Plucky Survivors See Europe Day 21: Rome

I didn’t do a lot on my final day in Rome.  The heat was oppressive – 90 degrees by 10am this morning and worked its way up to an even 100 in the afternoon.  Plus, my leg is feeling better today, and I didn’t want to anger it, so my explorations were a bit limited.

I relaxed and worked and researched some upcoming stops in the morning, trying to figure out the best place to do laundry in the coming days for instance.  Dijon, you have been elected.  Congratulations.

For lunch I walked a couple of blocks to the Mercato Centrale, another market with a variety of food vendors. This one was a bit different in that it was at Termini, the main bus and rail station.  As with neighborhoods surrounding a lot of bus and train stations, this isn’t the best and once you get there it is wall-to-wall people.

The market itself is very nice with pasta, pizza, sandwiches, chicken, empanadas, desserts, a butcher, and so much more.  I tried a sample of a delicious chicken dish and decided to get a full serving but was a bit disappointed with the end result.  I thought I was getting a roasted chicken dish but it turned out to be breaded and wasn’t fantastic.

Plus, eating there is like eating at a bus station – which you are.  Not pleasant.  So, I abandoned my first meal choice and moved on to the empanadas, one stuff with chicken and another stuffed with chorizo and a delightful chimichurri sauce to go with them.  I stopped by the pasticciera and got a strawberry tart and a chocolate cannoli to take back to the room.  All of these choices were much better – the empanadas were perfection!

As the heat built up, I stayed in the room and worked for the afternoon.  I’m so far behind on everything and if anyone I owe something to is reading this, thank you for indulging my tardiness.

But I was getting restless – this is my last day in Rome, I should do something!  What could I do that was very Rome yet indoors and easily accessible by the subway or an Uber.

I know!  I’ll take a cooking class!

The highly recommended place I found was not near a subway line, so I splurged on an Uber and took it to the neighborhood near the Pantheon.  I was early and had time to wander around a bit, finding a archeological site for the Mansory Stadyum Arch, all that remains of a massive stadium built in 86AD that held Rome’s version of the Olympics; the Piazza Navona with a fountain of Neptune and a 17^th century obelisk; and the Pantheon of course, a Roman Temple and, later, a Catholic Church dating back to the second century.

As I walked back toward the cooking class location, I happened upon a tiny store selling Italian made, leather bound products – everything from journals to sketch books to eyeglass cases and more.  I was enamored by a journal with the softest leather I have ever felt and got it engraved – my Rome souvenir.

After that it was on to the cooking class at Eat and Walk Italy.  Chef Lianello was a great teacher who helped our group of 20 make fettucine and ravioli stuffed with ricotta from scratch, plus tiramisu for desert.  It was a lot of fun but also a lot of work and I’ll probably never use anything I learned in real life, but I made pasta in Rome!!

I also chatted with a bunch of the people in the class with me who were mostly from America – Arizona, San Francisco, Kentucky, New York, and so on.  All very different people – I could tell the family from Kentucky probably didn’t share my particular political views, but they were lovely and friendly and we had the best conversation that didn’t involve any of that stuff.  It was a refreshing change.

And that, my friends, is Rome! 

I am three weeks into my ten-week odyssey.  Tomorrow kicks off a big road trip portion of the program as I head up the Italian coast to Genoa (with a planned pitstop to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa) for one night, then on to Zurich for a night, and then Dijon for a night (and laundry).  Then I’ll be in Paris for a week where the forecasted temperature on the day I arrive is 106 degrees.  If that happens it’ll be the second hottest day ever on record in the city.

Paying the extra money to stay at nicer hotels with air conditioning was probably the smartest decision I’ve ever made.