Travel, Day 12

Travel, Day 12

Rome to Milan to Barcelona

April 24

Today has been all about getting from point A to point B and it wasn’t until Barcelona that we started getting tired of it, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

We woke up this Easter morning to traditional Easter cake called Colombo, which means dove.  It is a lovely cake that comes around only once a year. Walking to the train station was better this time as we avoided certain unsavory parts of the neighborhood near the station. The ride from Rome to Milan is very smooth going over 300 kilometers an hour and it was a kind of bitter sweet ride as we were leaving the beautiful fields and orchards of central Italy to go to the industrial and commercial northern Italy and finally say goodbye. With Shana just getting the hang of Italian, and me getting finally brushed up on mine, we will miss the romantic eloquence with which Italians communicate. Having enjoyed Pizza (too many to list), Gelato, Focaccia, cheese (again too many to list), Pasta (again too many to list), Bread (again too many to list), and….  Wine: Frizzante, Spumante, Rose’, White, and Red.  Sights and more sights. The list goes on and on. We got to the airport good and early, by now pro at the public transportation scene in Italy. Actually we seemed to be just plain LUCKY with our transport to the airport, as I thought we were to go to the Malpensa airport and ended up at the Linate airport, which turned out to be the right one anyway. The flight was a little hour and a half jump from country to country.  We are totally jealous all these Europeans can do this so easily as we are semi dreading a long flight over the Atlantic and then all the states.

Barcelona transportation is very well organized and clearly marked, which makes it relatively easy to get around if you don’t speak the Spanish.  There were many times in Italy we were glad we could communicate with Italians, but here there seen fewer bus drivers and people in general that speak English in Barcelona, but the great urban planning and slick public transportation reduce the need for that type of communication which was good for us . The Barcelona airport is clean, organized, and has ja sensible flow to it and we found a bus that would go to our hotel super easy. Stoked we were only going to spend three Euro to get there we settled in.  After a couple stops we found ourselves regretting not paying more for a taxi as we weren’t the only ones with luggage and “packed liked sardines” doesn’t even come close to how tight we were in there. 

The B Hotel is ultramodern and fits in well with Barcelona’s focus on architecture and appealing shapes and colors.

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 It has a pool on the roof that spills over the edge overlooking the Spanish plaza and the rooftop patio boasts amazing view of the sunset and the city. It is situated next to a large shopping mall that looks like a huge bull fighting arena and more than a few excellent restaurants.

Dinner was at Tapa Gaudi. 

 Shana was intent on ordering the Goat Cheese salad as she had fond memories of goat cheese salads she’d had in Barcelona years ago.  For good reason apparently, as the salad that was delivered had a huge cross section of nice dense goat cheese along with super fresh mixed greens, egg, raisins, and a sweet vinaigrette that was an all perfectly scrumptious combination.

  We ordered a bottle of Rosado Frizzante from the local Catalan area that tasted like fresh tangerines and we also had a plate of cured Iberian hams which had a sampling of five different delicious types and a plate of salty stuffed olives.  Spaniards really love their salty meats, cheeses and tapas and WE really love the salty Spanish meats, cheeses and tapas!  We were happy to have such a refreshing acidic wine with a little bit of citrusy fruit to cut through our rich and salty Spanish Dinner.  YUMMY!  Hello Catalan Cuisine!

Rome, Day 11

Rome Day 11

Rome, Italy

April 23

 

           We woke up with tired feet and worn out bodies, vowing not to do a lot of walking today.  Somehow, though we found ourselves afoot once again toward the Coliseum to see it during the daylight hours and see where the wind blew us from there.  We followed the Roman Forum from the Coliseum toward the Victor Emmanuel Monument, the excavated ruins showing far below the current ground level of Rome.  It captivated us to see how far below the city streets sat the once great downtown plaza of the Roman Empire.

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  The Victor Emmanuel Monument is a massive sculptural building that is relatively new for Rome being built in the early 1900’s.  Once there, we climbed to its rooftop balconies for panoramic views of the city.

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We exited the monument from its upper level onto Capitoline Hill on which it sits and strolled to the adjacent Campidolgio, a famous piazza design by Michelangelo and famous for its architectural expression of vanishing points and three dimensional perspective.  There we saw a small sculpture that AJ loved of a mysterious medieval hooded man with a sword.  There was no plaque or description of who this sculpture represented, but after researching it a bit later we learned that it was a sculpture of Cola di Rienzo.  We found his story extremely dramatic and interesting, and we recommend linking to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_di_Rienzo  to read about a humble man rising to extreme power, letting it go to his head and then eventually getting mobbed and killed by his own people (An all-around captivating medieval tale).  All along the leading back to the Coliseum there were musicians, artists and costumed human “statues” vying for the tourists’ attention and coins.  Our favorite was the man who perfectly resembled the Statue of Cola di Rienzo. His costume and movements were extremely well done.  See the photos of the actual statue and the photo of the impersonator for comparison.  We were impressed!

