Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Monday, January 24, 2005
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Rome: When You're Here, You're Family!!!
This Roman Holiday has been chalk full of neverending shenanigans from start to finish! We arrived Tuesday night and immediatey set up shop in our dorm. Sidebar: we have a particularly "interesting" roomie here, who is probably 40, and carries a doll that is dressed like a nun, with a porcelain-looking face. Um, psycho much!!!!!!!! After talking with some girls, and researching the address of a particular restaurant that Alison recommended, we set off into the dark Roman night in search of some food. What we weren't expecting was a fairly interesting night, complete with a chaffeured escort home, and a reservation for a pick-up by car in the morning.
As we arrived at the restaurant, after having walked the streets of Rome for close to an hour, probably in circles, looking for this place, we found an empty terrace, an empty reception area and the sounds of banging pots and pans- were we in the kitchen? We regrouped and walked back outside to confirm that, yes, we were at the front of the restaurant, and we said f it, we're going in! As we descended further into the place, we finally found the hostess and it opened up into this cute little atrium/greenhouse-type dining area. We were hoping to find a piano player but instead we found a family celebrating Grandma's 85th birthday. Of course we joined in as they sang her "happy birthday" and of course they took notice and sent us over glasses of champagne and pieces of cherry chocolate cake. We were satisfied... but this wouldn't be the end!
Pino, the owner of the restaurant, and friend of this table, came over to greet us after the family had finished and gone. He asked if we wanted to go to piano bar with him and us being the adventurous girls that we are, we said "of course!" At this point, we ascended the restaurant and were waiting at the car: a 1985, 2-door BMW convertible, with jumper cables in the back (hmmm, what could those be for???). Laughing hysterically, we got in the car and shortly after, we busted out the video camera because this was a ride that certainly had to be shared!!! We think we almost died a couple of times, there are hardly any rules to the driving here, and for what there is, there is even more apathy or total disregard altogether, so this ride was certainly the wildest ride in the wilderness! And we stalled, to top it all off, in the middle of the road- Pino just chuckling away and us absolutely dying with fits of laughter and shouts of "beep beep" which Pino mistook for "pee, pee!!!!" Oops!
The next morning, Tony (how original) came to pick us up in the Mercedes that we requested, but we're more certain was for the Ambassador to Finland that he was picking up after dropping us off at the Vatican. We weren't even sure if he was going to show up, but imagine our surprise as we found him lurking in the streets near the Beehive at 11am on the dot! En route to the Vatican, he kind of cornered us and told us he would be picking us up for dinner that night at 9 (oh shit, oh shit... how do we get out of this one?!?!?!?!) Well, we coudn't. But we did manage to conjure up 2 other girls from our hostel and bring them with us, so as to avoid a potential double-date scenario. We were hip to their jig! And they did buy us dinner, all of us! They wanted to drive us home but Bruno, Tony's brother (again, how original these names are here!), had downed an entire bottle of grappa and was not only slurring his words, but leaning on every pillar in the restaurant. We are certainly smarter than that, so after much bantering back and forth, they finally got the point that we were going to take the bus and they called us "stupid Americans" for opting for the bus over the drunk, free ride. Stupid DRUNK Italians!
So that leaves us with today- nothing too exciting, except a ton of site seeing and we think we probably walked the equivalent of 15 miles, sometimes in circles, sometimes not. We saw a bunch of great things today including the Colloseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Roman Forum, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Maria en Cosmidin (Mouth of Truth) and various other sites in our travels. Tonight, we were going to take the night off of drinking and prepare for our early morning flight tomorrow- but instead, we met Bryan, PhD from D.C. via Arizona, and he has coerced into having a beer with him- ahhh, just what the doctor ordered!!!
That's it for Italy and we're off to London!
Cheers!!!!
