Paola

Because C. is going to be there for a year, and I can SO see myself on the beach or attending Cannes Film Festival!

Yay!!!

Cinema Pasquino has closed. Here’s a list of (the few) movie theaters in Rome showing movies in English (we tend to overdub here… errr).

(note to self: add ‘em to 43Places!)

They’re working on a figs and beer ice cream.
What they’ve already done with the lapsang souchong and chocolate is pretty good.

The location is great, the service is friendly, the desserts are from the “pasticceria” next door, so they’re usually nice… but the food is unimpressive at best. And the biggest scam: pasta cacio e pepe showed just a hint of pepe (black pepper), and it was sinking in cooking water. Booo.

Buses here don’t connect one point to another. They roam around. Not very nice, especially when you have to go there for work. Grrr.

Sink in a prosecco tank. Definitely.

Listening to electric gigs in the halls it’s just a step above being tortured in hell (better to go there in the summer, when there are outdoor concerts)—while generally they say that classical and acoustic music sound beautifully.

Anyway I love the buildings, I love the neighborhood, and it’s true that you can get some real (cool) people watching there.

Best concert seen so far: John Zorn’s Masada. Outdoor. At dusk. Magic.

When I read this Wikipedia entry I cracked up.
The author mentions “older Italian males, along with a large number of homeless persons and prostitutes of both genders” as the night typical customers, in a predictable Anglo-saxon delimitation of classes.
The foreign guy couldn’t be more mislead: in Rome the “noble” and the “poor” have always been hanging around together—and you can’t always tell from the appearance. Furthermore, while the class difference is always there (you never experienced real snobbery, until you’ve been snobbed by someone whose ancestors date back to the Ancient Romans), everybody talks to everybody. So my recommendations: go there at night. Watch people. If you speak a little Italian engage in a conversation with them. You will find out that often the shabby appearance hides someone pretty succesful.

Well, apart from being a gorgeous park, with quaint gardens and impressive mediterranean pine trees, it’s one of the few places in Rome where you don’t hear traffic noises. And there should be a free hotspot too.

Well, I live here…