So, before finishing up our Scotland blog posts with reports on Speyside, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, let’s fill you in on our first two stops in Italy: Rome and Florence.  This post will cover our quick 38 hours in what’s popularly known as the Eternal City (Urbs Aeterna), and then we’ll follow that up with the 2-day stop in our city in Tuscany, Firenze.

If you'll remember Brad, the likeable Sixt rental car agent in London, he himself a Scotsman, well, Brad encouraged me to leverage my double-Scots Gaelic name throughout our Highlands journey.  Lead with your name, mate. With a name like Glenn Gordon, they’ll welcome you as one of their own.  We’ll get into a bit of my heritage exploration when we post about our three nights in Speyside.

And on 5 September, after our 3 weeks in Tuscany, we’ll ride the rails to Foggia and its coastal neighbor Vieste, the home of Nancy’s nonna paterna, her father's mother.  Several of her siblings and extended kin have pursued Nancy’s family history in Puglia and Calabria; we may do a bit of that ourselves in a week or so.

But first, to Roma.

A pleasantly uneventful 3-hour RyanAir flight from Edinburgh put us into Rome’s secondary Ciampino Airport at just before 1pm, the facility’s diminished status soon evident by infrequent connections to the city’s center.  We coulda shoulda snagged a FreeNow cab, but decided we’d save a few bucks and wait for the bus. *slap forehead now*  40 minutes and 95 degrees Fahrenheit later, we boarded for a 10-minute meander to the scrawny suburb rail station, then a half hour wait for a train, and a 15-minute whoosh to Rome’s Central Termini station, and finally a mere 6-minute walk to our fourth floor AirBnB, via an old school phone booth-sized elevator that barely fit both of us with our luggage.

Worth the effort, in any case.  Our place was nice and airy (and air-conditioned!!) with high ceilings and maybe a view, the drapes remained strategically closed because of the intense heat. 

After cool showers, we slow walked our 3-mile late afternoon reconnoiter into the city hub - basically the Forum and back.  Clearly by then, the intense heat had driven most tourists back into their cooled lodging sanctuaries, so the crowds were light.

Crazy thing . . . and we talked about it as we walked along the Via Cavour . . . had we jusat flown in from Seattle or Charleston or Philadelphia, our initial reaction to Rome would probably have been quite different.  But no, we had just come from 2 weeks in the oldy old Scotland, conquered and architecturely influenced by the Romans in the first millineum, and I guess our brains were oldened out. We'd temporarily OD'd on old.  So, the wow didn't smack us in the face like we thought it would. 

Not until the next day

We dined late (for us) at a randomly-chosen restaurant/sandwich shop, Bono Monti, a few blocks from our apartment.  Learning of our American roots, our Moroccan server embarrassed and enlightened us with the revelation that Morocco was the first country to acknowledge the USA as a sovereign nation back in 1775.  Who knew?  Not us!

A cool bottle of Pinot Grigio and generous portions of Nonna’s handmade Roman-style meatballs (photo below), led to Casio pepe, Smoked scamorza cheese with porcini mushrooms; and Tirolese mixed salad with radicchio, beechwood smoked speck, gorgonzola, and walnuts.  So good.  So Bono. (Psst, that's their slogan.). The tiramisu looked fabulous, but we were beyond stuffed, though we graciously accepted complimentary digestif pours of housemade limoncello.  And as a side note, the offerings at their connected-by-a-lobby sister sandwich shop, Bono Bottega Nostrana, looked outstanding.  We’d go back just for a couple of those.  And some tiramisu.

We finished our walk with the Trevi Fountain and a lap around the Colosseum.  

Yeah, for seeing so much, we realize how much we didn’t see.  Next time we plan to come for 4-5 days, and spend the time necessary for St. Peter’s, the Pantheon, and the Colosseum.  Add in the Vatican and its museums, and the Sistine Chapel.  The artwork in the Galleria Borghese.  We’re not huge fans of the crowds, so we’d have to time it right.

Returning from our mega-walk, we relaxed in the A/C for a few hours after long showers, then FreeNow’d to the Travastere area overlooking the city.  Very fresh, upbeat, with clusters of bistros and wine bars.  Lots of younguns dressed up for a night out, but also plenty of local middle-agers and beyond. 

I’d read a rave review of the Essenza Wine Bar, and we lucked out with our timing, securing a cozy window table with a view of the burgeoning masses in the alleyway outside.  As this was dinner,  we opted for their house tagliere board for two: 5 varied cheeses (3 hard - 2 soft), 5 meats, juicy cantelope, plump green grapes, local honey, and moist buffalo mozzarella with basil and cherry tomato.  There was also a dish of ricotta cheese with truffle cream and black sesame seeds, as well as two pairs of saltine-sized bruscetta, one with pumpkin and bacon, the other featuring parma ham with smoked cheese and mushroom cream.  Oh, and some creamy blue cheese with self-grated dark chocolate. Gulp.  For wines we each enjoyed two glasses:  Pecorino 2015 Terre di Chieti and Trebbiano d’Abruzzo 2015 Masciarelli (both superb, and only €6.00 - about $7 US - for a healthy medium pour).  Afterward, we wandered the neighborhood for a bit, and unfortunately,  chose wrong for our post-prandial gelatos.  Won’t name the place.