Just Another Stroll Down the Street

Imagine walking down a busy street in Rome.

The always busy street exiting from the Spanish Steps in Rome.

The tall, classically European buildings hover their upper level apartments over your head while the ground level is dedicated to everything commercial.  Store after store goes from phone dealer to clothier, pizzeria to coffee shop.  All the while, you are dodging the slower walkers in front of you like a game of Nintendo's Rad Racer avoiding cars.

During this exciting, real life adventure, you are with a friend or two, and they too are in the throws of the battle. Where you veer left, they must veer right, or they sneak tightly through a gap when you go around the moving object.  But when you get lost in friendly conversation, things can go awry. Laughter escapes your mouth and funny thoughts clog your mind. Right when you pass a clothing store entrance ... BAM!

"Oh my goodness, miss, are you OK?" You managed to stay on your feet.  The unlucky woman, however, fell hard to the ground. You don't wait for her to answer.

"I am so sorry!" You help the petite woman up from the ground, lifting her by the arm.

"I didn't see you at all!  I am so sorry!" So far she is speechless, likely fuming from being knocked over.

Then you look the mannequin in the face.

"Oh."

And the embarrassment sets in and you sneak glances around you to see if anyone saw the ordeal. Thank goodness! No one was watching... except the store manager.

Never ever has anyone looked at you more like a grumpy bulldog. Quickly averting the death stare, your face turned cherry red, you look at the mannequin, then the manager and quickly mutter, "Sorry," and walk away faster than you ever walked in known history.

This story was based on true events. Thankfully, it wasn't my true event, but a good friend of mine who lived out in Rome for a while. In any city, big or small, things like this can happen.

Have you ever done something embarrassing in public? Share your story.

Do NOT Eat at Flavio al Velavevodetto

This past week, my little blog celebrated its 50,000th page view within about a year and a few weeks from my original start date. Because there's a chance you have stumbled on my site as a tourist looking for great places to eat in Rome, I recommend that you do NOT eat at Flavio al Velavevodetto! 

This place has received too much attention from the foodie blogs of Rome and perhaps they've become too popular for the staff to handle a heavy workload.  My wife and I used to go there because it had a good name for the food, and because it used to be a Best Budget Eat in Rome with surprisingly good and affordable dishes. But things have changed. We are locals in Rome and we will never go back and neither should you.  There are much better restaurants in Rome that will be more attentive and serve better food than Flavio al Velavevodetto.

My wife and I brought our two friends there a week ago because this had always been our go-to place for great Cucina Romana, the authentic Roman pasta dishes. We honestly went about once a month for the past nine months. The past few times before, especially in August, we noticed the food was becoming less satisfactory than the beginning experiences. Portion sizes were dramatically smaller than usual, taste of food was just ok, pasta wasn't as al dente as usual, in our eyes, it began to fail in general. We remembered the food tasting much better.

The Amatriciana at Flavio al Velavevodetto used to be so good... used to be.

Every Italian takes holiday in August so I looked over the most recent negative experience thinking the usual chefs were on vacation, that the next time would be better. September rolled around, it was a Friday night so you know the normal chefs were there and we had our worst experience yet, so bad in fact that we will never again patron this restaurant while we live in Rome and will forever recommend that people skip it if they are considering it.

It was a mix of the service and food this night. Our server forgot to bring us menus. After 10 minutes of waiting, we asked him for menus. After 10 more minutes, we asked him again. Keep in mind, he saw us often as he ran past serving food or taking other orders. Eventually, we gave up and just took them from a nearby empty table.

Next came the water and wine request. We ordered white for our friends, red for us and a bottle of water while we looked over the menu. The water came out in 5 minutes, not bad. The white wine took an additional 10 or 15 minutes and he completely forgot to bring the other carafe of red wine that we requested. And don't worry, we definitely asked at least twice for our red wine. So, more waiting and more asking where it was, and more of his saying "just a moment" in italian. 

Then the food came out.  The fried food antipasti tasted good.  That much, I was at least pleased with. Once we finished, we waited about 30 minutes for the next part of our meal which was much too long. When the primi arrived, the pasta plates, it continued going down hill. Portions were average to small, the taste was just average bordering too salty, overcooked pasta instead of al dente, nothing too pleasing.  Then the secondi came out, well, one of them, because he said he only heard us order the one meatball plate. So ten more minutes wait while we watched our friend eat her secondi, then ours came out and it was another slap in the face: a severely reduced portion of potatoes than what our friend received.  Why serve six total pieces at all when most plates serve a pile of at least twenty. The person opposite with the same plate just laughed. We ordered this dish every time we went there and knew what it usually looked like and this was not up to their standard. So we decided to talk to the staff about the terrible service that night.

Eventually we voiced all of our complaints, told them we were frequent visitors of the restaurant and he added an extra half liter of wine which when he asked if we wanted it, we said no. But he didn't comp the first half-liter, he just went and refilled it even though we didn't want it.

Then we asked for the bill. By this time, we assumed he would want us out of there too, but no, he wanted us to sit there for another 15 or 20 minutes. Awful.  So he brought out the bill and he noted that  he gave our secondi as free. We thanked him and waited for him to come back several minutes later to pick up our money. 

But when we paid the bill and he came back with our change, which was supposed to be 2 euro, he brought back only a 1 euro coin, set it on the table and walked away immediately. We looked down at it trying to remember if we read the bill incorrectly. Nope, the whole table agreed we were owed 2 euro. All we could do was laugh at the terrible experience and how spiteful the server was for questioning his terrible service and the kitchen's issues. By that time, though, we'd had enough of the battle and left without asking for our extra euro back. Enjoy the tip, pal.