Kyle & Colleen
As we arrived at the restaurant, after having walked the streets of Rome for close to an hour, probably in circles, looking for this place, we found an empty terrace, an empty reception area and the sounds of banging pots and pans- were we in the kitchen? We regrouped and walked back outside to confirm that, yes, we were at the front of the restaurant, and we said f it, we're going in! As we descended further into the place, we finally found the hostess and it opened up into this cute little atrium/greenhouse-type dining area. We were hoping to find a piano player but instead we found a family celebrating Grandma's 85th birthday. Of course we joined in as they sang her "happy birthday" and of course they took notice and sent us over glasses of champagne and pieces of cherry chocolate cake. We were satisfied... but this wouldn't be the end!
Pino, the owner of the restaurant, and friend of this table, came over to greet us after the family had finished and gone. He asked if we wanted to go to piano bar with him and us being the adventurous girls that we are, we said "of course!" At this point, we ascended the restaurant and were waiting at the car: a 1985, 2-door BMW convertible, with jumper cables in the back (hmmm, what could those be for???). Laughing hysterically, we got in the car and shortly after, we busted out the video camera because this was a ride that certainly had to be shared!!! We think we almost died a couple of times, there are hardly any rules to the driving here, and for what there is, there is even more apathy or total disregard altogether, so this ride was certainly the wildest ride in the wilderness! And we stalled, to top it all off, in the middle of the road- Pino just chuckling away and us absolutely dying with fits of laughter and shouts of "beep beep" which Pino mistook for "pee, pee!!!!" Oops!
The next morning, Tony (how original) came to pick us up in the Mercedes that we requested, but we're more certain was for the Ambassador to Finland that he was picking up after dropping us off at the Vatican. We weren't even sure if he was going to show up, but imagine our surprise as we found him lurking in the streets near the Beehive at 11am on the dot! En route to the Vatican, he kind of cornered us and told us he would be picking us up for dinner that night at 9 (oh shit, oh shit... how do we get out of this one?!?!?!?!) Well, we coudn't. But we did manage to conjure up 2 other girls from our hostel and bring them with us, so as to avoid a potential double-date scenario. We were hip to their jig! And they did buy us dinner, all of us! They wanted to drive us home but Bruno, Tony's brother (again, how original these names are here!), had downed an entire bottle of grappa and was not only slurring his words, but leaning on every pillar in the restaurant. We are certainly smarter than that, so after much bantering back and forth, they finally got the point that we were going to take the bus and they called us "stupid Americans" for opting for the bus over the drunk, free ride. Stupid DRUNK Italians!
So that leaves us with today- nothing too exciting, except a ton of site seeing and we think we probably walked the equivalent of 15 miles, sometimes in circles, sometimes not. We saw a bunch of great things today including the Colloseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Roman Forum, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Maria en Cosmidin (Mouth of Truth) and various other sites in our travels. Tonight, we were going to take the night off of drinking and prepare for our early morning flight tomorrow- but instead, we met Bryan, PhD from D.C. via Arizona, and he has coerced into having a beer with him- ahhh, just what the doctor ordered!!!
That's it for Italy and we're off to London!
Cheers!!!!
Kyle & Colleen
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
We're Fleeing Florence... ciao!!!!
Good Lord... where do we start? We knew we were going to love Italy, but maybe not this much! Perhaps that's why we've already sorted ourselves out with job offers and the deal seems to be sealed on that one! What we're talking about is we met the owner of our hostel, VLADIMIR, last night as he was walking out of the bldg. He asked us how we were doing and in talking and trying to figure out where a particular restaurant was, we ended up in a long conversation about what we did for a living, our travels, interests, etc... and we thought he was joking, but he seriously offered us jobs! We told him he couldn't afford us and he laughed but he did say that we'd get to travel 2 days out of each month to some place in Europe... Colleen was bartering for 3 so we haven't signed the paperwork yet :)
We arrived on Sunday night, and we had heard about a restaurant that was really close to our hostel so we went to check it out. All was quiet until Colleen busted out the video camera to get some footage of this really high maintenance asshole who sent his pizza back about 4 times because apparently he wasn't satisfied. How can you screw up a pizza THAT BAD in Italy?!?!? At this point, I guess we kind of created a spectacle and the family that was running the place took notice of us. We thought we were in the clear, but on the way out, we were greeted with two shots of Limoncello that we thought looked like lemon drop shots, hence you swig them back like a shot of tequila. Um, no... and glad we asked before we went down that road because this stuff was extremely strong and potent lemon liqueur that you're supposed to sip. We sipped it down with our biscotti that they gave to us and then somehow made our way into the kitchen for a picture with the chef. I immediately started playing with the deep fryer, cooking things, which they weren't particulary excited about for safety reasons, so they attempted to distract us with an appetizer. Oh wait, they were SHOWING us the appetizer, but with the language barrier, we thought they were giving it to us and we ate it. Oops! They were all dying laughing at our stupid antics so we undoubtedly needed a picture of this family for our memories. Colleen was chasing the Uncle around, desperately trying to coerse him into the picture, but this 70-year old man was having none of it! So she snipered a picture of him when he wasn't looking and we did get Mama, Son and Auntie to take the real family portrait together. Ok, we'd worn out our welcome here by this point so it was time to move onto the Irish Pub, Lion's Fountain. And we were so pumped because as we walked in, they were switching the satellite TV over to the Packers/Vikings game- who ended up winning, by the way, b/c we only saw the first quarter????
