Cobblestones & Carabinieri

Soaking-up-Italy time

When we landed in Italia we opted for the hour-long, eight-euro bus ride into the city over the 14-euro train and 40-euro taxi. Although it was our most time-consuming option from the airport, we were offically on soaking-up-Italy time so it was the best (so scenic!) route for us.

If anyone's ever told you to sit back and enjoy the ride, I'm pretty sure this is what they had in mind.

We were giddy as we stepped off the bus and onto our first real European cobblestones. About a mile down the road, we met our Italian landlady who lead us to our amazing apartment through a 20-foot-tall, green, double door, past the Fontana Romano and up a teeny-tiny lift. She handed over the keys and we were on our own.

We decided to start the night off with a walk down to Campo di Fiori for dinner and then the plan was to head to the Trevi Fountain and up the Spanish Steps.

No problem, right?

About a quarter mile down the road we got lost and were wandering around the streets of Rome. I approached a car with carabinieri (Italian military police?) written on the side to ask for directions.

"Parla inglese?" I asked.

"A little," they said. They all ended up getting out of the car for a better look (at our map). "A little" English turned out to be "less than a little" because we ended up having most of the conversation via Google translate. Asking for directions lead to them asking us to meet them for drinks when they got off work. At one point they told us they wanted to meet us "half past a field of flowers." I think that meant "1:30 a.m." But meeting for drinks quickly turned into "where is your hotel?" I'm pretty sure one of them wanted to be Jamie's new Italian boyfriend. It was unanimous, we didn't want to meet these Italian carabinieri for anything, anywhere.

We said "ciao" and headed on our way.

We found Campo di Fiori and a few seats at an outside cafe overlooking the square and the human river of young Italians drinking beer and eating gelato.

When in Rome...

I ordered the rossa della casa (house red) wine and we sampled our first Italian gelato on the way back to our apartment. I'd read these are the flavors of Rome best tasted after dark and I couldn't agree more.