Markets, Parks, and Experimenting in the Kitchen

Today was a learning day. I learned Italy does, in fact, have Grocery Stores. I learned that it's all the rage for young Romans to make out obnoxiously in public parks. And I learned that I can make a steak dinner with no more than a fork and knife, a pan, and a small gas stove with only two burners.

So, first lesson: Grocery Stores.
There are two places I have gone as of yet to gain the various supplies to keep myself from falling into the clutches of starvation. The first is the Italian Market, which is basically an open-air warehouse of Italians selling and buying Italian salty cheeses, fatty meats, and fancy breads. Very busy and very Italian. And by very Italian, I mean nobody forms lines. But the Market is for another day. I want to expose the possibly lesser-known Italian-style ACME. It has a name: GS, which, from what I can tell simply stands for Grocery Store. They have carts, baskets and everything you would expect to see in a standard grocery store; with two exceptions. Exception #1: the aisles are designed to resemble the floor plan of the garden maze from the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Aisles are not all neat in a row; they dead-end, they intersect at strange angles, and they have no detectable system of food organization. They are there and if you can find what you are looking for, then YOU WIN!! Exception #2: The produce is to be labeled by the customer. This exception is something I believe that US stores can adapt. In the produce section there are little scale stations, where you put on what you want, press the numbered button and the little bar code label prints out. Of course I figured this out AFTER I had waited in "line" (remember, Italians don't form lines) for 20 minutes.

Second lesson: it's okay to makeout in public in Rome.
After getting our cell phones, Jeremy, Cal and I went to Villa Bourgese; Rome's equivalent to Central Park. While it was nice to see people enjoying the park's many acivites such as the dog park, the bike rental, and the views of the Piazza del Popolo (pictures to come later), some people were enjoying the open grass fields and park benches a little too much. Regardless, the Villa Bourgese is one of the nicest and greenest spots I've found that's in the Roman city.

Last lesson: I can cook steak!
While it wasn't quite as successful as my Penne experiment last night, it was still edible. Of course given that our apartment has no stove, and only two gas burners, it's a miacle we eat anything remotely warm at all. I was also short on seasonings, so I worked with what we had: Olive Oil, Salt and Crushed white Pepper. Fortunately I also had a garlic I could slice up. To compliment my seared olive oil steak, I boiled up some broccoli, and fried up some home fries. Of course I had to wait until the steak was done to start the home fries, since we have only one pan.

We're off to Todi tomorrow. Hopefully they'll have some sort of Catholic sevice going on when I'm there.

Out on the Town

Yesterday I went on a walking tour with one of the Temple Rome Staffers. We ended up doing about 9 miles (14.5 km) total, from The Residence and back and hit up most of the local tourist spots. Here's the google maps rough estimation of our trip that I worked out: link And you can see all the photos I took here: photos


We started out at Temple Rome, which is right on the Tiber River, and after exploring some of the local neighborhood, we made it to the Piazza del Popolo. After a short rest, we headed onward to the Piazza di Spagna (the Spanish Steps). From there we checked out the Anglo-American Bookstore where I'll be getting my books for class, and continued down to Area Sacra, a Roman ruins site where stray cats live and are fed by old Italian women. The stairway to go down was closed off, but there was a cat up by street level who was basking in the sun. We then came up behind the Pantheon, and took a peek inside to visit the remains of great artist (and later Ninja Turtle) Rafael. We then set out to Piazza Novona, and then to Piazza Campo de Fiori- an open market by day and American bar hangout by night. Our tour guide then left us off at Ponte Sisto, where the majority of students went with herto the Metro, while Cal and I joined three girls from Tyler (Tina, Jo Anne, and Melissa) to explore some more residential Rome in the area. We ended up in Garibaldi, giving us a chance to take in the incredible view of Rome below. After a bit of walking around mapless, we got back on track and found our way to the front of the Vatican, where Cal and I left the other three t their apartment, and headed back to The Residence.

It was a great trip, I got 179 pictures, including about 8 panorama shots. It was also nice to get off the beaten tourist path, and see some of the lesser exposed areas of Roma.