Day 5 - Friday 9 April - Rome

Slept in until 9.30 - by the time we got organised it was close to 11am - headed over to Campo de Fiori (field of flowers) to check out the markets - really just one block south from where we are staying.

Bought a jacket for me up one of the streets leading off the market - a trench coat I will be able to wear back home as well as keeping a bit warmer here at night. Got some souvenirs for the girls - Murano glass rings and necklaces. Graham bought 2 t-shirts as well. Decided to bit the bullet and buy provisions for lunch - a little deli on the market - 2 slices of ham, 2 slices Porchetta (pork cooked in rosemary - delicious) and some cheese. The man was very patient…but I was in a cold sweat... bought some tomatoes from the market and picked up 2 Panini, a canola and a ricotta cake in a bakery on the way back to the apartment. Put it all together with a glass of our Pinot de Pinot from the supermarket and we were in heaven! The pork was especially delicious. Not really much cheaper than buying lunch from a cafe but definitively ‘funner’.

Met the tour guide - Gina - at 3pm for our culinary tour of this part of Rome - Gina and Daniela were very lovely guides and we were joined by Anna and Tom from Boston, and Jenna and Natalie from Toronto. We spent the afternoon getting totally disoriented and the bakery in the Jewish ghetto we visited was closed because Sabbath was about to start… we managed to visit a chocolate shop (and saw a E600 egg!), saw some gelato being made and tasted it (corn gelato - who would have thought of such a thing?) it was ‘belissimo’ - then we headed to a coffee shop where the process of roasting to coffee was described (didn’t get to see it, but it was interesting anyway) and finally ended up in one of the pizzeria/Panini/vino shops where we tasted Margarita pizza (tomato and cheese) and Marinara pizza (just tomato) - you buy it by weight - point to how much you want and the guy slams down his knife to cut it to size.

After all that food we decided a drink was in order, so we headed back to the ‘local’ after the tour and had a few drinks in the Irish pub down the road. Had dinner in a Trattoria up one of the laneways from the Irish pub - it was full of students and priests. Apparently we are still in Holy week and the children, nuns and priests will go home soon. I had spaghetti carbornara, graham had fettucine with mussels and clams - we shared a litre of house wine then staggered back home to bed, dodging the vespas and other cars in the cobbled lanes.