un caffè macchiato per favore

So, huge news - I'm starting to like coffee! If you know me and my drinking habits well, you'll know that there are about 3 things I drink on a regular basis: water (often flavored with those little crystal light packet things), juice, and alcohol. I don't often drink soda and up until now I never drank coffee. I like to think of myself as a bit of a beer aficionado but have always been disappointed to have to say I didn't like Guinness because of the little bit of coffee flavor it has.

But now it's all changing! I've recently started drinking cappuccinos and my new favorite - the caffè macchiato. Caffè macchiato is a shot of espresso with a small bit of cream on top, kind of like a miniature, more concentrated cappuccino. It's delicious. And the one I had after lunch during the bike tour my mom, sister, and I went on in Tuscany even had the foam in the shape of a heart. Awww, right?! Maybe one of our tour guides was trying to tell me something? ;)

lewis' in rome

As previously warned, I have been absent from blogging for the past week as my mom and sister came to Rome for a visit. To date, it was the longest vacation (8 days) that anyone in my family has ever taken. Plus it was the first overseas trip for either of them, which made it an even bigger deal! Here are some photo highlights from the week...

Day 1 - the Coliseum

Day 1 - inside the Coliseum

Day 1 - the Roman Forum during a brief break in the rain we endured here

Day 2 - dinner at Navona Notte where they had their first "real" Italian pizza

Day 3 - just outside of Trinita dei Monti (church) at the top of the Spanish Steps with the city in the background

Day 3 - at the Trevi Fountain

Day 4 - yes, that is the Pope! We listened to him give part of his weekly address in Piazza San Pietro in front of Saint Peter's Basilica - the largest in the world.

Day 4 - Piazza San Pietro

Day 5 - dinner in Trastevere (my neighborhood) and yes I upgraded to the big-girl beer :)

Day 6 - Florence!

Day 6 - Riding bikes through Tuscany for Brooke's birthday

Day 7 - at the Tiber River for the night-time entertainment found there. Brooke put her hand in this "mouth of truth" (electronic version of the real thing) which printed out a fortune after reading her hand.

Day 8 - One last look at the Coliseum, this time it wasn't rainy!

We had a great week, but now I'm exhausted and needing to get back to work on my thesis. Very glad they were able to visit and only wish more of my family could have been part of our fun week exploring Rome together!

favorite things

These are a few of my favorite things:

Sleeping in
Saturdays
New shoes
Gelato
Beer
Pizza
Rome
Friends

Experiencing all of the above in one day makes me one very lucky, happy, smiling girl. Honestly, it doesn't get much better than a day like today!

i love flowers

Like in many other large cities, the streets of Rome abound with people selling, well, all kinds of crap. But amongst the wide variety of useless things are a few gems, including roses. The flower-sellers are masters of convincing poor unsuspecting tourists to buy the in-full bloom (aka ready to die the following morning) rose that they thrust into their hands. But even though I know it is a scam and it will likely begin wilting in approximately 6 hours....

...I still can't help being a sucker for flowers. Receiving one is a lovely surprise that can easily make my night.

And a small side note - my mom and sister have just left Iowa to come visit me in Rome for a week. They'll arrive tomorrow morning and as such I shall be too busy to blog about their visit until they leave the following Monday. So have a good week - I know I will! Arrividerci!

the blazing italian sun

The last few days have been all about the sun for me. It's very hot - above 90 (about 33 for my celsius readers) - and the sun is relentless with clouds few and very far between. I do what I can to avoid being outside between the hours of 12pm and 6pm because of it.

I did venture out yesterday to meet some friends that I had met while traveling in Greece for an early dinner before their train left for Switzerland the other day. Our meeting time and place: 5pm at the Spanish Steps. This meant that I left my apartment at about 4pm and walked (at a good pace) for 45 minutes. In the sun. Sweating profusely. Luckily, my friends had also been out in the heat, so we sympathized with each other on our unsavory looks and smells. On a bright note, it was my first trip to the Spanish Steps. Today I was there again and counted the stairs - 135 total.


One hundred and thirty-five very worn and sometimes slippery stairs.


There was a nice church at the top too - this is the interior.


Tonight that blazing sun went down in a gorgeous sunset....this is the first of a few pictures I took over about half an hour...


...and the second...

