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Published: October 7th 2013
Another quiet day on the home front...Lizzie at school, Fred back to bed, I did laundry, light house cleaning and groomed Mr. Miles. The 3 of us went into the city for dinner, got off the metro at Spagna. The fountain in the piazza is beautiful at night but I forgot to take a photo...sorry. We found the store that sells pods for Debbie's espresso machine and bought a bunch, including the two highest strength ones. Should be really good with the warm frothy milk for breakfast.
We wandered the area, bypassing the pricier places and found a Viennese restaurant...Blanko...on Via della Croce... that served spatzle, sauerkraut, and red cabbage with traditional German beef and pork dishes. We decided to do in Rome what the Romans do so Lizzie and I had ravioli and Freddie a calzone. As requested by Fred's sister Donna, we did the touristy thing and photographed our dinner....do you see a face in Fred's calzone??? Every time he orders a calzone he asks for some sauce to go with it and always gets told "no we don't have that" and then they offer him ketchup. We know they have Bolognese and marinara because they have lasagna
and pasta served with them....go figure. I had ravioli stuffed with porcini in a cheese sauce topped with speck...speck is like our bacon. Lizzie had ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese, Fred's calzone had tons of mozzarella and not so much sausage. Our ravioli was excellent and reasonably priced. The restaurant soaked us 4.50€ for a glass of Coke...must have been the ice that made it so expensive, plus a service charge of 2.50€ per person. There's no tipping in Italy and we've never paid a service charge at lunch, so maybe it's the norm for dinner???? The other day at lunch we met some folks from Australia who complained about the cost of things in Rome...I found that interesting...I thought Australia was expensive!!
After dinner we had small cups of gelato and headed for home. It had started to sprinkle so our timing was perfect. We even caught the local bus that brought us half way to the villa....YAY!!!
We followed the Sox/Rays first playoff game on our smart phones using the ESPN app, Armed Forces TV is one channel due to the government shut down and Sky TV didn't carry the game so we had
Freddie's calzone
I see a crab face, do you?no other option. We called Craig and Deb....they're having a great time on their trip. We assured them nothing has melted, blown up or leaked...yet...and we all doing just fine.
SATURDAY
The Sox beat the Rays last night big time...12-2. Lackey is pitching tonight against Price....should be interesting!!! Heavy rain started this morning and the electricity went off with the first close lightening strike...so I woke Freddie up out of a sound sleep to go into the basement to reset the main breaker, while Lizzie and I reset the house alarm. We held our positions as the storm rolled through, the power blipped off 2 more times. Now I know why there's a couch next to the alarm panel....you could be there a while!!!! The villa is on the face of a hill, with valleys on the back and side, Rome is to the southeast so we have a good view of the surrounding areas....great place to watch the storms. The windows have roll-up heavy duty plastic shutters that protect the windows from storms and intruders. They also make the rooms very dark which is great for sleeping. The only glitch is that you can roll them up
list of evil brown liquors at Blanko
to give you an idea of the price, a € is worth about $1.50 too far, then you have to take down wooden panel to get access to the rolled up shutter and manually unroll it. Freddie did that this morning to one of the larger windows that also happens to leak in a rain storm...he had no choice but to fix it and he did.
We tested the strongest of the Nespresso coffees we bought...Kazaar...the lady in the store says its a 12 on the intensity scale. It's actually very good espresso, even with out the frothy milk. Something tells me I'll be putting my espresso machine at home a lot once we get back.
We walked to the Sma market, I committed a mortal sin by touching the avocado without wearing a plastic glove. Bought some most excellent gelato, and just hung out. None of us felt like doing much of anything. For dinner we made beef tacos, watched "The Hunger Games" and had gelato.
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Sheila
non-member comment
Leenda and Rico's excellent Roman vacation
trip and food pictures have been so nice. glad you are having a good time. the dogs would freak me out. shared your blog with the dulcimer mouse so she can follow. regarding your long walk that took you way out of your way, we had a similar experience going way out of our way to get somewhere that turned out to be close by when we were in Quebec. the locals are not always helpful. stay out of trouble. somehow I am expecting to see a snap of one of you behind bars for some reason.