January 19, 2024

In Italy, every day starts with a cappuccino and perhaps a pastry (depending on how late we wake up and when we will be eating next).

The weather is agreeable, but chilly, so I grab my coat and walk down the two flights of stairs from our humble apartment, and open the door into one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. We call it, "walking into the mix/madness," depending on the time of day. But in the mornings, it is glorious. I'm immediately immersed into a sea of narrow alleys adorned with finely crafted mailboxes, graffiti, and flowers. Ancient buildings. One of the oldest churches in the world. I'm grateful every single time.

The café is only at the end of the block, but I'm already passing by places I've spent time chatting with people in, and eating delicious food. The trip is short, but the senses are dazzled.

Every day I try to learn more Italian in order to successfully place my order at the café without them speaking English back to me. Today was not that day. A lot of tourists around here, you need to be very convincing; maybe not wear a black baseball hat. Tomorrow is another day, but we have cappuccino, and that's all that matters. It's an omen, that our day is soon to be filled with whatever we make of it, at our own pace.

Ever since we arrived in Italy, we have a full-on fear of eating at the wrong restaurants. I blame YouTube. I blame "Best of" lists. Are we going to wasting our time and money? It's absolutely comical. You can't trust ratings. Some places aren't on the map. So... we have starting adopting a new method. Are the people there Italian or foreign. Italian, we're going in! There are so many wonderful outdoor spaces here. We want to be a part of that delicious-food-sitting-outdoor vibe. Well, luckily we found a place this afternoon.

We stopped at Cantina dei Papi, which is a low-key place along one of the main roads in Trastevere. We sat outside. The weather was chilly, yet still delightful. We ordered a couple of Aperol Spritz: when in Rome? It took us a few minutes to realize you had to ask for the food menu, but we eventually ordered a bruschetta. In the meantime, we were amused by the playlist of American 90's music (did someone say Nirvana?). We've traveled the world a bit separately, but we've always talked about how much we love that. It's unifying. We don't like the new music either. Hah!

We had our drinks, ate our food, chatted with a British couple, made fun of some more American girls dominating the streets with their accents, and then we were off for a walk through neighborhood. This never disappoints. There are so many random things to see, and this time we walked up the hills of Trastevere a bit, to check some things out from above (this little reconnaissance mission will come in handy later).

By nightfall, we were absolutely determined to eat a delicious Italian dinner. We decided to do the right thing, and take a recommendation from a guy we met a few nights before. So we geared up, and went a massive two doors down to "Ristorante Pinseria Da Massi." As we walked in, we greeted them in Italian, they responded, and by then, that had exhausted our knowledge of the language. At that point they began to speak to us in English. Bug said, "We're trying to learn Italian." To which one of the staff responded, "Well, your husband didn't want to talk to us, so maybe he should change." Hahahah. Touché.

At Da Massi, we enjoyed a really wonderful meal, thank Romulus and Remus. We did manage to dodge a €120 upsell for wine. Yeah... we'll take the house wine, thanks. It's literally better than anything in the United States of Sulfites. We ordered a fried artichoke (Jewish style), gnocci carbonara, and lasagna. All of this was absolutely amazing. You've never had lasagna until you've had it in the motherland.

Rather than retire to our spot two doors down, we figured we should try out a cocktail bar we had heard about called "Freni e Frizioni." It was pretty busy, being Friday night and all. We managed to get seated inside and ordered two drinks: the "Phi-Mex", a tropical mezcal drink (pretty tasty), and the "Impeach-Mint" with rum, peach, bitters....it was ok (the former was better).

I feel like if we had the chance to hang there with friends, or at the bar itself, it would have been a better experience. However, we made the best of it, chatting about what we would do in the coming days, and enjoying the libations for the artistic crafts that they were, even though we were shoved into the last available corner.

We're now back in our little Roman apartment, snuggling in.

Ciao! Tomorrow is another day.