Rome Day 1 — Sunday Escapades

We woke up to 13 degrees outside with the promise of the temperature getting up to 24 degrees. We ate breakfast from the wee outdoor shack and the cats came to join us with Nina being particularly interested in our cereal. We had planned out everything but buying the 48 hour public transport pass meaning that instead of catching the overground tram closest to the house we had to walk to the nearest underground station in Pigneto about 10 minutes away. It was easy to use the machine to buy and validate the tickets but we did get confused with the trains as they were only running one track which we discovered when we were travelling in the wrong direction and had to go backwards by two stops. Next we had to catch a bus for 9 stops and as we got closer to the main attractions the military presence became greater also. Infact the bus has to slalom around the military trucks parked up outside the Colosseum to get to it's stop. They also have to drive over the cobblestone roads which threw all the passengers from side to side on the bus, luckily one of the local babies knew she had to hold on. The bus dropped us in town and it was a short walk to the Spanish Steps. The amount of tourists here certainly made us feel uneasy and we couldn't really understand why these mere stone steps were such at attractions. Yes the 138 wide stone steps were built in 1723-1725 with curves and terraces breaking up the straight lines and yes they seem to be very popular with the selfie sick welding tourist, but why?? They were built to connect the lower piazza di Spagna with the upper piazza Trinita dei Monti, with its beautiful twin tower church dominating the skyline. We spent a little bit of time googling the history of the steps to try and understand the international pull to such a place. Turns out in 1953 a movie called "Roman Holiday" starring Audrey Hepburn made the place well known and from then onwards it has been on everyones "To do" list. One of the most interesting facts we could find about the steps was that back in 2007 a young drunk teenager actually attempted to drive his Toyota down the steps damaging some of them in the process and getting himself arrested! I don't know whether he actually made it all the way down but it certainly would have been amusing to see as long as no pedestrians got injured!

We were quick to tick that one off the list and walked a few hundred meters to the Museum and Crypt of the Capuchin Friars. Charging us €8.50 ($14.40 NZD) each we entered the museum section which told you about the history of the friars and the church itself but what we had really come for was a lot more creepy and a bit further below ground. Beneath the 17th Century Church is a catacomb featuring the skeletons of about 4,000 friars and poor people of Rome. In 1631 when the friars moved into the church they brought cartloads of their deceased brothers with them and set about using them to adorn the walls of the crypt as a strange way to space save in a ever growing city. As the friars continued to die the longest buried one was exhumed (basically dug up from the ground) and the bones added to the decorative motifs to make room for the latest deceased fellow to be buried without a coffin. Usually bodies would be buried for at least 30 years to allow for proper decomposition before being exhumed. The 6 crypts are named based on the type of bones that is displayed there. There is the crypt of skulls, the crypt of leg/thigh bones, the crypt of pelvises, the crypt of the three skeletons, the crypt of resurrection and the mass chapel. Some of the full skeletons looked very strangely preserved and appeared to almost have a flesh like appearance partially clinging to the bones with their habits still intact. There was a plaque proclaiming, “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.” which is a good reminder of how short life is and that underneath all our clothes and unique appearances we are just bones of a similar structure.

The famous Trevi Fountain was the next on the list being only 750m away and we basically followed the crowd of tourists in it's directions. You could hardly see the fountain itself since there were that many people surrounding it all trying to get the best photograph or trying to throw a coin over their shoulder (right hand over your left shoulder by the way!). The building of the fountain started in 1732 and took 30 years to complete. It was the end point of an aquaduct constructed in 19 BC called the Aqua Virgo used to bring water in from a spring 21kms aways from Rome and supplied the Trevi Fountain an numerous other fountains in the surrounding area with water. It was more interesting actually watching the commotion of the tourists around us and the police that would whistle very loudly at someone if they stepped out of line and by that I mainly mean placing their butt on the side of the fountain! We searched for the smallest coins possible in our wallets to throw into the water and picked a spot not right at the edge but higher up where there was high possibilities of hitting someone in the head since the 1 cent coin is pretty light. Both of us managed to get it into the fountain and not hit someone which apparently ensures us a return to Rome. Back in Roman times the coin throwing was a request to the Gods of the Water to enable them to have a safe journey home. Lew did mention that the fountain didn't seem to be that full of coins despite the thousands of people that visit everyday and a quick google search told me that every night the coins are vacuumed up and usually there is about €3,000 ($5,080 NZD) per day that is then donated to a charity called Caritas for the poor people of Rome. So at least it does give back to the city which sure has its fair share of homeless people and filth.