....and the third. I'm having a love/hate relationship with the sun right now. I hate the afternoon bake, but I'm loving this sunset.

a little sunday walk to la fontana di trevi

Last night I waited until it had cooled down and then took a long walk to see the la Fontana di Trevi (the Trevi Fountain) for the first time. On the way I passed by...

the Teatro de Marcello (the theater is on the left and some very large columns that look great lit up at night are on the right. There are still concerts at Teatro de Marcello in the summer; when I walked by one was about to start and I thought about going until I saw the ticket price - 52 euros! Must have been someone reaallly good.


Capitoline Hill - this is at the top of some steps that I believe were designed by Michaelangelo.


Piazza Venezia, with the capitol building more commonly known as "the wedding cake" - so true, right?


Then I headed up Via de Corso, took a right, and a few blocks (and 40 minutes) later had made it to la Fontana di Trevi. Beautiful!


On my walk home I saw these massive columns, but am not sure what they are.


I also got a good look at what the banks of the Tiber River are like in the summer evenings - it's like a mini carnival almost. And then 5 minutes later I was home. All in all a pretty excellent little walk. Maybe I don't need television to entertain me...nah, I can't help missing it a little bit!

missing my guilty pleasures

It's Sunday evening after dinner and all I want to do is watch some mindless television. I love Rome, but I'll admit that I'm missing a few guilty pleasure from home. Mainly, I miss television, which is a little strange considering that when I am home, I only have a few channels since I don't have cable. Nonetheless, I miss those 5 channels a lot right now. You may be asking why I don't just watch television online. I have internet access, but the connection is sketchy and sadly not fast enough to allow for hulu.com. I also miss Taco Bell a little, but surprisingly not too much. I'm discovering plenty of new food vices here to help suppress the urges for American fast food. Mostly gelato and nutella, or my new favorite - nutella-flavored gelato, which is called 'variegato' = heaven in my mouth.

trastevere explorations

Yesterday Sarah and I went to Villa Farnesina, which was a residence and now a wonderfully restored museum (literally of the villa itself). Famous artists were commissioned to do different rooms in the home. It was wonderful. Several of the rooms used perspective, which was a little trippy. According to Sarah, the man of the house threw very lavish parties. And to demonstrate that money was no object to him, after dinner was over, he would insist that his guests go outside to the Tiber River (which is very close) and throw their dishes and silverware (all gold or gold-detailed of course) into the river. Though lavish, he wasn't quite as lavish as he appeared. He had laid nets at the bottom of the river and after everyone had gone home from the night's party, he would instruct his servants to pull the nets up from the river and therefore recapture all of the expensive dishes and silverware. Pictures weren't allowed inside, but here are a few from the grounds.

This is the back of the house. The tall windows were actually completely open (no glass) and this is where the guests would exit to the Tiber.

A summery look down a lane of trees :)

We then continued back towards home and stopped at the grocery store and a bakery, but along the way we found a few other little neighborhood treasures...


I'm starting to really like living in Trastevere. It's one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and dates back well into medieval times.

la mozzarella di bufala e stata molto fresco!!

Tonight Sarah and I stopped by Botticella to visit her friend Giovanni, who owns the bar. We stayed for a small beer (una birra piccola) and ended up partaking in quite the treat. A friend of Giovanni's came up from a town near Naples and brought with him some fresh mozzarella (it's called buffalo mozzarella) that had been made this morning. It shouldn't even be sold until tomorrow at the earliest! It was literally the freshest cheese I will probably ever eat in my life. And it was INCREDIBLE. Soooo delicious! It was so fresh it was oozing milk. Okay that sounds gross, but I swear it wasn't. It was also ginormous; mozzarella usually comes in a ball of varying sizes - these mozzarella balls were the size of softballs. Again, amazing!



(translation of the title: "the buffalo mozzarella was very fresh" ....I'm working on learning a little Italian as I go along!)

basil update

We named our basil plant Fido. And less than 24 hours later, our window murdered him. The window shut on its own and knocked poor Fido off the ledge and he fell 2 stories to his death below. I was sitting on my bed, heard the window shut (we forgot to secure it open), looked over, and a few seconds later heard Fido hit the ground. Going to work on getting another basil plant...not that Fido could ever be replaced, as he was such a loyal ally in the fight against mosquitos, but we will need another soldier to carry on the good fight.

happy birthday sarah!

Yesterday was my roommate Sarah's birthday. For her birthday she wanted to go out for dinner with a few friends.

