Huntin' some treasure in Rome!

Friday was probably one of the most exciting days of this summer. It all began a few days ago when I was contacted by one my mother's client who needed help in organizing a surprise for her husband. She invited me for an apéritif at Hotel Eden, a five-star hotel just next to Villa Borghese and five minutes from Via Veneto and Piazza di Spagna. The restaurant and the bar is on the roof, with a breath-taking view on Rome.

Now this is a Royal entrance!

This is only a 1/6 of the whole view!!!

This is how the aperitif looks like. Delicious! For some more click on Le Meridien Hotels's flickr photostreaming here. So, back to the business. Here's what it was all about. Every year she has prepared something special for his birthday and this year wasn't an exception. She had a clever yet a risky idea to make a treasure-hunt in Rome. Everything was already planned , the only problem (due to the language) was to convince the people to play along to the game. That's where I came in. Additionally she asked me to be one of the treasures! So this is how I found myself at four o'clock in the afternoon at the Bar Brasile in piazza Venezia, swiping some champagne and waiting for the birthday-boy to show up with his friends.

L'Altare della Patria - a monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy, on piazza Venezia. This was the view from the bar (below) where I had to wait. Not bad, huh?



This picture is taken from Google maps, thank God for Google!



Right after it I ran in Fontana di Trevi to leave a map in one of the oldest pharmacies in Rome called "Antica Farmacia Pesci"(click to see a picture of the interior). (This is the only public pharmacy which has conserved its original characteristics since Ancient Rome. The interiors are basically the same since 1552, the year in which it was established. The walls are probably covered by serpentinite, a type of green marble, and furniture in mahogany, I guess).



Anyways the phramacists were so excited to participate and couldn't wait to hear the four russian men pronounce a non-sense phrase - "I cavalli non sono animali pericolosi" (horses are unharmful animals) their joke of the year! Soon after my boyfriend walked me to my final spot - on Via Delle Quattro Fontane - to keep an eye on the "clue", which was sticked on the pale and to take care the boys head on in the right direction. I hid myself in the bar and Luca took care of everything. Their next stop was at Babington's Tea Room, just next to the Spanish Steps.



My final assignment was to make sure the chauffeur picked up the guys on time for a ride on a vintage car just before the dinner.




It' was fun, especially because I got to share it with my boyfriend. Soon it will be his birthday, I was thinking of doing something similar to him too (he won't read it because it's in english, no worries!). What has been the best surprise someone has ever organized for you on your birthday or for some other special occasion?!

A casual night out in Rome (and few tips for choosing a good restaurant)

Yesterday me and my family went to eat in a restaurant which my mom just discovered, thanks to her job. She organizes personalized vacations in Rome and always wants to test the restaurants she's suggested, before sending her clients there.

This restaurant is called Trattoria Pizzeria Fiammetta and it's just a few steps from Piazza Navona, one of the most famous squares in the Rome city-center. I think at the moment it enters in my personal top 3 list (the other two I definitely recommend are Il Chianti, near Fontana di Trevi (the most famous fountain in Rome) and Taverna Trilussa, in Trastevere.) Italian cuisine is already good and it's kinda hard to find a place where you eat badly, anyway it's always better to know where are you going to eat (either you've been suggested by a friend or have done a research on Trip Advisor, one of the best sites for this kind of information). In Rome it's very easy to fall in a typical tourist-trap. Because usually after a long day of walking you're willing to sit down at the first table which gets on your way, and belive me, if you were having some doubts about the place in the beginning, after 2 minutes you'll be already ordering, all thanks to the smooth-talking waiter who well knows his job, read: has the perfect eye for catching the tired and hungry tourists like you! That said, keep in mind the better the service seems and the better looking is the place, the more probably the food isn't so good at all. The restaurant thing is totally upside-down here: the best places in town can very often have a really bad service and they seem not to care about the interiors or atmosphere at all (which in my opinion is so important!). Why? The reason is quite simple: they just can aloud it. People keep on coming back for the food and there is no need for change. Oh, and another tip for choosing a restaurant: try to see if there're any italians in the place, in the absence don't even bother. Usually the best ones are always full of locals, through the week.

So, Fiammetta was good. It served the typical italian food, done very easily and deliciously! Everything just seemed to melt in mouth! Only thing I could complain about a little was the interiors, but let's just leave it aside. I always have something to say about the interiors!:) Compared to other restaurants, it was quite sophisticated and clean. The prices weren't so high too and the desserts were breathtakingly goood! Enough of talking, here are the pictures, also from the Piazza Navona.

On our way back home... oh Rome I'm gonna miss you a lot, even though I'll be away only for a month! It's crazy how you've become part of me! (what happens if I need to go to uni in another city? let's not hink about it!)

Autumn Colours

Finally I'm back! My trip was great, really fantastic and I was really lucky to have made it just before the wheather got cold. Cause now it's really really really freezing, seems like Autumn forgot to pass and Winter agressively took the position over. Anyway, I promised to post some photos and here they are.

Before arriving at our cottage we decided to go straightly into the restaurant for a pranzo (lunch at 1 o'clock) and we stopped at our favourite taverna called Ada 2000, near Fossanova. At the parking lot there were so many antique or vintage(therefore as I'm not a car specialist and can't make difference if it's a 25 year old vehicle or older) cars.



As I was resting, thinking my thoughts and oh-what-a-coincidence-just standing next to one of my favourite cars, not posing at all! Daniele took a picture of me. So this should be Porsche from the 80's.
:D



We have so much fun with Daniele all the time, I was so happy he came a long with us!





JAGUAR ROAR



KEEPS ROARING!



ME AGAIN:)



ALFA ROMEO SPIDER.



Italians really love this car.



So this is how the restaurant looks from the outside. Really simple and in even simplier inside, but man, how good you eat there! I think it's the best restaurant you can find because of the quality and price relation- you pay nothing and you eat until you feel SICK! Seriously, there are some people who take the train from Rome and go to Fossanova ( you spend about an hour to get there) just to eat in this restaurant. Everything is homemade there, from pasta to meat.



The place was originally made for the truck-drivers who stopped while on the road to grab a snack or something, but with years, because of it's fantastic food, the place got so popular that it's hard to get a table if you arrive too late. As we know the owners, for us there are never problems:)





Actaully I wanted to take a picture of this delicious torta di nonna (grandmother's cake), but it kinda was too late...



This was our cottage.



From the inside. It's really cozy there and I have already posted about this cottage once before.





The view on the lake and the Circeo's Mountain.



This is the cat. Love her.







The "garden" of this house is a forest and it has some many mushrooms in these period that the owners just don't know where to put them anymore.


These are the most precious mushrooms there are in Italy, really rearly found, but unfortunatelly, as you need the licence for selling no money making is possible. I seriously think they should concidere the black market as they'd make a fortune out if it!! :D









It was nice to get to say good-bye to the summer time and the beach..