Villa Sciarra, our delightful local park, remains locked up. It has been since last weekend. Rome had its atypical dump of snow last Friday and overnight we got about 10cm. Apparently this is the most since 1986, when they got 20cm+; substantial snow apparently isn’t a common occurence, and the city doesn’t really know how [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Rome'
Docking the bay
February 9th, 2012 · No Comments · Main thread, Rome
Tags:alloro·bay trees·laurus nobilis·monteverde vecchio·palm trees·pine trees·villa sciarra
Chestnut and walnut bread
February 2nd, 2012 · 5 Comments · Baking, Food misc, Main thread, Rome
Chestnuts were an important traditional foodstuff in parts of Italy. Peasants could supplement their diets with chestnuts, and flour was a natural extension of this. Roasted chestnuts remain a common sight in Roma over the winter, though I’m skeptical about whether this is because Romans demand it, or because it’s another cute novelty to sell [...]
Tags:bread·chestnut·chestnut flour·farina di castagna·farina dolce·walnut
Old geezers with the horn
January 30th, 2012 · No Comments · Main thread, Rome
One of our Sunday routines in Roma is going to the Mattatoio – the old abattoir in Testaccio – to the producers’ market. Wandering home yesterday, laden with veg, cheese, eggs, walnuts, chestnut flour and cose, we headed off Viale di Trastevere, up a snicket we’ve discovered, under looming apartment blocks, towards to our hilltop [...]
Tags:al fresco·car parks·cars·dining·fellini·fellini's roma·monteverde vecchio·parking·serenade·streeet life·traffic·viale di trastevere
Innocenti is bliss
January 21st, 2012 · 2 Comments · Food misc, Rome
My noble quest to try castagnole and frappe from, well, as many different pasticcerie as possible, continues. Today we dropped by Innocenti, which, for sheer vintage cuteness, is incomparable. Nestled in Via della Luce, a cobbled backstreet in the slightly less touristy part of Roma’s Trastevere (that is, to the east of Viale Trasteve), the [...]
Pass the dolci
January 19th, 2012 · 3 Comments · Food misc, Main thread, Rome
Italians love their dolci: sweets, desserts, ice cream and pastries, or pasticceria. I always assumed the French had the last word on patisserie, but living in Rome, I’m not so sure any more. In Monteverde Vecchio, our neighbourhood, indeed within about 100 metres of our flat, there are at least three pasticcerie (as I understand [...]
Tags:castagnole·frappe·monteverde vecchio·pasticceria·pasticceria dolci desideri·roma·rome
Translating cheesy Italian pop songs
January 18th, 2012 · 2 Comments · Main thread, Rome
Today, for some semblance of Italian self-education or compiti (homework), I’m going to try and translate the lyrics of this song they keep playing on the radio. Thank you Ram Power 102.7FM for getting this one stuck in my head. I can almost feel my music taste getting shifting, uncomfortably. The inner me dismisses this [...]
Tags:cheesy·italian to english·moda·pop song·radio·ram power·tappeto di fragole·translation
Musical migrations
January 17th, 2012 · No Comments · Main thread, Rome
So after I slagged off Virgin Radio here, our kitchen radio struggled to stay tuned in to the station. It’s like the station had the hump with me, and didn’t want to play any more. The tuning kept migrating into static, or other stations. So I gave up, and wandered around the dial until I [...]
Tags:cover versions·dolcenera·emile sande·italian version·professor green·read all about it·the chain·versions·YouTube
Katching-22, part 2
January 3rd, 2012 · 2 Comments · Rome
Quick update on our exasperating Italian broadband situation, 3 January 2012. This is more for my benefit really, to keep a record. So, we finally get a call and another appointment is made for the guy to deliver the router. No explanation for the no-show, no apology. Thursday 22 December, the guy arrives, early no [...]
Tags:
A sketch on the Gianicolo
December 23rd, 2011 · No Comments · Rome
(Bit of a different format today. Poem-ish as opposed to prose-rant.) What are the mountains to the east of Rome? I need a name, for everything. For all these domes and rusted trees, relaxing into cold under the autumnal sun of a Roman December. Is that the Chiesa Nova? Or that? And what is [...]
Tags:
Katching-22
December 13th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Rome
Living in Italy can be a Kafka-esque experience. It’s not a new observation, indeed it’s something that Tobias Jones alludes to a lot in his highly enjoyable extended op-ed book The Dark Heart of Italy. But we’ve been having such fun (*gritted teeth*) here are a few more first-hand experiences of Italy’s apparent love for [...]