Rome, Part 2
Exploring and Eating in the Eternal City
Because there was so much to say about Rome, here is part two, focused on the everyday experiences of walking around, exploring the piazzas, and, of course, dining out. Even with four full days there, we feel like there is much more to explore if we’re able to go back.
The Everyday Experience
Overall, I liked Rome better than Florence. While there were plenty of other tourists in Rome, because it’s a really big city, it’s not overwhelmed by them quite in the same way as Florence.
It was, however, very hot, and only getting hotter. It was in the 80s and up to the low 90s in the middle of the day. I cannot imagine visiting in high summer and suggest you do not, unless you really love hot weather and sweating through your clothes before noon. I found it unpleasant enough in late May to early June.
Although Rome does have a metro, we never used it. In fact, while I saw signs for the metro, I never actually saw a metro station itself. While we were there, I downloaded an e-book version of a 2011 Italy guidebook, as that was the newest copy I could rent electronically from the library. In describing the metro, it said it had two lines with the third being constructed and scheduled for completion in 2015. Well, it’s 2022, and they still haven’t finished that metro line.
Walking around the city was mostly an exercise in discovering piazzas. We started our stay near Campo de' Fiori and arrived while the Saturday market was still active. We had a frustrating experience later that day trying to find a spot to watch the Champions League final, which was playing on all the TVs on the restaurants lining the piazza. But no restaurant would let us sit down and watch if we weren’t going to order a full dinner, which we had already eaten.
My favorite piazza was Piazza Navona, which was nearby. I liked the big fountain and grand church beside it. We also saw our strangest site here—a gathering of what seemed to be ethnic Italians dancing and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. We weren’t sure if they were celebrating a Hindu holiday (and if they were actually Hindu) or if they were simply Italian hippies (and therefore, not Hindu but happy to appropriate the Sanskrit mantra).
We also walked up to Piazza del Popolo, passing the Spanish Steps.
One of the things that Alex and I have remarked on, and this is true of all of Italy, not just Rome, is the surprising lack of seating in these piazzas. Sure, these piazzas are huge, public, pedestrianized spaces, but they rarely have many benches.
After switching hotels (long story, but in brief, we found our hotel room unlocked), we ended up one block away from the Trevi Fountain, which was basically always mobbed. I wish I could have enjoyed it with fewer people around because it really is an impressive fountain.
We also spent a few hours one day walking to and around Trastevere, one of the neighborhoods on the left bank of the Tiber River. There was a bit more tree coverage there, and it felt more like a lived-in neighborhood.
Our Last Real Italian Meals
Overall, we ate better in Rome than we did in Florence. We aren’t sure if we picked better restaurants or if the food is simply better in the capital, no matter where you randomly go. At the very least, we weren’t stuck with any unsalted bread.
All our coffee—aside from the hotel machine—was superb. It was made from really good coffee and expertly prepared. Alex found Caffé Peru near our first hotel. It attracted some tourists staying nearby, like us, but it was definitely also a spot enjoyed by locals. Alex watched the barista spill the espresso down the side of the cup slightly as he poured it and insisted on remaking it—to make it perfectly—despite the customer saying it was fine. We also visited La Casa del Caffè Tazza d'Oro, which I had found online, and Sant’ Eustachio, which we were already familiar with as Alex’s uncle stocks their coffee.
In Rome (and likely other parts of Italy), it’s cheaper to drink your coffee standing at the counter, which makes a lot of sense if all you’re doing is quickly grabbing an espresso. It gets cold if not consumed immediately, and it only takes a sip or two to consume it. We’re still trying to avoid dining inside due to the pandemic—and we needed negative COVID tests to fly back to the US from Rome—so we avoided drinking ours inside, but we were able to stand outside at a high-top table.
As I had done some reading on Florentine/Tuscan and Umbrian food, I had also looked into some of the dishes that emerged in Rome. One of those is cacio e pepe (literally “cheese and pepper,” it’s a pasta dish made with pecorino Romano and fresh black pepper). We already knew we liked this dish and ordered, um, quite a few of these.
I also tried a pinsa, a Roman style pizza made on a focaccia-like bread. It wasn’t bad, but I’m confident that Neapolitan style pizza is still the best.
But perhaps our most interesting dining experience was at Trattoria Melo, a restaurant I had found online after looking for a Sicilian place. We had thought it would be nice to find a Sicilian restaurant in Rome to experience the food of another region of Italy. I’m not sure if the food was really Sicilian since a lot of the pastas were Roman specialties, like carbonara and arrabbiata, but the restaurant was at least owned by a Sicilian couple.
It felt like an American stereotype of a family-run Italian place. The walls were covered in collages of photos of patrons with the owner taken in the restaurant over the years with the restaurant looking exactly the same today, as well as an assortment of fish-themed plates and ceramics. The owner had the personality of a jokester grandfather, such as pretending to grind pepper onto Alex’s head with the giant wooden pepper mill after he sprinkled some on our food. He also was playing opera and folk songs from YouTube, and he adjusted the volume as we reached a section he especially liked. If he really liked the song, he played it again one or two more times in a row.
Related to food and on my theme of documenting free water in Europe, Rome has lots of free water fountains. This apparently dates back to Roman times when they were very proud of their engineering; their aqueducts brought fresh water into the city from far away. Curiously, the water is always running out of these fountains. I failed to take a picture, but they look like little spigots set into stone.