It was nearing midday and we were surprised by how much we had completed so far since we hadn't exactly got up early. The famous Pantheon was next up and was a short walk away also. It was built by Emperor Hadrian between 118-125 AD on the remains of a temple from 27 AD and was intended to be a temple itself. When Christianity became trendy in 609 AD the temple was converted into a church which is the reason it is still here today and survived the barbaric raids that destroyed many other Roman monuments. It is free it walk inside and they don't even bother checking your bags. The only thing I got asked to do was cover my shoulders so I would certainly recommend carrying around a Turkish towel or something similar that you can wrap around any area needing to be covered, especially if it is a hot day and your church hopping. The interior was certainly incredibly rich with different painting and sculptures at eye level but looking upwards displays an almost modern looking square pattern leading up to a large dome allowing the sunlight to stream through. The dome was the largest in the world for 1300 years and still today it remains the largest unsupported dome in the world, which is a little disconcerting coming from a city spontaneously devastated by earthquakes! It was pretty crazy in the square around the Pantheon with a couple of guys busking, tonnes of tourists and a lot of annoying locals trying to sell us selfie sticks and scarves. Tim a friend of ours recommended this gelato shop nearby called Gelateria Della Palma that boasts it has 150 flavours of gelato! Whilst it sounds like a good idea it does take you forever to work out which flavours to choose and thankfully there wasn't lines out the door or anything. After finishing our three different flavoured gelato each we thought we probably only needed half of what we just ate but it did fill a gap and delayed us from needing lunch.

We set Google Maps to take is to Piazza Novona famous for it's street artists and certainly it's fair share of more selfie stick, scarf welding hagglers. The Fountain of the Rivers built in 1651 is center stage within the square as well as the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone. The square was built on the remains of an ancient stadium of Emperor Domiziano which was used for Greek Athletic games in 86 AD or "agones" as they were called from which the square gets its name. We did a lap admiring the hussle and bustle and the many large camera set ups people had to shoot some sort of advertisement. we continued to our next destination and a quaint bread shop on the way caught our eye and we came out with some fresh foccacia for lunch. Around the corner was the Campo de Fiori where the local markets are held. We didn't actually know why this place was on our to do list but it was recommended by a Colorado friend Annie and I was pleased we came since it was quite cute but was mainly another tourist trap since they were selling customised pastas at incredible coats. Still we admired the colours and shapes they made them in and even saw the largest calzone I have ever seen. Since we had completed the days to do list we thought we would walk around in the neighbourhood called Trastevere which is on tomorrows list before we had to get to the metro to travel out of town to the pizza making course . We hadn't done any research on the area yet but this was where I originally wanted us to stay since it is considered a very young and hip area. We were hoping to find some lanes full of cool shops like we did in Aix-en-Provence but we really only found restaurants and bars with people enjoying the afternoon sun and being serenaded by buskers. It certainly felt very Italian in that moment as we walked by. The river Fiume Tevere was close by so we took a stroll down the side of that for some peace and quiet. The Citymapper route we were using to get out to Laurentina Station for the pizza making required us to take a bus and then a train but we decided we had a bit of time to kill and walked to the metro station instead. What we came across along the way was actually very interesting since there was a large area in front of the Roman Forum that was untouched with only a small amount of ruins at one end. Lew searched where we were on Google and it turned out to be called the Circus Maximus which was an ancient Roman chariot racing stadium first constructed in the 6th century BC. The last chariot race occurred in 549 AC, but it was also used for Roman games and gladiator fights. Today is used as a large open space (which is hard to find in the centre of Rome!) to hold music concerts and rallies.

Finally we found the metro station and our feet were in desperate need of a break. We arrive at Laurentina Station early and waited for our pizza making host Giuseppe to meet us at 4.30pm. Sure enough he pulls up in his mum van looking a tad frassled and explaining he had just finished his last class an hour ago. He certainly packs them in during the summer with three classes but only two at this time of the year. He was a large Italian man with curly blond hair and glasses and looked typically like a chef with a sweaty well worn top. I really wasn't sure what to expect from this class haha. We waited for another three Americans from Boston to join us who were a little late and he then shuffled us all into his car before driving towards his workshop. We had some great banter in the car and we found out what the Americans were doing in Rome (work) and also tried to get some answers out of Giuseppe about their road rules in particular the roundabout we had been having so much trouble with! Basically he told us there isn't any rules and he proceeded to show us how it was done by quite obviously cutting off a women at about 60km/hr who tooted at us loudly. The next lesson was the types of horn the Italians use and he explained that the women in the roundabout gave him a "f*** you" horn but you can change the length and the depth of the horn to get your friendly or angry message across. All of us decided that someone should come up a car that had a different button to push depending on whether your tooting is friendly or angry as that would be more simple for those of us who don't use it quite so often. We got stuck in traffic since he lives very close to the Appian Way with the catacombs beneath it that people can visit. He drove us down a side street and off into a dirt track that exited into a paddock with olive trees and his woodfire oven and other cooking stations set up under a gazebo. He instructed us to wash our hands and put an apron on before showing us how to stoke the oven to get it up to 300 degrees celsius. He explained that he uses two types of wood - beech to get the temperature up fast and oak to keep it steady.