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                 For dinner, we headed to a particular street dotted with a few recommended restaurants.  We chose this street solely because we like its name, “Sommelier!”  We settled into Santa Croce Restaurant to be entertained a restaurant run by another proud Roman family.  This place was pretty much staffed with only family members, aunts, uncles, sons, and daughters… the works.  Our server was the son of the owner.  We took his recommendations and ordered the Roast Lamb with potatoes and the Saltimbocca.  We started with a Frizzante, one of our newly developed favorites, and then tried a Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo.   Montepulciano is a neighboring DOCG of Montelcino where we visited Castello Banfi.   It sits on the East coast of Tuscan Italy and had been eager to compare this red wine to the Brunello of Montelcino.  It was fabulous!  Extremely well balanced, with nice violet and herb notes mixed with vanilla and aged raspberry.  I got welcome wafts of root beer upon each sip. 

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                 When he delivered Pugliese bread to the table, we decided to inquire as to why we hadn’t seen a lot of Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar in accompaniment to the bread as we see so much in the USA.  He explained something about that being more of an American development and that the olive oil sits in the stomach and fills you up before dinner.  We decided that didn’t make a lot of sense since the Italians always offer pasta, often adorned with olive oil, as a first course before the Entrée.  We smiled and nodded and he brought us the house EVOO and Balsamic so we could compare it to our Jasoh gourmet.  The verdict?  Jasoh EVOO and balsamic CANNOT bet beat!  After AJ’s lengthy conversations in Italian with our server we had become good friends.   The beauty I thought was that I actually caught about 50% of what was being said instead of being completely in the dark as I mostly had been through these Italian discussions for the past ten days… ironic since we were to leave Italy in the morning!  Anyway, AJ’s Italian banter once again paid off and we were gifted with Grappa and Limoncello and also a bottle of Castelli Romani Red Wine with a special “Santa Croce Ristorante Pizzeria” label on it for safekeeping.  Gratzie Santa Croce Ristorante!  Benissimo!

Rome, Day 10

Rome Day 10

Rome, Italy

April 22, 2011

 

How much ground can one cover in a single day by foot in Rome. 

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This much!  Today was a sightseeing marathon.  We somehow managed to hit a dozen tourist attractions by foot and feed the Roman economy by fitting in an impressive amount of clothing shopping along the way.  Sightseeing pit stops by metro and mostly by foot around the city included Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, the Tiber River, and the Vatican.  Our sightseeing stops also included Armani, Versace, and Diesel.   The latter where we accidently forgot we were just sightseeing and bought a few things.  Ooops!  Well it is my birthday so splurging a little should be acceptable, right?

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After hoofing it all over town, weaving through mobs of people, and spending lots of Euro, we drug ourselves back to the hotel to freshen up for the night’s highlight, dinner reservations at Glass Hosteria in the Trastevere neighborhood.  Glass Hosteria acquired a Michelin Star two years ago and we were excited to check it out…   We arrived at Trastevere by taxi, which took us along the River to take in some excellent views of Rome at night including the burly San Angelo Fortress.  We then wound through a maze of tiny Trastevere streets adorned with ancient cobblestone.  Traveler’s Tip:  Do not wear four inch stilletto’s in Trastevere.  EVER.  It doesn’t matter if you have reservations at a great restaurant.  I ended up riding on AJ’s back most of the way in order not to break something trying to navigate in my high heels.

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Glass Hosteria is a tiny restaurant with pristine contemporary design including glass windows in the floor with champagne bottles below.  The tables were all a made of thick aqua glass adorned with black slate placemats and golden yellow linen napkins.  The stone placemats added wonderful modern texture to the table setting.  We were greeted with the chef’s amuse bouche, house made sesame bread sticks packed with flavor and crunch.  We browsed the menu and earmarked what we thought were the most interesting dishes on the menu.  We then summoned the in-house Sommelier to help us pair wine.  The wine list was 43 pages thick, offering only Italian wine, so suggestions from the Sommelier was hugely helpful.  After choosing two glasses of wine to match our starters and a bottle to cover the rest of dinner we embarked on our little gastronomic journey.

As the food was delivered, we were sorely disappointed to realize we had left our camera behind, as the presentation of our dishes were all masterfully crafted…  we wondered if Nathan was back in the kitchen plating because of the extreme similarity in style and beauty of these dishes to the way ours are presented at Jasoh!  Well done.

First we had the beef Tartar with wasabi, orange, fried bread crumbs, mircogreens and tobiko.  This was the best beef tartar we had ever had.  It was very fresh and well-seasoned, had great texture, and was delicious with both the Chardonnay and the local Pinot Nero we had ordered by the glass.  Our other starter, shrimp with melon puree, and fried paper thin pasta sheets.  The texture of the dish was nice, but the flavors left something to be desired. 

