Rachel and I took the train from Verona to Rome, where the lovely Stefano and Stefania, cousins of a family friend, adopted us for the night.
First they drove us to a hilltop village just outside of Rome, where they fed us the best Italian food we’ve ever tasted. There was truffle fettuccine, peppered noodles, roast cucumber and eggplant and portobello and peppers, local cheese, flatbread, dry carved ham, sweet red wine and Italian biscuits. It was enough food to feed a small army of college students for a week. Naturally, having been on the cheapskate-cum-student-budget crash diet since leaving Cardiff, we practically licked the plates.
I’m blanking on the name of the village, but it’s high on a hill overlooking Rome. It was dark, but there was still a spectacular view of the valley:
Then—even though we were full of food and wine and liable to fall asleep in the backseat—Stefano and Stefania drove us into Rome to see the colosseum by night:
And the Arch of Constantine:
Incidentally, some of the cobblestones around the Colosseum are—according to Stefania—original. They’ve been polished almost slippery by two thousand years of feet. I can’t get my head around that.
Legend has it that if you turn your back on the Trevi fountain and throw a coin over your shoulder, you’ll return to Rome someday. I certainly hope so!