In the end we had a group of seven and more food than I've eaten thus far this week in total! I'm going to need to learn to eat like an Italian if I want to survive another night out like last night. We started the evening off at Botticella's (Sarah's friend Giovanni owns the bar) with a bottle of prosecco between the 4 girls, met the guys at a restaurant that I can't quite remember the name of, had appetizers (flat bread with proscuitto and fresh mozzarella), dinner (I had fettucine al salmone), some vino rosso (red wine), and then Sarah had some dessert -

with candles we snuck to the waitstaff, then back to Botticella's for a few more drinks and another surprise dessert from Giovanni. All in all an excellent night....but we were so full we could hardly walk home! It took us much longer than usual as it just wasn't possible to walk at our normal quick pace.


PS. To my family that's visiting in a week and a half - we are going back to that restaurant :)

going the natural route

So the big news in Rome is......the mosquitos are waaay worse than initially reported. My left arm appears to have the chicken pox, which is totally impossible considering I've already had them. Believe me, I remember it well - I had to miss trick-or-treating when I was in kindergarten because of those stupid red bumps! I also remember being selfishly happy when a freak ice storm made it near impossible for ANYONE to trick-or-treat that year.

Anyways, back to the point. Mosquitos. Tiger mosquitos specifically. They are in the U.S. too, but not in Iowa - at least not yet! They are in Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansa, Missouri, and Illinois and most of the southeast...so I'm sure we're not far behind. So far between my roommate and I, we have purchased an anti-histamine for the itch, something with cortisol in it to reduce the size of bites, bug spray, and today I picked up a basil plant. Apprently the little buggers really hate the smell of basil, so we were told to put a basil plant in our windowsill to discourage them from entering.

I'm very excited about our 'natural remedy', but after getting the little guy home and set out, I'm thinking he's a tad small for our window. What do you think?

roman mosquitos - like ours, but on steroids

First off - just wanted to say happy anniversary to my parents! I think it's been 28 years since they tied the knot, so if you see them, say congratulations. 28 years together and 24 of putting up with my crazy schemes is pretty commendable if you ask me!

So far Rome has been very good to me. I've mastered (mostly) the art of getting in and out of the many doors to my apartment with the tricky keys and locks that go with each of them. I'm familiar with the city center area - at least where the market is at. I can navigate to the closest (that I'm aware of) grocery store - and today found another, albeit smaller, fruit & vegetable market that is close to the grocery store. My Italian is still very limited, but I am very good at saying hello, please, and thank you :P Luckily my roommate Sarah speaks a good amount of Italian and has spent a lot of time in Rome before; she has been invaluable in my getting acquainted with the city so far!

Today I went in search of a pharmacy with a note that Sarah and I crafted in Italian by combining her Italian skills and filling in the blanks with an online dictionary. We've both had bug bites and were unsure of what they were. I've had one the past 3 days on my finger that has only gotten more swollen and more itchy, so today it was time to get it taken care of! I introduced myself with a "Ciao, non parle italiano" and a apologetic look, the pharmacist read my note, looked at my finger and said it was mosquitos! They must have some SERIOUS mosquitos here considering the perseverance of this bite. She gave me some gel to put on it and sent me on my way. I love that there aren't screens on the windows here, but I'm definitely dealing with the consequences of it now.

I've started doing some serious hunting down of relevant articles for my thesis research and it's not going very well so far. I'm attributing this to the fact that not many (or any) other people seem to have studied what I am so far, which right now is wayfinding in small-scale retail environments. The unstable internet is only adding to my frustration on that front!

Looking forward to my first skype date with my mom in a little while. I love traveling and honestly don't miss home, but I do miss the people there. It'll be nice to see and talk to friends and family through more than just emails and my blog once in awhile. Yay for webcams!

in roma!

Well 1 night in boring Patras, Greece, 1 very long 21-hour boat ride across the Adriatic Sea, several dull hours @ the Ancona, Italy train station, and 4 excrutiatingly slow hours via regional train across Italy....I have finally arrived in Rome, where I shall stay (excepting a few possible side trips) for the next 2 months. My apartment is insanely hard to find and I'm looking forward to exploring the neighborhood in the morning (it's past midnight here now.) For now I'm ready to catch up on a few emails and then hit the sack. Looking forward to really unpacking my stuff for more than 2 days for once!