Rome & Naples
We visited Rome in 2017 when we were on our big 3 month trip before we settled in London. We vowed we didn’t need to go back. It’s kinda like Venice, when you have seen it you don’t feel the pressure to go back. But I’m so pleased we did. My parents were supposed to visit Rome in 2020 when Covid kicked off. Their accommodation close to the Trevi fountain refused to refund them but rather gave them a voucher to use. With it still being difficult to travel from NZ we got to use it instead! We swapped them for a hot pools voucher back in NZ so they didn’t entirely come away empty handed. The reason we chose this weekend was that we had friends running the Rome Marathon so it made sense to go across and support them. Just a note that because we did Rome 5 years ago we didn’t have to do all the tourist “must do” activities. If you want to know what we did when visiting Rome for the first time just click here and it will take you there :)
Friday 25th March 2022
It had been a cracker of a week in London with the days reaching 18-20 degree and sunshine. I had forgotten what it was like to have the heat of the sun on your skin until this week. Leaving home Friday afternoon for the airport brought back all the feels of summer travel in Europe. Gosh it felt good. Tonight we were flying out of Stanstead airport which is so easy from our house. Walk to the underground, train to Liverpool Street and then the National Rail out to the airport. Stansted airport was absolutely packed and the visa line for Ryanair was very long (as always!). It’s the only airline that completes a “visa check” on your passport if your not from the EU. Which is a bit of a joke now since the UK isn’t in the EU. We left plenty of time before our flight so it wasn’t an issue. I had prepped some dinner which was a super tasty tahini traybake but realised once we got to the airport I had left it in the fridge! Whoops, Pret for dinner it is! I will seriously miss Pret when we return to NZ.
Our flight went pretty smoothly but felt so long tucked into the middle seat between two randoms. Whenever Lew and I actually sit together it’s a novelty as there is no way we would pay to sit together. It’s like water and toilets. Both are a human right and should be free and accessible to everyone, hence we won’t support Ryanair’s decision to separate people on the same booking. Add it to the list of things I won’t miss when we leave Europe!
Our flight arrived in late at night as it was a 2.5 hour flight and Italy is an hour ahead. Lew met a fellow Kiwi onboard called James who we met up with when we all got through security. His wife Alex and friend Abby were also travelling and we considered sharing an Uber together. There was numerous buses going into the main train station Termini however so decided to take that after racing around trying to find some cash. My biggest tip is always make sure you carry cash with you so your not forced to take it out of a Euronet machine and get charged crazy amounts. We ended up swapping contact details with Alex so we could meet up over the weekend for a drink as we walked from the train station to our separate hotels.
It felt strange to be back in Rome with the impressive beautiful buildings towering above us and the cobblestones trying to ruin my carry on suitcases wheels. Our hotel Roman Nights was great and they sent us a fabulous instruction as to how to enter into the place late at night. It didnt have any impressive city views but rather overlooked the back streets of but this meant it was quiet day and night and would be perfect for the weekend.
Saturday 26th March
Bongiorno! We were super excited about how gorgeous and warm it was going to be this weekend - 22 degrees! We didn’t have enough summer clothing out to even pack for such weather. We thought our hotel provided breakfast just outside our room between 7.30-9.30am but it was super quiet and we figured we missed it. So instead we found a super cute cafe called Buddy Vegan and got some açai + budda bowls plus smoothies to keep us full for the day. We kept walking and saw the gorgeous view over the city at Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi. We continued walking for another hour to collect Lews Italian boots which we had an issue with and Panchic agreed to drop a new pair at a hotel which we collected and left his broken ones behind. This wasn’t the original plan as Lew had actually shipped them to Italy but the company refused to pay the customs duty so it was sent back to London. Basically it was a miracle it all worked out.
Run time!
Whenever we go to a new city we always love packing our running shoes and heading out because you can see so much of the city on foot. Lew planned a run to go via two lovely parks around Rome and past the famous Spanish Steps. It was a good 10km run with some hills, cobblestones and 22 degrees heat so it was quite the challenge for the first summer run of the year. The park where Villa Borghese is really pretty and loads of locals were out enjoying the weather with their friends and families. One thing you do have to look out for is dog poo, it’s literally everywhere. Rome is a very filthy city when you truly look at it but I guess being as old as it is the filth has just built up over time. It’s part of the history and it’s almost nice that a lot of the really old decrepit looking buildings are not just knocked down and something modern built. Rather it is refurbished and reused over and over again. On the way back from our run we actually spotted a Patagonia store. We don’t even have one of these in London! They had a crazy amount of stock and Lew came away with a gorgeous blue running top and I now have a fluffy which jersey. Lew calls it my lamb jumper.
