October 29, 2006
In Rome!
Not that people are wondering whether or not I died in a plane crash, but...I didn't. Or else it'd be pretty hard to write this post. From...the grave...
The keyboard is a little different, but not impossible to use like a French one. There's a key that says "turbo" on it. Nothing happens when I press it. Hmmm. This "turbo" is misleading.
Oh, so how much fun have I been having? WELL! Wait in line for three hours to get into the Vatican Museum and then walk around for two hours among hoards of other tourists (because that's where the three hours of people in front of went) and...yeah. Oh, and while waiting in the line for three hours, imagine scribbling notes that you can barely hear since you're outside and your teacher doesn't have a megaphone as you slowly shuffle in the line and pissing other people off because you're shuffling even more slowly than the line would naturally be shuffling at. You kinda just wanna kill someone, you know? I'm under the impression that the line is only that bad on Sundays. Really bad. Sadly, it's very hard to enjoy something like the Sistine Chapel when it's overstuffed with people taking photos (despite that you're not "supposed" to; good luck enforcing that rule) and all you can think about is LEAVING THE MUSEUM FOREVER AND NEVER GOING BACK EVER NOT EVERRRRR.
Um...yessss...but I'm glad I went because I don't intend to ever reproduce that experience.
So! The highlight of each day (as in the two that I've been here) has been eating gelato. Yes. It's. Awesome. The moment I had of awe and wonder and excited high-pitched squeals upon first seeing boulangeries and patisseries when I first rolled into Paris was reproduced in Rome when we passed a handful of gelaterias while driving down one street. ONE STREET = AT LEAST FOUR GELATERIAS. This is magic, folks.
The two places I went (don't recall the names right now) to were better than most gelato I've eaten, which made me uber happy. I tried pistachio at the first place and although I'm sure there are better ones out there, it was...really good. I let some of my friends try it and they thought the same thing: it tasted like pistachio! It had little pistachio bits! Whoa! Yeah. Today I tried a flavor called "crema _______" (yup, totally don't recall the name) that had something like whipped cream as part of the ice cream (whose flavor I honestly couldn't identify, not that it matter much since it was tasty) and YES, BUILT IN WHIPPED CREAM, what a freakin' great idea.
My plan was to eat gelato twice a day after lunch and dinner, but I didn't get to eat any after dinner tonight. Bummer. I'll try to hit the biggies, but it depends. Like...whether I can find other people who want to pig out on gelato with me. There's actually another girl in my class who IS gelato crazy (it's because of her insistence that our whole class stopped for gelato today after lunch), so maybe we can hit a few places. Some people go bar hopping, so I don't think gelateria hopping is that bad. Right? No? I don't care. I have two full days left.
Oh, what else have I been doing? We walked a lot. And I've eaten three pizzas so far. The first one was meh and pricey, the second one was okay and less pricey, while the third was the best and the cheapest. Odd how that works out. Overall I wouldn't say any of them were really bad, but the first two restaurants were more touristy than the last one. Obviously if you're in Rome on vacation, avoid any place that looks too touristy. When you're with a school group, you don't have much say. If everyone's tired, they're going to go anywhere that's open. I hope I can eat something even better tomorrow and maybe on Tuesday night I can finish off with my best meal.
My overall description of the pizza is that...it's good. I like the average pizza here more than the average pizza in NYC at least. I think. The first pizza I had was just mozzerella and potato, the second was buffalo mozzerella and pachino tomatoes, and the third was with buffalo mozzerella, pachino tomatoes and speck. Each time the crust was very thin, fairly crisp and THANK THE LORD, not at all swimming in a pool of grease. If I thought about them hard enough, I could have nightmares about the cheesy-death pizza slices swimming in orange pools of oil I ate as a kid. You know, the ones that people would lay napkins on top of to soak up the fat, as though that would do anything aside from make the napkin transluscent.
I don't have any photos up since I'm at an Internet cafe right now, but I figured I'd let you know the basics: pizza and gelato are very good things. Gelato is happiness. And tastier than ice cream, in my humble opinion. Le sigh.
Also, I didn't realize how much French I knew until I found myself unable to say anything basic in Italian. Oops.
Posted by roboppy at 3:39 PM
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