Stacey

Hint: You can’t get directions from Mapquest to get to the Pittsburgh zoo. Not the last I heard, anyways. Apparently the road the zoo is on isn’t actually recognized as a real road by the US census, or something like that, so Mapquest will (or at least used to) send you to some random road in some random residential district. Now I think Mapquest at least links you to the zoo’s website. But anyways, get driving directions from the zoo’s website or call them. It’s definitely worth going, you just don’t want to get lost on the way there.

I went to Il Piccolo Grande Chef four times in about a month and a half (and didn’t learn its name until the third time, but that’s ok). The place isn’t touristy at all, since it’s located in a residential neighborhood far from where the tourists normally haunt. It’s actually in Monteverde, near Stazione Trastevere, just off the fourth stop on the 8 Tram after the Ministry of Education (big white building) stop. The food is good, not the most spectacular stuff you could find in Rome, but it’s delicious and reasonably priced. My favorite part of the restaurant are the two owners. Actually, I don’t know if they’re the owners or not, maybe it’s the owner and head waiter, I’m not sure. Either way, the two older gentlemen who run the place are the best part about it. They bake you fresh focaccia bread when you come in. If you’re on a date or if they like you, you get heart-shaped focaccia. They’re very friendly and love to interact with their patrons. I brought my mother and grandmother in when they visited, twice actually, and the one owner (the one in my picture) bonded with my grandmother over grandchildren stories and my mother over a fondness for the Glenn Miller Orchestra (he likes the song “Pennsylvania Sessante-Cinque-Mille”). I came back with my roommate the night before my roommate left for the US, and not only did they give us heart-shaped focaccia and free wine and appetizers, but when we left they gave us each a couple fresh flower blossoms from their centerpieces with their stems wrapped in foil so they’d stay fresh. Whenever I get back to Rome, Il Piccolo Grande Chef is my first dinner stop.

If you go (and you should if you’re in town!), tell the two owners that their American friend Stacey and her mamma and nonna say “Ciao”.

“What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you will be.”

Creepy stuff. Although I kept thinking as I walked through it that it reminded me of a Disney Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and I kept expecting the skulls on the walls to break into pirate songs. Disney would definitely have fun with the place.

Santaa Maria Maggiore is a beautiful church. You feel like you’re in a palace when you walk inside. I thought it was Baroque, but I’m not an architecture student, apparently it’s a mix of architectural styles and architect-types go to the church for that reason. Mostly it’s just beautiful. You can pick out its twin domes in the Roman skyline from almost any vista over the city.

A very residential disctrict of Rome. Hardly any tourists at all. Lots of bars and gelaterias with very friendly owners, some nice churches, mostly apartment buildings though. Not all that many restaurants, but there are a few and they’re mostly good. Probably not worth visiting if you’re only in Rome a short while, but if you’re here for a longer stay, like a semester or something, it’s worth exploring.

Lots of fun clubs and bars down here, though they’re mostly packed with American students. There’s a couple good salsa clubs. Also a bunch of ethnic restaurants. Apparently if you go early in the morning you can see sheep grazing on the hills nearby, though I can’t confirm that.

Cinque Terre is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. It’s definitely on my list of favorite places in the world. It might just be my top favorite place ever.

The Cinque Terre are these five tiny little old towns along an amazingly gorgeous stretch of the northwestern Italian coastline. The towns are connected by a rail line, but the better way to get between them and see them all is the 7ish mile hike that snakes along the mountainsides overlooking the Mediterranean. I can’t even describe how beautiful it is. The clearest water you’ve ever seen, beaches, rocky inlets, cliffs, mountains, forests, streams, olive groves, every sort of beautiful landscape imaginable. There were tourists but it wasn’t overrun with them; the Cinque Terre are just starting to be included in more guide books, so they might be overrun in a few years, but for now the small-town feel is still there and everything seems untouched. I loved it. I would go back in a heartbeat.

The hike took us about 6 hours, but we stopped a lot and explored the towns when we came to them. The hike just about killed my two travel companions, but I didn’t have much of a problem with it. Word to the wise: Start from Monterosso and work your way towards Riomaggiore. The first stretch from Monterosso to Vernazza is by far the hardest, so you want to do that while you’re still fresh and energetic. Lots of stairs involved. We started from the other end. The first part of the trail leg going from Vernazza to Monterosso was the part that exhausted us. Take lots of water with you, there aren’t really that many convenient places to fill up your water bottle in the towns, unless you want to keep buying more water everywhere you go. The Monterosso-Vernazza stretch probably needs two or three bottles of water, ideally. Taking a snack or two (something healthy, you know, for hiking) would also be a good idea. Sunscreen. CAMERA. I took about 250 pictures in Cinque Terre (thank God for digital cameras!).

We stayed in a hostel in Riomaggiore. Wasn’t bad, except for the gigantic set of ladder-steep stairs we had to climb to get to our room. Lots of cute little caffeterias and pizzerias and shops selling fruits and veggies and specialties from Cinque Terre – pestos, mostly, and pasta and olive oil and limoncello. There’s a really cute little church in Riomaggiore that smelled like lilies (I love Easter!) when we stopped by. In Riomaggiore (and in just about every town in Cinqueterre) you can rent kayaks or go snorkeling (wish we would have had more time!). When you go to Cinque Terre, make sure you try the seafood, the pesto, and the focaccia bread. Mmmm.

Can you tell from the gargantuan entry that I loved this place?

Does it count if we were only in the train station for a transfer?

Campo is a center of Rome nightlife, especially for American students and expats. There are a couple American bars here, lots of other bars, and several good restaurants. Campo at night is a sea of people. I prefer it in the mornings – weekday mornings Campo turns into a huge outdoor market. Most of the stands are fruit and vegetable stands, but you can also find meats and seafood, touristy-type things, and one guy who sells about a hundred different kinds of spices and spice mixes (go talk to him, he’ll break out his scrapbook of newspaper articles he’s been featured in). Campo dei Fiori is definitely one of my favorite places in Rome.

Did you know the Pantheon has another name – the Basilica of Mary and the Martyrs? Yeah, that’s right, the Pantheon is a Catholic Church. I went to Mass in the Pantheon. It was awesome – the organ sounded amazing, the acoustics in that place are beyond belief – but it was also pretty damn cold. You’ll have that in stone buildings, I suppose.