Once we arrived back we grabbed some gelato from the super cute place just down from out hotel called Verde Pistachio and sat on the side of the street people watching. Rome is fabulous to watch people and also street traffic. Unlike London people are very efficient with their vehicles. There is often 2 of 3 people on one scooter and cars are well used and much smaller.
Dinner & drinks was when we finally met up with our London friends - Katie + Joey, Dan + Jess and Eoin. We sat outside a bar called Wiki Wiki in Trastevere which is the foodie hotspot in Rome watching the sun go down and catching up. It had only been a week since we had left France where we were skiing together! Dinner was tricky finding a table for 7 of us but after trying about 5 places we found a small restaurant off the main drag which would give us a table. The mains however were literally all meat based. They did agree remove the cheese from one of the pastas but it ended up being disgusting and bland. Thankfully we did have a couple of starters - eggplant and also Roman beans which were fabulous. Remember whilst your here in Italy you often have to pay a service charge which may or may not include something free like bread, salt and olive oil like we had or nothing at all. You also have to pay for your water which is often bottled so I always bring a drink bottle. This time I couldn’t fit it into my handbag and also didn’t want to pay for water so I pocketed my cup and went to the toilet to drink some water. In Rome they also have a lot of continuously running water fountains locals drink out of so I considered walking down there to fill up our cups! Once again an example of how people shouldn’t have to pay €2 ($3.20 NZD) for bottled water when the water from the tap is perfectly acceptable and free.
We wandered home after dinner too full to even fit in more gelato. What it big day of walking it was today! 32,00 steps!
Tonight is actually daylight savings so the clock bounces forwards an hour to finally start us on the journey of incredibly long summer nights. The best thing about Europe.
Sunday 27th March
We had an early morning wake up to get to breakfast by 7.30am and also get out to the marathon course which started at 8.30am. It was the perfect running temperature but would steadily get hotter as the day went on. We missed the start line as with every major marathon it’s quite hard to get close to all the hustle and bustle. We walked down the course a little to two beautiful places I recommend you visiting. The Knights of Malta keyhole and the Giardino degli Aranci which provides a view of the Vatican and over the city. It’s very peaceful up here and we could see the marathon course below us. We collected Jess who had just finished the 5km fun run and also Jonty and grabbed some bikes to get us out to the 25km mark of the marathon course. They were electric which was quite fun but capped at 25km/hr. It made us wonder why bikes have their speed capped yet cars don’t?
We managed to see Katie, Joey & Hana here and also randomly ran into Alex who we met at the airport and her husband James & friend Abby were both running - we saw them also! We then popped across the bridge at 35km and saw Dan come by as well as Hana & Joey again. Once they passed we made our way to a pizza place recommended by a local. It’s called Gino Sorbillo Roma and is a chain that is also in Naples. Very famous and good pizza. The only thing that annoys us greatly is it is incredibly easy to make a vegan pizza yet all we have been able to eat is the traditional neopolotana - tomatoes, oregano, basil and garlic which gets old very fast no matter how good it is. To us it’s very easy to add eggplant, peppers, courgette etc etc but probably an insult to Italian pizza, who knows. It was a fabulous lunch however and we left feeling like we needed a nap. Everyone finished the marathon successfully and happy with their times.
Running the Appian way
The Appian way is the most significant road in Rome ?? Info about it.
This was one thing we missed out on doing last time we were in Rome because we tried to fit so much into a small amount of time. You can bike out there, taxi etc etc but we decided we wanted to run the old cobblestones. It wasn’t quite what Lew envisioned as there isn’t room for pedestrians, your sharing the road with cars going fast and making a lot of noise on the old cobblestones. It was hot and polluted as well. There was some old ruins and things to see like the catacombs. We ran a small section of the original rock road which still had evidence of thick scars from chariots deep in the stone. This type of road is far more long lasting than the likes of tar seal! Although very difficult for bikes to ride on. We cut through a fantastic park called ?? Back into town so our run ended up being 15km. We of course grabbed some gelato and people/traffic watched again.
We met our London friends at a rooftop bar just down from the Trevi foundation for some drinks and snacks before some of them flew back to London tonight. There was some hobbling and groaning with the stairs we needed to climb but other wise everyone was handling it fantastically!
Our new Kiwis friends ended up joining us just as the others called it a night and we ended up finding a place for dinner with them just down from the Pantheon. Dinner was finished up with more gelato and we vowed to catch up back in London!
