

me and Carly

Dan the man

We then headed up towards the Villa Borghese and the gardens and while Carly, Elyssa, and Dan got cappuccino I wandered the streets up towards the Spanish Steps again, bought a couple scarves for myself and actually stumbled upon a celebrity sighting. I saw a crowd of Italians with their cameras ready and pointing at a pharmacy so I stopped and thought even if I don't know who it is I want to see who everyone is waiting for. So I hear someone say "Alan BALDWIN??" and I thought "ALEC BALDWIN!?!" So I stayed and snapped some up close pics of the celeb. I am a huge fan of 30 Rock and love his character on the show so I was actually really excited that I happened to run into him (well ya know, not really run into him. ok)

the Italians swooned when he kissed his fiance

Here are some more pics from my hour of wandering:

the pup that perches

a lil limoncello 

spanish steps in their prime

sup pinocchio

lady liberty does piazza del popolo

We all met up in Piazza Del Popolo and headed back to the apartment to prepare for our final dinner at Ditirambo. Ok amazing food. I apologize that this post in particular has turned into a food blog but that's what the trip mainly focused on. And I don't regret any of it. We finished up our four days of touring with complementary limoncello at dinner, a perfectly sweet way to end my spring break. I had a wonderful two weeks with my friends traveling around and exploring different countries and cultures that I only dreamed of visiting. Before I left for Copenhagen I jotted down a tentative spring break plan and it was so enjoyable seeing this idea come to its fruition. [side note Nicki thinks I should be an english major because I have a good vocabulary so that word was just for you weirdo]. I had promised a friend I would have 8 gelatos a day.. well I only had 5 over the course of 3 days but I think I did enough damage for one short trip. I decided on this trip that I need to not only explore the entirety of Italy but I also really want to live in Rome at some point. And that is all for spring break. I kind of stopped re-reading these posts and I also didn't upload a lot of pictures that I had taken and edited from my iphone on other ones but we'll see if I feel ambitious enough to go back in and edit what's already been posted.
Ok rambling ends now. Next post is about my PARENTS' visit to Copenhagen!

ciao roma