Advertisement
Published: April 29th 2009
Dates of travel: April 10th-13th
Friday, April 10th My parents arrived to Milan on Friday morning and after giving them a quick tour of my residence and packing up my bags, we hit the road in our rental car and started driving south to Rome. I had arranged it with our familiy in Rome so that we would be able to stay at their house for the long weekend. We were all very anxious and excited to get there because it had been about 2 months since I had seen them and about 6 years since my parents and brother had seen them. We hit a ton of traffic on the road because apparently we were not the only ones who wanted to spend Easter weekend in Rome. We should have seen that one coming. I kept trying to convice my Dad to teach me how to drive stick-shift so that I could help him drive part of the way. We both agreed that the streets and highways of Italy were probably not the best place to learn. We arrived in Rome at about 8:30 or 9pm and were greeted with open arms and a kitchen table full of home-cooked
Italian food. We talked for a while and reminisced about our trip to Italy 6 years ago in broken Italian while they responded in broken English. Not wanting to calling it a night just yet, Matthew and I went out to a bar with Letizia, her boyfriend Alessandro and their friend Diego. After a few drinks Diego convinced us that we needed to eat again, and that we could either have a 'cornettone' (croissants with filling in the middle) or sandwiches at 'Saloon del Panino'. On my last trip to Rome I heard all about how good 'Saloon' was from Diego but hadn't gone yet....so this was an easy choice. It was pretty funny because the shop owner named almost all of his sandwiches after the different states in America, but there was no sandwich named after Connecticut. He gave us the opportunity to create one and put it on the board, but Matthew and I weren't feeling very creative so the CT Sandwich still does not exist. If anybody from back home would like to travel to Rome and fill this void, I am sure that all of Rome would be grateful.
Saturday, April 11th Matthew and I
La Bimba Divina
Hopefully Matthew and I will be able to go out on this badboy...or badgirl, when we go to Rome again in July.slept in so late that the next day that when I went downstairs to say hello to Romana, her first words to me were "Colazione o il pranzo?" - 'Do you want to eat breakfast or lunch?' She got a good laugh when I said "Voglio mangiare le due" - 'I want to eat both' , but I was very hungry and wasn't really joking with her. After breakfast and lunch (because she actually did end up making both), I walked next door to Letizia's house and played
Need For Speed on the Playstation 3 with Ricardo for a while. After a while we got tired of sitting inside on the couch and decided to head outside and enjoy the nice weather. The Landi's have their own small, personal soccer field and it entertained Matthew and I for a long time. I gave my soccer career up after F-Division when I was about 9 years old...but I think it might be time for a comeback. Being in Italy for almost 3 months now has made me appreciate 'football' more and made me want to start playing again. In the late afternoon/early evening, Giuliana, Romana and the kids took all of Romana, our chef for the weekend.
Romana is a great chef and and excellent host. I can't wait to see her again in July. us to go see their boat in the marina which is about 20-25 min. away from their house in Rome. It is a very nice sailboat called La Bimba Divina, but we did not get to go out because it was too late in the evening. The next time I come to Rome hopefully I will be able to go out on it with the Landi's. When we headed back to the house after sunset, Romana immediately started preparing another delicious meal for everybody - rigatoni, roast pork loin and whole artichokes. After the meal, Matthew and I got dressed because Letizia had made plans for all of us to go to the 'discoteca' that night. I have been to plenty of discos and clubs in Milan so I knew what to expect, but I was excited for my brother to get his first taste of Italian nightclubs. By the time we entered the club it was already 12:30AM so it was officially Matthew's birthday. Matthew enjoyed his first "legal" drinks (2 Long Island Iced Tea's) and we all danced for a couple of hours before heading back home in order to get some rest to be able to wake
P1000942
Waiting to go to Easter mass. up for Easter mass.
