We decide to rise early this morning and head onto Rome. Maybe because once we know we’re leaving, neither one of us likes to hang around, or maybe the signs of yet another festival in town and the fear of impending crowds and parking regulations drive us away. Either way, by 8:15 we have our bags ready and down at the corner.
Chris runs the keys into Mario and comes out a few minutes later and says, “Go talk to Mario.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but he’s speaking quickly in Italian and I can’t figure out what he wants.” Just then Mario appears at the door and Chris heads up Via Roma to fetch Claudio. I give Mario a buon giorno and listen to him as he hands me a card and begins to speak. I get it. He wants me to tell my friends about his hotel. So here it goes. He owns Albergo Giardino right across from the Piazza Cavour in Montalcino. You can’t beat the location and he’s the sweetest man but I can’t vouch for the rooms, as I’ve never seen them. It’s next door to Ristorante Giardino but I think they’re related in name only. You can reach him at 0577 848257 or cell phone 338 6843163 and he’s Mario Caselli. Oh and if anyone does contact him, tell him the “runner and his wife” say, “Hi” that should be enough to identify us, but remember, Mario does not speak English.
While I wait for Chris to bring down Claudio, I talk with the three ladies from Boston who stayed in the next apartment. Funny, we were there all week and didn’t meet them until the morning we’re leaving.
Chris brings Claudio down, we pack him up and Mario yells “Ciao Ciao” as we climb in, drive around the piazza and head on our way. It’s sad leaving and both of us comment that we could easily spend a month if not more in and around Montalcino.
Our ride to Rome is uneventful and we are both looking forward to our last night in the City. About 10:00, we touch base with Sandro and later his dad and arrange to meet at 11:30 at the airport. We run into a bit of traffic merging onto the GRA but nothing like the one to two hour horror stories we’d heard. Yet, I remember the GRA being three lanes and now due to all the construction it’s only two through most of it.
We arrive at the rental car return about 11:15 and have no problems returning it. NOTE: It appears Europcar return while still in parking garage B can now be accessed by the shared entrance for parking garage A and B – there are signs but it will be on your right as you approach the parking garages not the left.
After we drop the car, we head through the maze of tunnels back to the terminal and can’t believe the mass of people gathered around the rental car agency areas waiting to pick up. We’re both more convinced than ever that the 55€ we spent to pick up our car off-site was more than worth it (aka one of the better values of this trip).
Once inside the terminal our phone rings, and it’s Sandro. His father’s downstairs on the lower level but he says it’s too complicated to direct us so he’ll have his father drive around again and pick us up on the departure level. Five minutes later, we’re in the car and heading back to Rome.
Diomio! I can’t believe the traffic once we approach Piazza Navona. Rome is jammed and it takes us two tries, negotiating with a parked truck and navigating some pedestrians who don’t understand that these tiny alleys are roadways too before we finally are able to pull up in front of our hotel, Teatro Pace (BTW I notice the construction next door seems to be completed and they’ve put a sign next to the front door of the hotel). We make arrangements for tomorrow morning’s pick-up, say good-bye to Sandro’s Dad, and head inside.
Our room isn’t ready yet but they’re holding our bags and tell us by three it should be fine. It’s 12:30 now, and that’s not bad, 4 hours from Montalcino to our hotel in Rome, including rental car return.
We had skipped breakfast earlier, so our first stop is the Bar around the corner (Caffe Tormillina on Via Tormillina) for some espresso before we set out for some shopping. First stop, the jewelry store just off the Piazza Della Rotunda where we buy four nomination charms, a wolf for me, a pantheon for Sammi, the letter “C” for Becky (‘C’ was the only fake charm she owned and she wanted a real one), and a Roma for my friend, Lisa, who was helping out my Mom while we were away. 56€ later, and some beautifully wrapped packages (though I put my charm right on my bracelet), we’re on to our next stop, the AS Roma Store.
Wait, it’s almost one and we’re meeting Peter at Pasquales for lunch, so we decide to head there instead and hit the AS Roma store after lunch. Peter’s running late, and well, I’m starved so we start and figure he’ll catch up. We share some zucchini pizza and artichoke pizza while we wait for the sausage and mushroom to finish cooking. Sometime during this, Peter arrives with the family he’d been touring with that morning in tow. We’re all seated upstairs, talking about different sites they can visit while they’re in Tuscany, their mini-nightmare traveling over (the flight was oversold and the father and son ended up flying through Munich while the mother and daughter ended up flying through Frankfurt), and politics back home.
Lunch goes quickly and before you know it, we’re saying good-bye to Peter, who has to catch his train back to Chiusi and the family from Colorado. I still can’t believe that was our first and only pizza of this trip. We head over to AS Roma and arrive just before a group of German school children on a field trip swarm the store. We pick out two short sleeve shirts for the girls but Chris is out of luck; they’re completely out of authentic team jerseys.
Okay, we’ve had lunch, we’ve done a bit of shopping, and it’s mid-late afternoon. What time is it? You got it, gelato time! We head to Giolliti first but they don’t have Coco so we’re off to our old favorite Fiocce de Neve. Chris gets his coconut and I get bacio and pistachio. Theirs is probably some of the better pistachio I’ve had on this trip. Yummy.
On our way back to the hotel, we stop and call the girls. Sammi immediately asks if I have her charm and I tell her of course, to which she replies, “Now make sure you put it in a small bag and in a safe place.” You see I lost her charm on our way home last January. I assure her it’s safe and we head to the hotel.