From here he gave us a demonstration of how to make your typical margarita pizza starting with the moulding of the dough which was prepared 24 hours ago allowing it to rise and be soft. Giuseppe had clearly been perfecting this for a number of years and he handled the dough wiht such love and tenderness. Lew queried him why he didn't throw it around his head as he was expecting to see this kinda show but all we got was a laugh. He also said he doesn't use a rolling pin to make the dough flat as this is the Roman way of doing things which he hates but that's similar to how we make it at home so clearly we are massacring the art of pizza making haha! The most surprising thing for both of us was actually the cooking process of the pizza he had just made. Giuseppe didn't use any wheat germ to allow the pizza to slide off the massive steel spatula into the oven and he eased it off straight onto the stone bottom of the oven. After leaving it for a few seconds the back closest to the flames was starting to cook and he began to rotate it with a turning spatula handle by pushing it into the left hand side of the pizza and rotating it anticlockwise with one hand. It only took about 2 minutes for it to cook and I guess we shouldn't have been so surprised since it was a 300 degrees oven! He chopped it up and allow us all to try it, unfortunately for me it had both mozzarella and parmesan on it so I wasn't going to touch it. After our demonstration it was our turn to make one and he handed us each our a prepared dough from a container in the fridge. The dough always had to go into the fridge for 24 hours after it had been prepared in a container with nothing touching the top of it. We tried to all handle the dough with as much love as Giuseppe did and some of us were certainly better than others. Lew quickly became teacher pet but I just think it's more that his hands are a more appropriate size to create the dough into the right shape! We worked the dough out keeping a little border that would hold all our toppings in and create that fluffy crust we all love. Next we added some tomatoes which had been boiled, the skin removed and then crushed by hand instead of that nasty tomato paste you buy from the supermarket. Toppings came next and we were allowed to chose what we wanted - garlic, salami, prosciutto, cherry tomatoes, onions. basil, mushrooms and of course cheese. I asked how many toppings was too many as I was struggling to choose and Giuseppe said "Don't worry I tell you" but I did get out of him that three is enough which doesn't include your cheese or basil. Once we had all made our pizzas look and hopefully taste pretty good we added some olive oil and a pinch of salt.

Lew was first up to get his pizza in the oven and he got the full experience of learning how to turn the pizza and get it just right. Somehow he managed to get a small hole in the middle of it whilst he was turning it and Giuseppe ripped the shit out of him saying that must be how Kiwis like it and it's less calories like that with half of it missing! The rest of the Americans - Ben, Dave, and Tarnie weren't so good either and in fact the boys managed to get theirs too far back in the oven and the ash fell on top of it just adding the extra woodfire taste as Giuseppe decided. I was one of the last ones and I certainly mucked it up as well as I couldn't get it off the spatula and ripped a large hole in mine also! Giuseppe had to save it for me tuning it around until it cooked. It did come out in a love heart shape but didn't look so pretty with its large hole in the middle of it but tasted pretty good! We all sat down to eat with Giuseppe's home made organic wine whilst the man himself humoured us about how keen he is to play foosball after our pizza and on a more serious note how to make pizza at home without the fancy oven he had access to. So he recommends you use a steel frying pan that can hold a pizza and is able to be heated on a gas burner as well as going into the oven. Put the frying pan on the gas burner and wait 15 minutes for it to get very hot. Add the base allowing it to cook for one minute making sure the underneath is crispy by lifting it up before adding your toppings. Then put it in the oven for no longer than 3 minutes on the grill setting extra high with the oven door slightly opened. Remember your not trying to make the toppings crispy but getting it slightly cooked. He rubbished the idea of using a pizza stone as you can't get them hot enough and still means your pizza has to stay in the oven for about 9 minutes with a pizza stone compared to about 20 minutes without one. This is still much to long and your toppings end up being burnt to a crisp, 3 minutes max he reminds us again. True to his word he dragged us all over to his foosball table and with wine in hand we all joined in on the game. Us girls played on Giuseppe's team and he obviously gets in a lot of practice with probably every single one of his cooking classes so our team quite easily bet the boys. It was just hilarious to watch and be a part of. Once he had had his foosball fix on a more serious note (hardly!) he still had to teach us how to make the dough!

