Rome and the Borghese

Friday seemed a glorious day-and-a-half long.   Our goal was to "play through" and then be on Italy time.  I (Stacie) confess, that I napped however, it was only about 30 minutes, and the others stayed strong.  We all slept well Friday night - here is why.

Upon arriving in Rome, we were introduced to our apartment where we would be spending our first three nights. Our host John lives in the building with his parents on the third and  fourth floors.  He was so welcoming and gave us a tour of our apartment.  First impression:  big.  stark.  plain. but, since then, I have grown to love it!  It is a 1/4 discrete blocks from the Pantheon, which is not only an amazing cathedral, but a great place to get taxis!  We are on the second story which is accessible by a beautiful marble staircase or a charming elevator (so charming, that Jessica and I refuse to use it.)  The apartment has three bedrooms and two bathrooms.  It is alongside a bustling side street that had us nervous at first, but ultimately quiets down nicely by ten at night.  I love that there are no screens on the windows - so just as you would imagine - if we need to figure out the weather - we open the tall thin windows and lean out to see what is going on.   Hair dryers are provided in the apartment, however, flat irons and curling irons are not, which is proving to be a travesty for some of us (okay, one of us .. can you guess who?)  There is a nice office, and a TV with multiple channels including one that carries "Honey Boo Boo" translated in Italian.  No wonder we are taking  pains to look "Italian."

Did I mention our shoes?  We have worked for weeks to get the proper footwear, and I can confirm that it was not in vain.  No one here wears "Nikes" or "adidas", but Converse and "walking shoes" are all the rage.  I might be pushing it, but we look like locals.  Howard's Italian helps immensely!  After a whopping 3 months of studying, he easily gets us seated at restaurants, asks for directions (really) and jokes with the waiters (although, they do not always get it the first time.. )  He even asked the taxi driver about daylight savings time which is Sunday. Yes - we lose an hour again.

Our first meal in Rome was at an amazing trattoria, which was within walking distance from our hotel.  As expected, coke: 4 Euros, awesome bottle of wine, 10 Euros.  It was a bottle of Montelpuciano.  We started with some mozzerel... (guess who is taking over here)... So, the first restaurant was called Maccheroni.  We started with some great buffala mozzarella and tomato, the kids had pasta with cherry tomatoes, and the adults had a pasta carbonara and a very good tortellini with mushrooms.

After lunch, we stopped for Gelato and then we went to the Borghese Gallery, and say some incredible sculpture like Apollo and Daphne and Raphael's Deposition.  We were pretty tired, but the audioguide kept us entertained for most of the first floor.

After the Borghese, we went back to the apartment to rest a little before dinner.  dinner was at Constanza,

in the underground portion of an ancient amphitheater:

The staff couldn't have been nicer and made sure our first dinner in Rome was memorable.  We had the house antipasto (fried, stuffed zucchini flowers, pizza bianco with chicken liver and marscapone, etc; buffala mozzarella (you might sense a trend here), Lobster pasta for two (Jessica and Stacie), and prosciutto and melon (Brian's new favorite).  Main dishes were meat, meat, and more meat, with Filet in Barolo, Rib Eye Steak, and Veal Scaloppine

before dessert, the highlight of which was an apple cake/pie drizzled with chocolate:

A good time was had by all:

Day 2 to come tomorrow.  It includes more Mozzarella, wine, and pasta, and gelato.