ciao
ciao! mi amo roma.
Rome is amazing and its blowing me away at every turn. im staying in the cutest apartment ever and i can throw open my shutters and below me is this cobbled road with a trattoria across the street called Pizza e Champagne, my two favorite things. italians love staring out of their windows to the road below, and they greeted me from their windows with many ciaos.
my plane ride was long. i cried after leaving Skip and am constantly turning every corner here muttering "ohmygod i wish Skip could see this ohmygod". it will be a month of that.
after some hectic money changing at the airport on Saturday, i took the Ostiense train to Trastevere and walked to my apartment. i was greeted by Stefania, a beautiful (everyone is beautiful here) young woman who was so happy i was young too. I put my bags down. she can barely speak english and i know very little italian, but she immediately invited me up for espresso. that is how everyone has been since then. so i had some coffee and we talked about how she grew up in Sicily, with 6 siblings, and moved to Rome to be an actress but Italy dowsnt make many movies. She has a casting call tomorrow for an english movie so we ran through her script and i helped her with her english. words like "nothing" and "anything" are hard. she then invited me to her birthday party next Tuesday, the 12th. sigh.
Then Gabriala, Brice and Gianluca swung by my apartment and we walked to Campo di Fiori and had some brachetti, a sparkling red wine that was shockingly addictive. met many people. drove around rome!!! which is INSANE. they drive like race car drivers, cueing up at the line when the light is red. there are no lines in the road so three lanes turn to four turn to two turn back to three. i have never seen anything like it. its hysterical.
Drove around the colliseum and went to a pub overlooking it. met more people. drank more, went back to Trastevere, had late night pizza (SO GOOD) and passed out.
Ok, so then on Sunday, Gabs and Brice woke me up at noon, and we had a lingering lunch of a huge salad and pizza and pasta, then met up with their friend Allesandro, a genuinely sweet man. he drove us to Marino,a gorgeous tiny hillside medieval town, for the Sagra dell'Uva, a festival to celebrate the harvest of grapes and the making of wine. It got a bit surreal. we walked up the cobbled hillside street, bought a bottle of wine for only 2 euros and walked ito the town center piazza. it was crammed full of Italians singing songs of wine. I looked at the center piazza fountain and grapes draped the stone cherubs. at the stroke of 5 pm, music blared and WINE came out of the fountain. people crammed to the fountain drinking the white wine. WINE! OUT OF A FOUNTAIN! i wish Skip couldve seen this. i wish i could upload my pics. but i did find someone elses pics, which are WAYYYYY better then mine....
http://www.giovannirinaldi.it/page/tradition/marinofesta/
we ate grapes and watched floats and watched children trying to sip their parents wine and listened to crazy italian folk music about wine. it was gorgeous. GORGEOUS.
then we went and had an amazing dinner at almost 10 pm off of Piazza Navona back in Rome. every course had some cheese involved. then we went to go meet Gab's friend, Peter, an italian mod who i met 6 years ago at a new years party in SF. he invited me to some soul night this thursday and we discussed football (he had just come from a A.S. Roma game).
ive eaten a ton of amazing gelato already. luckily my apartment is up four flights of stairs.
today we do nothing and Brice and Gabs fly back to their home in Paris tonight. i am thankful for their amazing introduction of Rome to me.
ok, a presto! amo mi fidanzato. i miss you.
Rome is amazing and its blowing me away at every turn. im staying in the cutest apartment ever and i can throw open my shutters and below me is this cobbled road with a trattoria across the street called Pizza e Champagne, my two favorite things. italians love staring out of their windows to the road below, and they greeted me from their windows with many ciaos.
my plane ride was long. i cried after leaving Skip and am constantly turning every corner here muttering "ohmygod i wish Skip could see this ohmygod". it will be a month of that.
after some hectic money changing at the airport on Saturday, i took the Ostiense train to Trastevere and walked to my apartment. i was greeted by Stefania, a beautiful (everyone is beautiful here) young woman who was so happy i was young too. I put my bags down. she can barely speak english and i know very little italian, but she immediately invited me up for espresso. that is how everyone has been since then. so i had some coffee and we talked about how she grew up in Sicily, with 6 siblings, and moved to Rome to be an actress but Italy dowsnt make many movies. She has a casting call tomorrow for an english movie so we ran through her script and i helped her with her english. words like "nothing" and "anything" are hard. she then invited me to her birthday party next Tuesday, the 12th. sigh.
Then Gabriala, Brice and Gianluca swung by my apartment and we walked to Campo di Fiori and had some brachetti, a sparkling red wine that was shockingly addictive. met many people. drove around rome!!! which is INSANE. they drive like race car drivers, cueing up at the line when the light is red. there are no lines in the road so three lanes turn to four turn to two turn back to three. i have never seen anything like it. its hysterical.
Drove around the colliseum and went to a pub overlooking it. met more people. drank more, went back to Trastevere, had late night pizza (SO GOOD) and passed out.
Ok, so then on Sunday, Gabs and Brice woke me up at noon, and we had a lingering lunch of a huge salad and pizza and pasta, then met up with their friend Allesandro, a genuinely sweet man. he drove us to Marino,a gorgeous tiny hillside medieval town, for the Sagra dell'Uva, a festival to celebrate the harvest of grapes and the making of wine. It got a bit surreal. we walked up the cobbled hillside street, bought a bottle of wine for only 2 euros and walked ito the town center piazza. it was crammed full of Italians singing songs of wine. I looked at the center piazza fountain and grapes draped the stone cherubs. at the stroke of 5 pm, music blared and WINE came out of the fountain. people crammed to the fountain drinking the white wine. WINE! OUT OF A FOUNTAIN! i wish Skip couldve seen this. i wish i could upload my pics. but i did find someone elses pics, which are WAYYYYY better then mine....
http://www.giovannirinaldi.it/page/tradition/marinofesta/
we ate grapes and watched floats and watched children trying to sip their parents wine and listened to crazy italian folk music about wine. it was gorgeous. GORGEOUS.
then we went and had an amazing dinner at almost 10 pm off of Piazza Navona back in Rome. every course had some cheese involved. then we went to go meet Gab's friend, Peter, an italian mod who i met 6 years ago at a new years party in SF. he invited me to some soul night this thursday and we discussed football (he had just come from a A.S. Roma game).
ive eaten a ton of amazing gelato already. luckily my apartment is up four flights of stairs.
today we do nothing and Brice and Gabs fly back to their home in Paris tonight. i am thankful for their amazing introduction of Rome to me.
ok, a presto! amo mi fidanzato. i miss you.