He sat all 5 of us down on a long table pre-prepared with some flour in a bowl and some water. He explained that quantities of each and how it differs when the seasons change. Currently we were using 200g of flour in which there was a 50/50 blend of normal flour and also bakers flour. The normal flour has more sugar in it and less protein compared to the bakers flour but you need both to get the rising of the yeast correct. He explained the ratios of the two different flours in the summer and in the winter, where in summer you use less of the plain flour which contains lots of sugar as the yeast feeds off sugar and doesn't need any further help to multiply since the temperature is already helping it along. He spoke it all in percentages so it did get a little confusing so I think we will stick to the 50/50 ratio at all times and see how we get on. He also explained to us whilst it is possible to make a 2 hour pizza base (which we do at home because who knows 24 hours in advance that your having pizza for dinner!) he doesn't recommend it as the yeast are doing their thang and multiplying for 12 hours once activated hence you have already eaten at that point and the yeast just multiples in your stomach! The yeast likes sugar which is why you often crave something sweet after this. Next we added about 100-110mls of water and mixed with a fork allowing the glutens to stick before adding some fresh yeast and tipping it out onto the bench to kneading it with our hands. Lew was a bit perplexed at why the dough looked so shaggy and not sticking together but it's just part of the process - clearly he doesn't make the pizza bases at home haha he just adds the toppings! After kneading for at least 5 minutes every so often Giuseppe would having a feel of each of our doughs to see if it needed more attention. I really don't know what he was feeling for so he must have some sort of magic touch. Once we had kneaded it enough we had to make it into a ball, folding it in half and then stuffing the bottom edge in like the underside of mozzerra cheese pitching it and pushing it to get a round ball. There was much discussion about this as Ben couldn't seem to get rid of this large hole in the bottom of his. Giuseppe thought this was great and made fun of him and his hole telling him it was his problem he doesn't know what to do with holes! But he did fix it up for Ben and the rest of ours needed a little helping hand also. I thought surely mine would be the best right? I make all the bread and doughs at home already but it was actually Mr Lewis again who took the title! Giuseppe really wasn't afraid to tell us who was the best for each activity which added to the humour and the inappropriateness of a teacher pointing out favourites. Once we had finished this he told us to have a seat back at the table and he would bring us some dessert. Lew was still so pleased with his dough that it got it's photo taken whilst he admired it some more....to me they all looked the same! (Can you spot the top dough out of all of them?! Lew's dough is at the bottom of the picture, doesn't look any different to the rest right haha!) Giuseppe had made some dessert with mascarpone cream so I gave Lew my share and ate the bruschetta he had supplied instead. After this the night was over and it was completely pitch black at this point. Giuseppe told us he had to get home as it was his two year olds birthday today and he also continued to tell us he had a 24 year old daughter, a 21 year old son, "Then I change wife" and I have 2 year old. Everyone was howling with laugher because of the way he said this and there were lots of questions about whether he had upgraded his wife which he found fantastic. On the way out to his car he asked us whether we wanted to see his large mushroom and sure enough when we all shined our phone lights on a tree there was this large circular mushroom dripping with moisture and covered in moss. He was so pleased with it and said he was planning on having a big party and cooking it up as he had checked with a mushroom expert that is is safe to eat. I told him it better not have blue veins in it or else everyone at his party will be hallucinating! Middlemore ED crew we all know about these types of mushrooms that bring us a bit of entertainment in monitored/resus at times haha! The drive back to the train station was of course full of laugher and it really had been a great night. Giuseppe said his goodbyes to everyone and walked we to the train station to find out way home. Giuseppe reminded us of our German Ice Hockey coach Andy as his sense of humour was exactly the same, we loved it and certainly both left with sore cheeks from laughing and smiling. We navigated the trains home having to switch from the underground train at Termini to the overground train to get out to our Airbnb. We just got onto the overground train and I went to sit down but there was a cellphone someone had left behind on my seat. I grabbed it and poked my head out the door hoping to see someone running back for it but there wasn't. I tried to give it to the driver but he ignored me and walked off haha! Then a call from "mumma" started coming through and I didn't know whether to answer it or not. In the end I did and I asked the women whether she spoke english as she started speaking to me in fast Italian. She ended up passing me over to son whose phone it actually was and he spoke broken english. I tried to explain where we were but since Lew had been navigating I didn't actually know, I told him the station we were stopping at and asked whether we could meet him there. I clearly wasn't pronouncing these station names correctly as he asked me whether I could find someone who spoke Italian. I walked up the moving train trying to ask the people on it whether the spoke Italian and could help me. Majority of them actually ignored me thinking I was just one of those crazy train people that you just put your head down and ignore. One nice man did help me and he managed to set up a station for the young guy to come and pick it up from us. He was incredibly pleased to have it back and I thanked the Italian man for helping me out but he told me he should be the one thanking me. We walked the 4 minutes home in the dark and felt pretty safe despite the neighbourhood looking pretty grungy. We were both shattered and were planning to get up early to see the Vatican Museum etc tomorrow so we called it a night reasonably early.