Every day is full of surprises and around every corner is another delight; Rome is wonderful, and even thought the temperature got up to 34 degrees yesterday and forecast for 37 today, it’s good to know there’s air-con back at the hotel – phew.
Yesterday the plan was to post some gear back home that I won’t need (I overpacked), visit the Pantheon and then Trastevere for lunch. All went to plan and I reduced my luggage by 4kg.
It still amazes me how many tourists there are at the touristy spots, funny that. All the outdoor trattoria’s in the popular places like the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon are full, business must be good, but eating on a busy street with scooters and cars racing by doesn’t appeal to me – I prefer the shady back street places.
It’s surprisingly cool inside the Pantheon and it’s such a beautiful round room, no extra bits leading off anywhere – just one big curved room with a big hole in the dome open to the sky, what a clever way to ventilate.
Nanarella in Trastevere served me the best carbonara I have ever had with big chunks of bacon and no eggy slop, a generous amount of parmesan to make it thick and tasty, I was tempted to ask for a second helping.
The La Feltrinelli Bookshop is huge with books in all languages, I was looking for antiquity style maps and a place to chill out for a bit – it has the best air-con I’ve come across by far!
On the Lime bike back to the hotel I turned off my route and wound up an interesting looking hill to Parco Savello which seems to be thee spot for weddings. Giardino degli Aranci has views out across Rome and the photographers use the distant St Peter’s Basilica as a backdrop for the nuptials.
Must mention I’ve switched over to my Italian TIM sim card. Vodafone/One in NZ charge $8 a day roaming which adds up, for example, 4 weeks would be $240, instead I paid €20 (NZ$35) for 100Giga bytes of data (yes, 100!) and unlimited texts and calls. The was nothing to update or change and my WhatsApp just stayed as it was – magic! The wifi is patchy just about everywhere I stay, in Naples it went down completely for two days at the place I was staying. I seem to get much better connectivity hot-spotting to my phone – yup, loadza data.
