I would be remiss if I did not mention Italian food. Wow. Josh and I were in heaven- I think we fell in love over a plate of something delicious, and I have never been the kind of woman to not eat {minus a 2-year eating disorder in high school, mind you}. Thus, eating and eating a lot were two things high on my to-do list in Rome.
As for the actual food, of course there were lots of fresh pastas, pizzas, and salads- those are all favorites of mine, but I have really been missing fresh salads here in the UK. Thus, when we happened upon a delicious and inexpensive salad and pasta place {L’ Insalata Ricca}, we lunched there every day, trying new dishes each time. They had 4 pages of salads, and every one sounded amazing. The two I tried were everything I hoped for. Italian tomatoes. I will never be the same. We ordered bruschetta daily and I made sure that tomatoes were in abundance in my salads as well. For dinners, we opted to try restaurants that offered well-priced, but authentic 3- or 4-course meals. They all started with bruschetta, then a “first” course of pasta, then a “second” course of meat, then a dessert, usually a custard or fruit salad. All scrumptious, though I did grow weary of pork- this baby is picky about salt evidently.
I did not take pictures of everything {I was too busy consuming it in enormous mouthfuls}, but I did want to share what I did take.
Another daily ritual we had was gelato consumption- if we did not eat at least 2, but preferably 3, cones a day, we felt we were unsuccessful in our gluttony. I mean seriously how many times do you go to Rome pregnant??? Once. Eat and eat well is what I say. We happened upon a fabulous gelateria {Old Bridge Gelateria} in between the Vatican and our bed breakfast- extremely delicious and well-priced- about 2pds per heaping 2 scoop cone. I will say that we had one utter fail in regard to gelato. It was the day we had visited the Trevi Fountain- I spotted a gelateria that looked good and saw some good flavors. When we ordered, we decided to splurge a bit and get the chocolate-dipped cones, too. When the lady told us hesitatingly that these cones {and what we were ordering} were “special,” we should have seen a large red flag pop up. In hind sight, when Tiffany’s was a few doors down and every woman I saw was carrying a Louis Vitton hand bag, enormous red flags should have waved until I backed away from this place as stealthily as possible. However, we were on the hunt for mid-morning gelato, and none of it registered. As Josh walked away from the register, all he could say was “Wow.” I ignorantly assumed his ice cream was really good…until he told me he handed her a 20 Euro note {roughly $30} and got 1 Euro back {roughly $1.50}. I think I blinked a few times, then I know I felt sick to my stomach, but by golly I ate every bite of that blasted cone that wasn’t nearly as good as our usual haunt. As Josh put it, “It’s like we got mugged, but only lost 20 Euro and got some ice cream out of it.” In repentance, we made several cuts that day to make up for what I considered squandered money.
