Pizza in Roma

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After spending what felt like all day traveling, and almost injuring our taxi driver with my heavy suitcase (I told him it was shoes - it's really books, but probably in Rome, a suitcase full of shoes is more acceptable), we arrived in Rome, or Roma as the locals say. I already want to say things like "Roma" and "arrivederci" and "grazi" while rolling my r's and adding extra emphasis.

As we drove in, I was feeling a little blah about the whole thing. I mean, I was Excited with a capital E to get to Rome finally, but as we were driving, it wasn't striking me as particularly cool. But that feeling left as soon as we saw the Colosseum - all I could say was "wow." It was incredible to be driving along, and all of a sudden, there it was. I was brought right back to the fourth grade, when I had to do a project about the Colosseum and I built a model of it - all the places I had to do projects on in elementary school are on my list of places to go, but Rome is the first one I've made it to. Seeing the Colosseum really got me excited for tomorrow's trip around the city in preparation for next year's European meeting here.

We arrived at the hotel, the Intercontinental de la ville Roma. The building and its furnishings appear to be a bit tired, but it does have that European charm (aka narrow rooms and strange toilets), so I'm feeling at home already. My room struck me as strange at first, because I have quite a long narrow hallway from the door to the room with nothing on the walls. But the room itself is nice - no ironing board, so that's a negative, but the internet connection is good, so that's all I need!

After dropping off my bags and freshening up, we headed out to find a place to have dinner. I had heard that there is good pizza in Rome - finally, something I can eat, and be an expert on! The hotel had given us a recommendation, so we headed down the Spanish steps and along to the Via Della Vite, to Le Grotte. Inside, it was like a grotto and to me, even though it was probably a touristy place, it felt like a little hole in the wall Italian restaurant - yay! The walls were painted with fake frescos and the chandeliers had metal grapes and grape leaves on them. I ordered a salad and a margarita pizza. The salad arrived, and aside from the tomatoes, was actually close to a perfect salad for me - it had lettuce (not iceberg, but okay), celery and carrots and our waiter brought over oil and vinegar for my dressing. Delicious. However, my pizza was not what I had ordered - it arrived as a cheese pizza (no problem), with a piece of ham, half a hard boiled egg, part of an artichoke, and mushrooms on it. Very strange. But I was afraid to argue with our waiter, so I just picked off what I didn't want and ate it. It was good, but the cheese was a little bit salty, so I'm still on the quest for a good piece of pizza. We'll see what tomorrow brings! As for now, it's time for bed because I think the jet lag has finally caught up with me...

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Comments

[Mandy]

Pizza
Have some pizza for me too!!!