We ask if our room is ready; it is. We leave our two larger bags downstairs in the area behind reception, since we don’t need anything from them for our night and bring up the wine bag and overnight bag. Our room is 209 (thankfully not high up since they don’t have an elevator). It’s a nice room maybe slightly larger than our last one with the same high ceilings and decent size bathroom (smallish shower). I empty my healthy back bag of the non-essentials and we’re out again.
Next, we’re off to the Cat Sanctuary. Yesterday, Kelly had on this adorable t-shirt from the Sanctuary, picturing all these cats holding balloons almost floating out of the Coliseum and we think it would make a good gift for the girls. We visit with the cats for a bit as we talk to a woman manning the souvenir desk. She shows us a couple of different tees, and we end up with the same one Kelly had for Becky, and one with a picture of a Pinky cat eating a big plate of spaghetti for Sammi. They’re 12€ each and for a good cause.
Now, I’m getting hot (it’s 35˚C), tired and I can’t stand the crowds. If this were my first visit to Rome, I’d hate it. It’s not just crowded with individuals but with groups that swarm and block narrow passageways as they jostle to keep up with their umbrella-handling leader. As much as I wanted to visit Villa Giulia I know that’s not happening today and opt to duck into Nick’s Wine Bar (Via Dogana Vecchia 9/10 – if coming from Piazza Navona, hang a right, and then it will be on your left) instead.
Daphne, from 3 Millennium, introduced us to Nick’s during our January trip. Subsequently, we spent every night (except Sunday because they’re closed) under the care of Lorenzo (who speaks wonderful English) and Lidia (who speaks no English). Lidia is a Sommelier but I’m not sure about Lorenzo. Either way, we’d walk in, describe the type of wine we were in the mood for and they would nail it every time. By our last night, Lorenzo just poured us what he felt we’d like – very nice. Each evening, they’d also put up a little assortment of nibbles for us too. Others came and went as we sat there but we were the only “plants.”
It’s still early when we arrive and since Nick’s is also a ‘café’, Italians still stop by for a café on the way to wherever they’re going. We each enjoy a glass of white and catch up with Lidia a bit. Finally, we decide to head back to the room to relax and return before dinner around 7:00. We tell Lidia we’ll be back later and head out to brave the crowds.
As we get back to the hotel, Chris has another Cola craving, so we stop back in our bar and he gets a cola and I get another café before we return to the room. The air conditioning is running full blast, so that it’s almost chilly but after being out in the heat, it feels good. I read and write a bit; Chris reads and snoozes a bit. About 7:00 we head back to Nick’s.
Whoa! What happened? It’s dark out and the receptionist at the Teatro Pace tells us it’s about to rain. Chris runs back upstairs and grabs our jackets. We dodge through groups of people, wondering what all those sitting outside in sidewalk café’s will do once the skies open up. The artists in the Piazza Navona scramble to get their wears packed away and I’m moving at my NYC pace in order to get to Nick’s before we’re soaked. About five minutes after we arrive, we see the lightning and here the thunder as the deluge starts.
Tonight, they pour Chris an Amarone, which until that moment, he totally forgot that he enjoys while I stick with my white wine (think I OD-ed on red last week). For tonight’s nibbles, they put a wheel of Gran Padano on the bar from which they pry some wedges for everyone to nibble, some get it with a drizzle of balsamico and some without. They also offer us some Oysters, which Chris loves but I pass.
We sit at Nick’s enjoying our wine, watching the rainfall, and listening to the great music they play (they say it’s a radio station but we could never find it on our dial), until about 8:30 when we head over to L’Orso Ottanta. Luckily, the rain has ended.
Originally, we were going to eat at Checchino Dal tonight but after the money fiasco on Thursday, Chris finally believes me that I really don’t need the fancy shmancy places. I figure we could go to a restaurant within walking distance (either Da Pallaro or L’Orso) for almost what it would cost us to go roundtrip taxi to Checchino without including the food. We opted for L’Orso because I wanted to capture some of the ‘magic’ of the multi-course antipasti of Puglia.
We make one wrong turn on our way to L’Orso (navigating without a map, I think that’s pretty good) and we arrive in time for our reservation at 9:00. Of course, reservations don’t seem to matter because they summarily ignore us and the group of four who pushed in front of us upon entering for about fifteen minutes before sitting them in the back and us in the side room. Yet they do seat the Italian couple that walked in after us first.
The front room has no guests and while all the waiters seem to rush around as if in a tizzy, they don’t seem nearly as crowded as I remember them on past visits. We sit in the back of the side room, in front of the long table along the back wall where a large group of American women from the south (as opposed to South American women) sit, laughing loudly and having a ball. I don’t begrudge them at all but of course there’s one in the group louder and “squealier” than the rest who seems to drive Chris as well as the other patrons a bit crazy.
It’s quite some time before we’re asked about our water and wine choices and more time before we’re brought some of the brick oven bread they make in the front room in the pizza oven, and even more time before our order is taken. As a matter of fact so much time, that an Italian couple and their child seated not far from us and after us, are served their risotto before our order is taken. Now, granted, in that time one of the two waiters serving our room broke a bottle of water that must be cleaned up but still….
We order the antipasti della casa and as always enjoy the cold selection of foods brought to us, too many things to name but we never receive any of the warm dishes I remember, things like fried vegetables, suppli, meatballs. Occasionally, I see other tables receive these dishes but not all of them and I’m wondering if they’ve changed the house antipasti. Finally, Chris asks for the suppli, which they do bring (and don’t tack on a charge) but nothing else.
I want the mini-strawberries for dessert but they ran out and bring me some of the bigger ones, which are still good. Chris has his parting sambucca and we’re out of there about 40+€ poorer, thinking, we should have gone to Da Pallaro.
We stop at Blue Ice on our way home for one last gelato and then hit the hay.