Sunday, April 12th Sunday was Matthew's 18th birthday as well as Easter Sunday. We all woke up fairly early in order to make it to Mass by 10:00am. At about 9am we had breakfast which consisted of hard-boiled eggs, pizza formaggio (bread with cheese baked into it), salami and white wine. After we finished eating Roberto started to take the wine from the table and asked anybody if they wanted anymore, and I was the only one who asked for another glass. Roberto gave me a big grin and then did an impersonation of me being drunk in church. I don't even remember him saying anything - it was all done by body language. He held his hands up like he was praying and started stumbling around and knocking into things. I gave him a 10 out of 10 for that, it was pretty funny. (What wasn't funny was that in church I actually did almost fall over. When I leaned back to let someone by in the row we were sitting in, the whole bench moved from under me because it wasn't secured to the floor. Whoops. My brother ripped on me for the
P1000944
Kicking the soccer ball around on Easter sunday, waiting to go to church. rest of the day and continued to make fun of me later in the trip.) Before we walked to church, which was just right down the road, Matthew and I kicked the soccer ball around with Letizia and Lorella for a little while. After mass we went back to the house and almost immediately sat down at the long, king-sized table and feasted. Romana had been cooking food all morning and some of it was still cooking while we were at church. After yet another large meal, all the cousins brought huge, hollow chocolate eggs to the table that were wrapped in very shiny, metallic foil. These eggs, which all have a surprise in the middle of them, are a tradition in Easter much like it is a tradition in the U.S. to have Easter baskets with lots of little pieces of candy and toys. I was only able to eat about 1/5 of my Ferrero Rocher egg...and that was one of the smaller eggs. The family also brought out a nice cake for Matthew that said "Happy 18th Birthday" and they gave him a very nice gold bracelet that they all chipped in to buy. After lunch, Matthew and
Letizia, Valerio and Matthew
What a stylish looking group we've got here. I decided to play some soccer with Ricardo and Lorella on the Landi's field. After an hour or so I left with Roberto, Fiorenzo, his 3 kids and my parents to drive into Rome and go for a walk. For the most part, we walked up and down the streets around the Spanish Steps. There were so many tourists at that time that it was not even possible to physically see the stairs - only the walls and the monument in the background were visible. When I saw the steps on my trip to Rome in February there were maybe 10 people on them. Later that night, 4 or 5 of Letizia's friends came over and we played 'Sing Star' on Playstation 3. Basically, you just sing along to certain songs and you get judged based on how well you follow the words and change your voice to match the song. It's pretty embaressing at first, but once you get warmed up it is a ton of fun to play. All of the songs were in English, so when the words were too fast and Alessandro and Diego could not understand them, they hummed along to the music and made
Happy 18th Birthday!
Matthew and his birthday cake. Right after this picture was taken, Valerio leaned in and licked the cake. random, funny noises into the microphone. Surprisingly, the humming actually worked very well but the random noises didn't have the same effect. I think we played from about 10pm until 2 in the morning. We even got my mom and Romana (Letizia's grandmother) to 'flex the golden pipes' and play Sing Star with us.
Monday, April 13th This is just getting redundant. Would you believe me if I told you that I ate a meal on Monday that topped all of the others? Well you better....because I DID.
Monday was Christian's birthday and Fiorenzo took the whole family to their favorite restaurant in Rome. I have been there about 4 times now and not only is the food great there, but the environment cannot be beat because it is a restaurant that only locals know about (it is not right in the center of Rome so no tourists go there). Out of the 4 or 5...or 6 courses that were served, I think the strangest one was #2. It was a big plate of beef liver/heart/assorted other body parts in a dark sauce. It didn't taste very good and wasn't very pleasing to look at either. I think I
an Italian tradition
huge chocolate easter eggs (complete with a prize). ate the most of it, but it was just to get a laugh out of Letizia, Lorella, Consuelo and Corinne. I wanted to show them that I still liked to eat gross foods. *Six years ago when we stayed at their beach villa in San Nichola, we had lobster for dinner one night and I ate the eyeballs. On my first trip to Italy I spoke ZERO Italian and they spoke very basic English, so we used body language to communicate and have fun.*
After we were finished with the birthday lunch, none of us really wanted to leave because we had such a fun time with our family and wanted to prolong the inevitable second leg of the Easter weekend traffic back to Milan. Still, we packed our bags, said our 'ciaos', and 6 hours later....home sweet MILAN!
This trip to Rome was so nice because other than walking around the Spanish Steps, we did not hit any of the crowed, over-priced tourist destinations. We came to Rome to relax and visit our family and that is what we did for 4 days. Oh, and I forgot to add 'eat lots of food and drink a lot
of wine' to that.
P.S. The title of this entry is a quote translated into English from Italian. Roberto was speaking to my Dad about the differences between the Roman and American celebration of Easter and the traditions regarding the Easter Bunny.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 8; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0424s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Joe Paravati
non-member comment
Looking for the Italian Easter Bunny?
Easter in Italy is very different than in the USA. In the U.S. ,Easter is very commercialized, ie. " the Easter Bunny". At the dinner table talking to Roberto about Easter in the USA, I mentioned the Easter bunny to him. He had know idea what I was talking about because there isn't a floppy eared bunny delivering gifts. It was very difficulty to convey the idea of our Easter Bunny to him, so the next best thing in translation was rabbit. When I mentioned rabbit , Roberto's eyes lit up and I swear he started to salivate, and said in Italian " oh you eat the rabbit on Easter"! Half startled and the other half laughing I exclaimed, "no, no, we don't eat the Easter Bunny at Easter"! You had to be there, talk about "Lost In Translation"! P.S. Italians do love their rabbit, roasted, fried, baked, and is eatened much more frequent than in the USA.