Ella and Francisco

Ella and I visited Rome and Siena from 5/4/08 to 5/18/08. We had a great experience visiting this amazing part of the world for the first time. Every day we walked extensively in both places. We also made use of the local bus and train systems to get around in each city and to journey from Rome to Siena and back. Some of the highlights of our trip included:

• The food, which required constant sampling. I had a wonderful stuffed-pepper dish in Rome at an osteria by our apartment in Trastevere. Ella had an amazing pasta alla carbonara in Rome. The gellato overflowed everywhere we went. And the coffee was truly good, including every capuccino we sampled in bars and restaurants.
• All the big site in Rome, including St. Peter’s square and the Basillica, the Vatican Museum, the Circus Maximus and Coliseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, the Villa Borghese,  and every piazza we discovered just by turning the corner.
• In Siena, the Duomo and the Piazza del Campo were the big sites. The Campo is the site of the annual horse race, the Palio. We could not enter the tower at the campo because they were filming the next installment of the James Bond series (the Quantum of Solace, whatever that means).
• Our neighborhood was the old Jewish ghettoe in Rome near the river Tiber. We crossed the river everyday to get into the ancient part of Rome.
• The view from our agriturismo in Siena was like a painting. At night we could see the lights of the villas all over the Chianti countryside. We actually ordered pizza on our first night in Siena.

Some life lessons I learned on our trip to Italy include:

• A combination of English, Spanish, high-school French, and phrase-book Italian does not compensate for not speaking Italian. Most people seemed less frustrated if I just spoke English.
• Deodorant does not last on a multi-leg flight. It just doesn’t.
• The pasta is truly better in Italy.
• Every ill can be cured by taking an afternoon walk while eating a scoop of gellato.
• You can get tired of seeing amazing sites every day, so you need to space it apart with doses of pizza and wine.

Next time we plan to visit other areas of Italy in order to keep sampling the gellato and write a paper on the regional impact of gellato manufacturing processes.

The link below will take you to the hundreds of pictures we took during our trip:

Italy Pictures

Some of our favorites are below.

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