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Our next courses included a pan seared white fish with lemon crème, deep fried polenta died with squid ink, and a nice artichoke sauté.  We thought it was well prepared, but our Chef Nathan could have taken that dish to a much higher level with our Wood Oven, our citrus extra virgin olive oils, and Nathan’s wonderfully creative starches for more texture.  Next we had fois grois filled raviolis with amaretto and apples.  It was very tasty and the pasta was as fresh as it gets.  We would have loved to see the ravioli more plump, packed with more fois grois, but the flavors were awesome and it was amazing with our bottle of 2002 Jermann Chardonnay-Sauvignon Blanc from Gorizia, one of the towns AJ had lived in in 2002!   With the connections to AJ’s past and us noting that Jermann has won some recent winemaking awards we made the choice for this bottle after much conversation with the Sommelier.  Aging had done great things to this wine, giving it a unique sweet cream butter approach with a nice acidic short finish.  The wine was extremely full bodied and rich and we enjoyed it throughout the rest of our dinner, while chatting endlessly with the friendly Sommelier all about wine.

 

We culminated the evening with hazelnut nougat paired with coriander ice cream, bid the friendly staff farewell and trekked back over crevice and cobble through Trastevere to hail a cab home. 

Florence to Rome, Day 9

Florence to Rome Day 9

April 21, 2011

 

AJ perfected his slick Smartcar maneuvering and creative parking as we zipped around Florence for a couple hours of sightseeing before we had to move south to Rome. This is the way to see the city!  Rent a smartcar, enter your sightseeing wishlist into a Tomtom navigator and away you go! We headed up along Michelangelo Avenue to reach the most famous view of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo which sits high up on a hill and allows views of the river below and the entire city with the largest brick Dome in the world, Duomo, the terracotta rooftops of the tightly packed city center, and the peaks and domes of many other masterful works of Renaissance architecture.  In the center of the Square sits the replica of Michealangelo’s David which gave us our quick Statue “Fix” since I had already seen the real thing and we just didn’t have time to waste in never ending lines at Academia.

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It was a divine day for walk… or maybe we shall call it a hike… so we headed next to the Boboli Gardens, the extreme expanse of skyscraping hedges and dirt-gravel paths leading to endless mini squares with statues, fountains and ponds.  Along the way, our senses were delighted with the scents in the lemon tree garden, the fairytale view of Tuscany off the back side of the Gardens which is reached by a procession of upward pathways and stairs of dirt, gravel and stone.  We imagined the important political conversations that could have taken place in these gardens as important Imperials would stroll through these gardens or ride through the wide gravel paths on their horses.

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We also explored the Fortress that surrounded the palace and gardens.  This was why the Medici family survived with such power for so long!  Their grounds were protected by a fortress than meant business!  Nobody was going to try and infiltrate this structure.

 

With tears in our eyes, we waived farewell to our Smartcar and Tomtom, and to the city of Florence.  We boarded a train for Rome and….   We slept for a while to recharge from the afternoon hike through history.

 

We arrived in Rome in the evening… with only enough time to get dinner and a small show.  The show of choice?... the Coliseum!  Our hotel was luckily only a fifteen minute walk from this Roman Engineering Masterpiece.  Along the way, we stopped at Le Clemintina, a family run Hosteria for some dinner.  The owners of this little joint were serving the guests with cheery pride and we could tell they had been doing the same, day in and day out for years.  The menu had some fun small portion items so we got to try several things for a only small hit to our wallet.  We tried their tempura battered veggies and whitefish.  We munched on diced potatoes that were herbed and fried to perfection.  We had a nice spaghetti basilico with red chili olive oil, and also delicious tapas sized saltimbocca prepared on skewers and sautéed.  We had a half bottle of Chianti Classico that upgraded from “not great” to “mediocre” after about twenty minutes of breathing time.  We then finished off dinner with an absolutely divine Chocolate Soufflé very similar to our Chocolate Boudino at Jasoh.  The chef kindly brought out an additional strawberry tort gratis and said hello to us as fellow restaurant owners.

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The Coliseum was beautifully lit up and we enjoyed the juxtaposition of this massive age old structure with hectic traffic and hordes of partying young people on the streets and going in and out of bars and clubs down below.  To the top left of this photo, you can see a rooftop restaurant that caught our eye.  We were too curious to not go into the five star hotels that housed it and see if we could check it out.  The concierge kindly obliged and directed us up to the top floor to speak with the Matre De about the menu and scope out the view of the Coliseum from a unique bird’s eye perspective.

Tomorrow we will try and fit in as many sights we can as Rome has so much to share!