IPP43 - prima parte

We start our travels on Saturday afternoon heading down to London for pizzas with Chris and Ken at Social Dough before crashing at Chris’ place for the night. Next morning we head to the pod parking and we’re in the terminal in plenty of time to grab some breakfast at Nero before saying goodbye to our bags and heading into the duty-free paradise(!) that is terminal 5.

We stock up on M&Ms for the room and Longchamp bags for the carrying thereof…we mooch around for a while and head to the gate where there’s an absolute masterclass in not listening to the pleas not to gather at the entrance to the gate before your group number is called…we get on toward the end of boarding and there’s plenty space in the overheads so we relax for the short haul to Rome.

Rome is nice and warm (30C) and we get through immigration fairly quickly after expecting the worst with the new EU entry requirements – we found the shorter queue somehow… We get our bags and join the queue for the taxis after establishing that Nick and Anne are already well clear of the airport. Our bear of a cab driver drops us at our hotel and we’re welcomed to our room for the next few days…

We meet up with Nick and Anne a short while later and head out for a lemonade (with basil) and some pastries in lieu of lunch… then we head off into the underbelly of Rome managing to avoid most of the tourist spots until Nick navigates us to the Villa Borghese where they’re setting up for some sort of celebration for the local police chief, apparently… the grounds are massive and we spend ages wandering through them before heading down Via Veneto (I’ve heard of that one) which is fairly quiet as it’s a warm Sunday afternoon. We cut back and forwards toward our hotel and arrange to meet for a spot of dinner a little later…

Dinner is at a pizza joint that Chris has recommend (she also recommended the hotel and several other eateries around the hotel) and it’s brilliant! The pizzas are excellent and the waiter’s recommendation of lemon cake for dessert is really memorable! There’s a queue waiting for tables pretty much the entire time we’re there – clearly the locals like this place as well! We crash at a reasonable hour and get a brilliant night’s sleep.

We sleep in the next morning and Nick and Anne end up putting us to shame and heading out hours before us even though they’re the ones who should be jet-lagged. We end up back at the local coffee shop for a pain au chocolate and an espresso before meandering down toward Piazza Navona and a cold drink. Lunch consists of a massive plate of starters for me and a Caesar salad for Gill… we wander past the Trevi Fountain and I get a great pic of the assembled throng of tourists all clamouring for the perfect shot of the fountain…

The walk back to the hotel is largely uphill and as a result we take a pretty direct route before chilling for a few hours.

We meet up with Dave and Jan and Nick and Anne in the lobby and Dave wrangles us a cab down to Travestere where we have a secret food tour booked… we find Frank and Jo already in the first bar so we join them… it would be rude not to after all! After a short while our guide for the evening joins us and following the usual introductions and a long explanation of why we meet up once a year somewhere around the world – which for some reason includes an introductory lesson in mechanical puzzles.

Ludo then proceeds to introduce us to a bunch of local Roman dishes from a series of specialist establishments – deep-fried zucchini with anchovy and mozzarella at the second stop, proper Roman pasta at the fourth, Maritozzi was a revelation and the final round of gelato was superb…we’re all grateful to Jan for finding this one and for taking the initiative – it’s a brilliant evening for friends to reconnect and experience some of the local specialities.

Gill and I fade stupidly early – we don’t have the excuse of being jet-lagged so it must be an age thing!

 

Tuesday morning is another leisurely start with breakfast at our usual spot and then a trip to the local supermarket for some hotel snacks and breakfast the next day… then we grab a cab down to Piazza Navona for a little sight-seeing before our pasta and tiramisu-making class.

We meet up with the Potts and the Baxters and enjoy a welcome glass of prosecco before heading into the restaurant to start the process of making our pasta… literally from scratch – one egg and some flour and fair amount of gentle encouragement and we have a large sheet of pasta on our boards about an hour later… that duly gets chopped into strands and we choose our pasta sauces…

Next we’re onto the tiramisu and that’s even harder work as the real Italians don’t believe in using electric mixers! Once it’s fully beaten into submission we head out for a starter and some cold drinks in the warm piazza – those misting machines are superb! We end up having a wonderfully leisurely lunch made largely by our own fair hands and end up chatting there for an hour or two.

We’re feeling lazy and grab a cab back to the hotel where we end up chilling for the rest of the afternoon…

We meet the Rossettis and the Baxters for dinner at a local Taverna that Dave’s chosen with the help of Google and it’s superb! We literally feast on some simply superb dishes over several hours and have a brilliant evening before a gentle wander back to the hotel.

We end up getting all our packing sorted before crashing – we’ve set alarms for the morning but don’t end up needing them…simple breakfast in the hotel room and the final packing before meeting the gang downstairs and grabbing a taxi van to the train station… we manage to evade the alleged plague of pickpockets, grab another coffee and pastry before heading off to the platform, which it turns out is a long hike across the other side of the station… we make it with about 10 minutes to spare but the Potts don’t…

They end up grabbing a cab to another Rome station and getting a later train from there to try and catch up with us at our change-over where we should have just over an hour between trains… we watch their progress over the next couple of hours with their window of opportunity getting progressively smaller and smaller but they manage it with a couple of minutes to spare in the end…

We get onboard and find Duncan and his wife in the same carriage, only I insist on calling him Donald for some reason… in Assisi, Jan is off the train in a flash and wrangles us the only taxi on the rank and all 8 of us pile into it and head up the hill to our hotels.

We check in and unpack and then start running into all of our friends in the lobby and at registration – it’s good to be among my tribe again, especially now that there’s a growing number of MPP-ers among them!