You'll be pleased to know too that yesterday, January 10, 2005 was a monumental day in the history of Italy. Apparently, they have taken a page out of California's book and it is now illegal to smoke in restaurants and in bars/pubs!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, yesterday was our first full day here- long train ride on Sunday from Munich and we didn't arrive until 7pm. We mapped out what we wanted to see: the Ponte Vecchio- check, Palazzo Vecchio- check, Uffizi- we saw the outside, Accademia/Michaelangelo's David- CHECK, Santa Maria Novella Church- check, Pitti (Kitty-we'll explain but you will have to see the video) Palace, and we climbed the 500 stairs to the top of Brunelleschi's Duomo. That was actually really amazing and it provided a wonderful 360 degree view of the entire city- too bad it wasn't a clearer day.
We'll just touch briefly on the Kitty Palace but when we entered the Boboli Gardens, there were cats everywhere! I, of course, was slightly more enthralled than Colleen so I had to stop and play with these little four-legged beasts. This one really was in desperate need of attn and started rubbing on my leg. I bent down to pet him/her and it immediately jumped into my lap. The next thing I knew, the cat had climbed up and over my shoulder and was clinging to me for dear life purring... so cute! Colleen captured the entire thing on video, told me that I couldn't bring my friend with us b/c we had no room, and I pouted for a minute or 12.
After all the sightseeing yesterday, we popped back into our hostel to freshen up for dinner and that's when we met the owner. We told him we wanted to eat at Aqua al Due and he insisted on walking us there. On the way, we got sidetracked into a cute little wine bar called Frescobaldi, where we polished off a bottle of great red wine and some appetizers. Then , as we were making our way towards the restaurant, guess who we stumbled upon on the street where our hostel was? This guy Phillip who we met in our hostel in Prague that is from CA!
We made our way to the restaurant where were surprised to find out that Vladi new everyone, from people in the street, to the entire staff at Aqua al Due. We sampled some of the best pastas we've ever had, then we moved along to the salad sampler (didn't do quite as good a job on that one because we were so full from the pasta), but somehow we made room for the dessert sampler at the end! And oh my God, it was soooo good!!!! We managed to locate the same bottle of wine that we had consumed at Frescobaldi and polished off 1 1/2 more bottles at dinner, compliments of our friend. About half way thru dinner, in came Phillip to see how we were doing. We got talked into drinking some grappa- don't do it!!!!!!- and Phillip was really amused because he devised a way to make us take drink and then snap a picture of our sour faces from the aftermath... they are seriously so funny!
Today we are leaving for Rome and we will check-in with everyone from there... we hope it's as wonderful as Florence was, but more importantly, we hope it stops raining in CA before next Wed when we get back! I guess we picked a good time to leave :)
Ciao!
