Lunedi a Roma!

Boungiorno Paisanos!

We're off on our Roman Holiday!

For those of you having trouble keeping up with Claudia and Jeffrey (we know, we know: one day it's Madrid, the next Paris, and the third it's Snellville), we skipped our planned trip to Tokyo and instead are spending a week in The Eternal City. As I write this the bells of St. Peter's are wringing in the background, which is odd, considering it's 7:15 AM. Ah well, Italian efficiency -- La Dolce Vita! (another movie reference; here is a much more wholesome one).

We woke to a beautiful sunrise onboard Delta flight 240, here looking over the port wing and engine nacelle of the Airbus A330 (click on photo for larger view of this and all images):

Looking over the port wing of DL420 Airbus A330

Had no problem at the airport. We are renting an apartment and arranged with the service to have a car and driver pick us up. Bilo (pronounced "Bill-o") was thus there to greet us. He was a good driver, bringing us up to date on the expected weather, suggesting places to eat and see, and chatting in general while navigating morning Rome rush hour traffic.

Which we did in record time. Bilo dropped us at the apartment about an hour before our early check-in time of 9:30. The housekeepers were still cleaning up from the last guests, so the agent, "Mr. Honey," deposited us at Sorpasso, a restaurant right around the corner (actually, as it turned out, in the same building as the apartment, but on the other side of the complex).

Sorpasso, where we cooled our jets while waiting for the apartment to be cleaned

Odd how we always seem to start these trips off with food as the theme. Sorpasso was one of the highly-rated eateries that Claudia had on her "hit list," and here we were, not even checked in at the apartment, and already seeing things like this:

Sorpasso just lets it all hang out. This may put you off your breakfast, but not me!

Right there, just hanging out in public! Shocking!

Speaking of shocking, the city fathers are getting serious about cleaning up graffiti. Here we see the graffiti police (in blue) with the workman (in orange) who paints over the graffiti. For some reason the policeman got very Vin-Diesel-irate with my taking this photo. I haven't a clue why. So I took a couple more just to see if he would yell at me in English after he finished yelling at me in Italian. Nope, he stuck with the native tongue.

Vin Diesel wannabe directs the efforts of the anti-grafitti painter

Anyway, after a couple of espressos and tea and cookies, Mr. Honey collected us and took us to the apartment. Now this place is sweet. It's two levels on the inside with a bonus on the outside. The bottom is the master suite, the top is a den/kitchen that leads out onto a veranda:

Kitchen leading onto veranda

The view from the kitchen onto the veranda, and yes, that's Saint Peter's Basilica in the background:

San Pietro as seen through the kitchen door leading onto the veranda

The veranda has some nice touches and a great view of Saint Peter's Basilica (that's Claudia enjoying the view):

Lower veranda; note spiral staircase.

Nifty window looking into den. Kitchen is to the left, through the glass door.

Claudia enjoying the view from the lower veranda

Spiral staircase

That spiral staircase in the corner leads up to another veranda, this one with a commanding 360 degree view:

Upper veranda

St. Peter's from the upper veranda

Upper veranda with Palace of Justice in background

Close-up of the Palace of Justice from the upper veranda. What must Amanda Knox and her parents think of this place?

 After depositing our stuff, we headed out to lunch. And when in Rome…

Pizzarium lunch

Yes, that's right, we got pizza; a "slice" of meatball and another of "Spring salad on four local cheeses" (zucchini, ramps, leeks, asparagus, etc.) at Pizzarium, another recommended eatery. The Spring salad pizza is a specialty of this little niche in Rome. Each "slice" was about twice what I would normally have for lunch, so we WAY over-ate!

Next, we headed on to Saint Peter's Basilica. So much has been written about this, the largest church in Christendom, that I'll just let you look it up on ta Google. Crowds were immense and a lot of it was roped off inside and out as workmen were making it all spiffy for Holy Week. We did not spy Pope Francis, but according to Bilo, he is wildly popular in Rome and Italy, so he may have been out signing autographs or washing the feet of the poor or some such.

I did get a couple of photos that I thought were pretty neat. Here's the obligatory shot looking up at the inside of the dome, but with sunbeams catching all the dust from the Spring cleaning they're giving the place:

San Pietro inside dome

Here's a shot from around the corner, showing lots of angles and somehow reminding me of an MC Escher drawing:

MC Escher was here!

This pretty much wore us out. Recall that we'd just flown in this morning and haven't slept much since night before the night before in Atlanta. So, we decided to head back to Sorpasso for dinner, since as mentioned it's highly recommended. Looking up from our table, we could see the back of our building through the skylight. That's us on the right:

Sorpasso is known for being a nice wine bar/cafe, and of course any place that hangs their meat right out front (see above) it all right by me. The appetizer of top-shelf parma ham and buffalo cheese did not disappoint:

Parma ham and buffalo cheese at Sorpasso

However, my dinner of lamb kabobs and Claudia's tagliatelle with artichokes and pancetta failed to please, and indeed, didn't even rate photography!

And so off to bed! I'll leave you here with San Pietro in the evening:

San Pietro in the evening