Roma! Trastevere

We left Sicily on Friday afternoon enduring the bus service of the skies that is Ryanair and arrived at our hotel in Trastevere at 6pm; just in time to hustle over to a local bar and watch the Italy-Costa Rica  World Cup Game! While the excitement of the young crowd was palpable, unfortunately Italy lost the match one nil to Costa Rica. After a quick pit stop back at the hotel, we headed of for our dinner reservation at Meridionale, a local hip trattoria where we enjoyed a yummy dinner washed down with a litre of house vino! Then it was time to wander around Trastevere until the wee hours bar hopping as though we were in our 20s.

Trastevere is quite a change from our usual Roman haunt across the Tiber; much younger, hipper and more lively.

We laughed that even though we have been to Rome many times and think we know it, we keep discovering new facets to the city and truly remain strangers in the Eternal City.

Saturday in Trastevere started a little bit blurry for Christos although Lisa seemed to be in fine form. Clearly the vino has a greater impact on one as one ages. We headed out to Santa Maria in Trastevere, an amazing church founded in the third century AD with gorgeous mosaics from the 13th century AD.

We then wandered a bit more before taking another little break (for Christos to recover some more) and then headed out to see the Villa Farnesina with its lovely frescoes by Raphael. After the villa tour we grabbed a quick lunch of pizza at the aptly named "Bir & Fud" before retiring once more to our hotel for an afternoon nap. In the late afternoon we headed out again for a wander and realized we may be in for a treat similar to "fete de la musique" in France as many street corners have suddenly sprouted what appears to be setups for live music!

We headed out for another stroll, caught some entertaining street theatre (Christos ended up participating) and Lisa bought a new bag from a street vendor (Lisa just loves to buy bags on holiday). Dinner was at the lovely restaurant "La Boticella" just a stone's throw from our hotel. We both started with a wonderful ravioli (cheese, mushroom and truffle) followed by lamb for Christos (good but not as good as Monaci's lamb) and chicken for Lisa (first chicken we have had in weeks; quite good!) and were stuffed to the brim by the end of dinner. A local cat watched us from a nearby moto.

We had a lovely conversation with some Swedes during dinner and Christos may have convinced them that it is time to buy a little gold. We then wandered about a bit more, caught the end of a live music set and finally got back to our hotel around 11:30pm. We played a game of Kingdom Builder while sipping beers in the hotel patio, breathing in our last (for this holiday) of the Roman summer ... Tomorrow we will be (hopefully) back in Toronto.