Kyle & Colleen
We arrived on Sunday night, and we had heard about a restaurant that was really close to our hostel so we went to check it out. All was quiet until Colleen busted out the video camera to get some footage of this really high maintenance asshole who sent his pizza back about 4 times because apparently he wasn't satisfied. How can you screw up a pizza THAT BAD in Italy?!?!? At this point, I guess we kind of created a spectacle and the family that was running the place took notice of us. We thought we were in the clear, but on the way out, we were greeted with two shots of Limoncello that we thought looked like lemon drop shots, hence you swig them back like a shot of tequila. Um, no... and glad we asked before we went down that road because this stuff was extremely strong and potent lemon liqueur that you're supposed to sip. We sipped it down with our biscotti that they gave to us and then somehow made our way into the kitchen for a picture with the chef. I immediately started playing with the deep fryer, cooking things, which they weren't particulary excited about for safety reasons, so they attempted to distract us with an appetizer. Oh wait, they were SHOWING us the appetizer, but with the language barrier, we thought they were giving it to us and we ate it. Oops! They were all dying laughing at our stupid antics so we undoubtedly needed a picture of this family for our memories. Colleen was chasing the Uncle around, desperately trying to coerse him into the picture, but this 70-year old man was having none of it! So she snipered a picture of him when he wasn't looking and we did get Mama, Son and Auntie to take the real family portrait together. Ok, we'd worn out our welcome here by this point so it was time to move onto the Irish Pub, Lion's Fountain. And we were so pumped because as we walked in, they were switching the satellite TV over to the Packers/Vikings game- who ended up winning, by the way, b/c we only saw the first quarter????
You'll be pleased to know too that yesterday, January 10, 2005 was a monumental day in the history of Italy. Apparently, they have taken a page out of California's book and it is now illegal to smoke in restaurants and in bars/pubs!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, yesterday was our first full day here- long train ride on Sunday from Munich and we didn't arrive until 7pm. We mapped out what we wanted to see: the Ponte Vecchio- check, Palazzo Vecchio- check, Uffizi- we saw the outside, Accademia/Michaelangelo's David- CHECK, Santa Maria Novella Church- check, Pitti (Kitty-we'll explain but you will have to see the video) Palace, and we climbed the 500 stairs to the top of Brunelleschi's Duomo. That was actually really amazing and it provided a wonderful 360 degree view of the entire city- too bad it wasn't a clearer day.
We'll just touch briefly on the Kitty Palace but when we entered the Boboli Gardens, there were cats everywhere! I, of course, was slightly more enthralled than Colleen so I had to stop and play with these little four-legged beasts. This one really was in desperate need of attn and started rubbing on my leg. I bent down to pet him/her and it immediately jumped into my lap. The next thing I knew, the cat had climbed up and over my shoulder and was clinging to me for dear life purring... so cute! Colleen captured the entire thing on video, told me that I couldn't bring my friend with us b/c we had no room, and I pouted for a minute or 12.
After all the sightseeing yesterday, we popped back into our hostel to freshen up for dinner and that's when we met the owner. We told him we wanted to eat at Aqua al Due and he insisted on walking us there. On the way, we got sidetracked into a cute little wine bar called Frescobaldi, where we polished off a bottle of great red wine and some appetizers. Then , as we were making our way towards the restaurant, guess who we stumbled upon on the street where our hostel was? This guy Phillip who we met in our hostel in Prague that is from CA!
We made our way to the restaurant where were surprised to find out that Vladi new everyone, from people in the street, to the entire staff at Aqua al Due. We sampled some of the best pastas we've ever had, then we moved along to the salad sampler (didn't do quite as good a job on that one because we were so full from the pasta), but somehow we made room for the dessert sampler at the end! And oh my God, it was soooo good!!!! We managed to locate the same bottle of wine that we had consumed at Frescobaldi and polished off 1 1/2 more bottles at dinner, compliments of our friend. About half way thru dinner, in came Phillip to see how we were doing. We got talked into drinking some grappa- don't do it!!!!!!- and Phillip was really amused because he devised a way to make us take drink and then snap a picture of our sour faces from the aftermath... they are seriously so funny!
Today we are leaving for Rome and we will check-in with everyone from there... we hope it's as wonderful as Florence was, but more importantly, we hope it stops raining in CA before next Wed when we get back! I guess we picked a good time to leave :)
Ciao!
Kyle & Colleen
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