What we did in Rome:
Knights of Malta Keyhole
Giardino degli Aranci
Villa Borghese
Piazzale Giuseppe Garibaldi
Appian Way
Ate at Gino Sorbillo Roma & Buddy Veggy
Gelato at The Gelatist & Verde Pistachio
Mercato Centrale Roma
We heard the food at Otello was great but we weren’t able to get a table
Monday 28th March
Time to move on to the city of Naples! This was a city we completely missed out when we travelled around Italy in 2017. We did the nearby Pompei but avoided Naples as we heard it was the murder capital & super dodgy. BUT Naples is the home of Neapolitan pizza which we are obsessed with so travelling here is a must. Plus for Lews 30th birthday I got him a pizza making class for us both which is at the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. We had grabbed some pizza for breakfast to have on the train and arrived into Naples at 10:30. Our Airbnb wasn’t ready so we used “Stow Your Bags - Luggage Storage” just around the corner from the station which was recommended to us by Lews friend who lives here in Naples. We had heard the main train station is the most dodgy area so I turned my rings around, strapped my bag to me and we walked around looking like we meant business. Whether this actually works because I betcha we look like tourists still!
Once we got rid of most of our stuff we began the walk into town. Now if you havn’t ever travelled in Rome or Naples the road situation is probably rather foreign for you. Pedestrian crossings mean nothing. You just have to walk boldly out onto the street making eye contacts with the driver and pretend your not scared your about to get run over. It gets slightly more comfortable the longer you stay here. People do actually stop for you most of the time. If you did this in London you would expect to get tooted at but not here. It’s organised chaos. Walking down the small narrow streets through central storico it reminded us very fondly of our trip to India. Your senses are overwhelmed by the amount going on around you including the washing hanging between buildings, litter filled streets, street vendors selling all sorts and buildings which seem like they are crumbling down. Did I also mention the scooters weaving in and out of the pedestrians pumping fumes out into the already polluted streets? It’s a fabulous experience and the comparison of where both Lew & I grew up is enormous.
I had read that there is some fascinating underground tunnels in Naples and thought perhaps this was something we could do this morning when I saw the sign. We went to something similar in Edinburgh and it was great but I unfortunately signed us up to the “non claustrophobic” version. Which we read on the sign but didn’t quite understand until we finished the tour and noticed on the other side of the road the actual place we were supposed to be. €16 ($26.70 NZD) had already been spend so we definitely wernt’t bothered to wait in line and try again. Best tip ever…take any student ID with you! I am still a little cheeky and use mine everywhere I can go. Guys it says 2015 on it! But I feel less guilty because actually Lewis is a student but has no ID as it’s online from University of Canterbury so that balances it all out right?
One of Lews friends Alessandro from his old job Converge recently moved to Naples so of course we took any opportunity to be shown around by a local! He took us to this wonderful pizza place called Pizzeria Da Attilio which felt very much like a little local joint. I think it is actually famous for its star pizza filled with ricotta but that’s not really our vibe. We both went got the traditional margarita pizza with no cheese and I added on some eggplant. Ohhh yum!! We felt so full afterwards and collecting our things from the train station lockers was quite an effort feeling as though we were in a bit of a food coma. Figuring out how to take the underground back to our apartment was even harder but worth it instead of pulling a roller bag over cobblestone streets.
Our Airbnb was in the heart of the Spanish quarter, it was very well done but had the slight odour of mould which these old building usually do! It was on the first floor so opening the windows on either side wasn’t a great options especially at rush hour as cars and scooters flew by and the pollution was unreal. Looking down our street though there was a glimmer of the sea. Lew crashed for two hours whilst I caught up on some life admin - like what we will eat when we get back to London. We were both exhausted from the last couple of days but managed to get out for a walk before sunset. The waterfront feels like a completely different city. It has all the glitz and glam of any other city on the water and feels very different to the crowded narrow streets of the neighbourhoods.
The sun was setting as we looked at the Borgo Marina and the Ovo Castle. You can also see our to Sorento and the Amalfi coast as well as the islands of Capri and Isola. What a stunning night. These are the nights your truly grateful for the opportunity to travel like we do.
Alessandro had invited us to dinner and he lives on the outskirts of Naples which meant we took a train one stop. The walk from our apartment to this station felt super dodgy with no side walks and scooters coming at you left right and Center. It was dark, polluted and with the buildings being so close to get her google maps was a nightmare! But we thankfully made it in time to jump into a packed train. We had no idea whether it was the line we were supposed to be on or the one going in the totally different direction as there was no signage. It just highlights how easy London is for anybody arriving whether they speak English or not.
Ali has recently moved into his place so it was very sparsely furnished. He is well known for his pasta from all his ex London colleagues so we were excited to have some homemade pasta made. With us being vegan it did make it slightly tricker. We took an Uber back home which was actually just a taxi and it was quite the experience being in the back of one of the super fast cars that would definitely fail a driving test in the UK. The narrow lanes of the Spanish quarter meant we had to walk 5 minutes as they were too small and busy for the car to get through.