I hope Flavio al Velovevodetto does something to change its ways because it has supremely become worse over the last few months. HEED MY WORDS, visitors of Rome, go someplace else if want a good Roman food experience.

An Italian Amuse Bouche for VASGO's 50,000th!

AUGURI, AUGURI! Best Wishes! It's a Celebration!

In just over a year since I began truly writing posts on this blog, around this time in 2011, I had only a couple hundred page views according to my site's statistics.

This past week, you, my wonderful, beautiful and talented readers, helped the blog surpass its 50,000 page view!

In your honor, I'd like to give you a treat designed by just VASGO himself!

Photo Source: Francesca Claybrook Photography, LLC

I made up this Italian themed Caprese Salad style amuse bouche after seeing the most perfect round pasta, called Croxetti, in the store Eataly. It's like a pasta coin with an image stamped on it and was the perfect platform for the red, white and green treat.

The tiny, grape tomatoes looked so wonderful, I knew they would provide the bold red color I needed while functioning into the dish the way I wanted.  All I had to do was slice them thin as a coin and lodge them into the sides of the center. The basil was so green and aromatic, cutting them into tiny strips really kept the colors moving around the spool of pasta. The center is what made it all happen. Once I spotted the freshly made ricotta di bufala at the store, not just normal ricotta found everywhere but ricotta with superior bufala awesomeness, I knew the design instantly of my project from beginning to end.

Drizzled with the superior cold pressed-only extra virgin olive oil (better than hot-pressed) and next to a tiny pool of sweet, 30-year aged balsamic vinegar from a micro producer in Tuscany, this just VASGO version of a gourmet Caprese made all the work worth it.

And now..... The top Ten countries, by readership:

1. United States
2. Italy
3. United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Brazil
6. Australia
7. Germany
8. Netherlands
9. Russia
10. India

And some honorable mentions within the last few weeks: France, Greece, Israel, Guam, Libya, Finland, Japan, and Spain!

Thanks to all my international readers!  All of you are wonderful people!

Drink Coffee Like an Italian

One of my side projects this summer was to create a bunch of articles for a re-branded website all about Italy. So I turned on the old thought generator the first night while laying in bed and went deep into my world of words. What did I know about Italy? What things have been revealed about the country and their culture, habits, etc? And more specifically, what hasn't been written.

Then it came to me. No one has ever written about coffee in Italy.

The coffee at Castel Sant'Angelo is good, but expensive because of the excellent views provided.

Knowing I had the edge on my competitors, I jumped out of bed hastily in the middle of night to turn on the computer. My glasses reflected the bright login screen like a mirror and I slid easily onto the plastic chair because of my silk suit pajamas.

Before any brilliance could be accomplished, of course, I had to have a drink nearby like all the other professional writers in the world.  So I got up, lit the stove and set the tea kettle to it's task. A few minutes later, my friend, Earl Grey, and I finally sat down together. I slid back into the chair slippery as ice, opened the word processor and stared at the blinking black cursor. No words came to me, so I looked at my tea for inspiration while it sat on the local pub's borrowed beer coaster. Still nothing. Then I looked down at the distinguished, paisley pattern of my pajama suit.

The connecting powder puff ball of my silk night cap slid off its comfortable nook above and bounced off my nose, covering my eyes. I pushed it out of the way, slightly agitated, and like a blind person seeing for the first time the enlightened path of my story revealed itself.

See the epic article here - http://www.made-in-italy.com/italian-food/news/the-four-coffees-daily-ritual

And if you are in Rome, make sure to get the Best Coffee in Rome, near the Pantheon.

After that, consider purchasing some vintage paisley silk pajamas with night cap. Happy Italian coffee drinking!

A hotel near Trento, Italy makes the happiest cappuccino in Italy.

The Pope's Escape Path

In case there are any plunderers wandering about Rome, you should heed these warnings: Skip the Pope.

Long ago, when times were much less safe, a strategic Pope decided it would be smart of him to have a backup plan in the event his city fell or someone wanted to kill him.  So he commissioned builders to create a secret path that would lead him from the Vatican to his private apartments in the nearby Mausoleum of Hadrian, also known as the Castel Sant'Angelo.

The important question was how should he get there?

Underground sewers? Too dirty.
Horseback? Too visible.
The options weren't, as they say, a-plenty. (This verbiage makes me sound like a cowboy from the mid-1800s.) After all, resources were limited in the mid-1200s, a wee 800 years ago.

The answer was quite simple, really: build above ground.

So his men used the existing wall that protected the city and built on top of that. They made it stretch the full 800 or so meters, about half a mile all the way to the castle.  And thus, the Passetto di Borgo was born. From what I understand, it came in handy, as it was used a handful of times to save the life of the Pope.

Now granted, I am no scholar of history and my version of how it came to be may be a little different than the exact truth.  But what I can tell you honestly is that YOU too can walk this historical, life saving passage, just like I did.

A View of the Dome of Saint Peter's Basilica from the Passetto di Borgo.

Castel Sant'Angelo opens most of the passageway only one time a year.  For a few weeks in late July / early August, and only at night, they allow visitors to access and walk a surprising amount on the Pope's escape path.  For the cost of the entrance fee, it's worth it to first tour the castle and see some of the rooms that aren't usually open to the public, such as the rarely viewed Pope's bathroom, fancier and full of more frescoes than any bathroom I have ever experienced. Then a lovely concert among the catapults.

A concert in the Castel Sant'Angelo.

And some great views from up top.

A view of Saint Peter's Basilica from the top of Castel Sant'Angelo.

Few things in Rome are as romantic as this. At night and including a concert, this attraction is one of a kind already. But adding a jaunt on the Passetto di Borgo? Well that might just steal your heart. Consider yourself plundered.

Front view of the Castel Sant'Angelo.