Buongiorno readers! It is 6:30am and we are sitting in the airport (our most hated of places) waiting to board our slight to Spain. Yesterday was our last day in Italy.
We started the day off with a nice sleep in until about 8. We have had so many days where we have had to drag our sorry asses out of bed between 6-7, a sleep in with good air con was nice. It was forecast to be a fuckin hot day today (high of 36) and it certainly lived up to this.
The first thing on our agenda was to get over to the Testaccio neighbourhood for our Devour Food Tour. Devour are a tour company that was started in Spain that run 3-4 hours food tours where you go around to different local food establishments of small, authentic family run businesses and try the foods. We already had one booked for Madrid but they recently started the tour in Rome so we decided to jump on that.
We met our tour guide Abbie in the park in Testaccio. There was 2 other people in our little tour, four was a good amount. Not a private tour, but also not too big. The tour had 8 eating stops.
The first was at a pasticceria nearby the park where we had a coffee, a cornetto and a maritozzo. A cornetto is just a custard filled croissant. The coffee – like all coffee in Italy was delicious. A maritozzo is a homemade whipped cream filled bun. It’s pretty hectic to eat this for breakfast, but they do it daily here. It was really nice, but it sat heavy and we still had 7 courses to go.
Our second stop was at Testaccio Market where we had pizza al taglio. We had five different types – pizza Bianca (plain pizza bread with sesame seeds and slightly salted), zucchini and stracciatella pizza, roasted sundried tomatoes and pecorino cheese pizza, mushrooms and stracciatella with a sprinkle of chilli pizza and eggplant and hommus pizza. They were all so delicious but everyone’s fave was the mushroom one.
Our third stop was another shop in the market with a cheeky stall holder who only spoke Italian which Abbie translated for us. We were there to taste cheese. We sampled pecorino, parmigiano-reggiano and mozzarella di bufala. They were all so fresh and the two hard cheeses were strong and bitey.
We moved out of the market to our forth stop which was at a wine bar owned by a family who’s vineyard has been running for 100 years. Here we tried a prosciutto cotto and Italian broccoli panino. The prosciutto cotto was slow roasted in the oven so it was smoky and the broccoli spread was cold but paired well with the meat. The bread was nice too. At this stop we had wine from the vineyard. It was only 3€ for a big bottle because there’s no special packaging or marketing. It was good wine.
We then walked to a little snack bar and had a suppli. Suppli is pretty much an arancini ball with ham, cheese, rice and marinara sauce inside. It was crumbed and salty on the outside. Absolutely delicious!
By this point it was getting very difficult to keep eating but we soldiered on! We went to a deli and had three different cured meats. Salami, prosciutto and another different salami. We also tried a pickled artichoke and sundried tomato. They were all excellent, especially the prosciutto which was so soft and great. We got to try some bread with different olive oils and then three different types of balsamic vinegar. One that was 5 years old, 10 years old and 15 years old. They got sweeter and thicker as they aged. They were amazing. If we weren’t going to Spain we would’ve bought some. But carrying it around in our bags would’ve been difficult.
Then we went to a little family run restaurant and tried the three types of pasta that Rome is famous for – Cacio e Pepe (creamy peppery pasta), amatriciana (tomato based sauce with guinciale, pork cheek) and carbonara. All three were so excellent. We love the pasta in Italy. For me (Ronnie) the pasta is an absolute highlight. We also washed this down with a nice red.
Then to wrap it up we went to a little gelato shop that is all female owned and ran. The girl there loved my AS Roma hat. We had our favourite flavour – Pistacchio, just amazing again. Pistacchio was made to be in gelato – perfetto.
The tour ended there. Our guide Abbie was great. She is an American who has been living in Rome for the last 4 years. The tour was ran so excellently and the food was amazing – highly recommend. Abbie also writes a blog about living in Rome La Vita Roma.
After this we decided to take a walk up to the Orange garden which is a little park that has orange trees and a beautiful view of the city. The only problem is that it was 36 degrees and we had to climb a big fuck off hill. We did it though and the views were really nice.
We tried to do this photo spot we heard about called the “Aventile Hill keyhole photo” that has a really beautiful line of trees through this keyhole on a door, but the sun was in the wrong spot so it didn’t work out.
We were hot as fuck after this so we canned it back to the hotel and had a kip in the air conditioning. We considered not going back out because we weren’t hungry but it was our last night in Italy so we did. We went to the Spanish steps which is a giant set of stairs that lots of people hang around and people watch. We climbed them and shot some film and took some photos. It was nice. We then grabbed a quick snack and walked back to the hotel taking in our last sights, smells and sounds of Italy.
We could not leave Italy without one more gelato! We grabbed a last Pistacchio gelato from that place with the van checkout again – so fuckin good. We will miss gelato! 4:30 wake up….ughhhhhh.
Itemised Spending:
- Taxis – €23
- Water – €2
- Abbie’s tip – €10
- Accommodation RomeHello – €140
- Cokes – €3
- Snacks – €19
- Gelato – €7
Two Minds Travel Alike 