Tuesday 29th March
Our final day in Italy unfortunately, but I do also think we have likely eating our body weight in pizza so perhaps its time to change it up a little bit. This morning we have the pizza course which I organised for Lews 30th birthday present. We checked out of our Airbnb and walked down to the waterfront to catch a bus up the back of the city where the pizza association is located. It started at 10am and our teacher Peter began telling us about the 5 different ovens in the kitchen and a little bit about the history of pizza in Naples. It actually started off as leftovers from the rich that the poor ate. It was made with the most basic topping ingredients of tomatoes, salt, garlic and oregano with some torn basil. Now it is more normal to have cheese on pizza since we are wealthy enough to afford it. But that wasn’t the usual.
We had another couple Ross & Elena from Edinburgh with us and a guy called Max from Dubai. We started off making our dough which involved adding in 500 mls of water to a large metal bowl. We then added in some salt - far more than I would have thought we needed! Salt apparently acts like an antibacterial and stops the yeast from overgrowing. We then added in 3 handfuls of 00 flour into the bowl and three handfuls onto our table. We mixed the flour into the mixture until it looked like a very light crepe batter. They provided us with some fresh yeast which is something we haven’t been able to find in the UK so often just used dried yeast. We mixed this in before adding in the rest of the flour. The technique to mix at this point is just to pat the mixture to incorporate all the ingredients, occasionally wiping down the side of the bowl to collect all the flour stuck there. Once your dough begins to form a bit more of a shape you come under the dough with your hand and press it down. Its certainly messy! We slowly added in small bits of the flour we put onto the bench to make our dough less sticky. The entire process of making and then hand mixing should take 20 minutes and then you let your dough rest for a bit. At this point Peter showed us the ingredients we would use. Cheese, basil, oregano, garlic and tomatoes. The tomatoes are whole from a can and you add some salt and hand crush them. The reason you do it this way is that the tomato seeds are bitter and when you blend them the bitterness comes out. Plus the slightly chunky sauce is far more pleasant than something the consistency of tomato sauce. Next we took turns cutting the cheese very finely and removing the bulb from the garlic. By this stage it was time to go back to our dough and fold it to help the gluten produce stronger bonds. We recovered it with our bowl and Peter showed us how to make a marinara and a marinara with cheese which we got to eat. It had been go go go until then so was nice to be able to get a snack in! Plus we got to take out masks off for a break - unlike the UK, Italy is still wearing masks in such places.
Now it was time for us to make our own pizza! The dough that we were making actually takes 12 hours to rise so we weren’t able to use it today. The is the most crucial part of making Neapolitan pizza and something that shouldn’t be missed. Lew went first and Peter taught him how to make the famous puffy crust and spread the pizza out by putting your hand in a position where your fingers make a triangle . To stretch the dough further there is a complicated trick of wrist slapping where you stretch, pull it up your wrist and then drop it down on the bench. It took us all awhile to get this motion going. I have made a reel on instagram where Lewis is doing this exact movement so you guys can check it out here. Now it was time to add our topping. He spread 2 large spoonfuls of the tomatoes and spread it around 1cm from the edge, added oregano and then the pieces of garlic + basil. A good spread of olive oil went on top and the pizza was promptly pulled onto a peel ready to go into the oven. Peter checked the pizza was round and pulled it slightly before it was thrown into the back of the roaring pizza oven. Together they checked the underside of the pizza which Peter said “animal print” would form on the bottom when it ready and they rotated the pizza 180 degrees to cook the other side. 2 minutes and its finished and ready to come out! Honestly they were SO good! I really hope we can replicate such thing at home when we buy our pizza oven. Our dough had finally risen and we split it into 4 pieces and shaped it into a ball by folding it into the center from all four corners, flipping it over and then using our hands to scoop underneath. These balls of dough are then left for 12 hours in room temperature ready to be used later that day.
Over all we left feeling much more confident about creating our own pizza at home. The techniques used were slightly different to those used in the pizza course in Rome we went to in 2017 which Lew seemed to remember well as he had been creating homemade pizza at home for some time. If this is something that interests you I highly recommend visiting if your coming to Naples! This is the link to the course we took here . It was super easy to organise and the course is also in English. Its a fabulous thing to do if your visiting Naples and want a true experience of how the locals make their pizza!
We left to the airport with our stomachs were full and we were also now considered “friends of vera pizza Neapolitan” which gives us discount for courses and also for pizza joints around the world!
Later that evening we flew back to London ready to head back to work the next day! Maybe something other than pizza & pasta for dinner this week?
Until next time Italy! Ciao!
