We started the day late, Thursday having been a long exhausting day after an unrestful night on the Palermo-Naples ferry. As we got all our cylinders firing, I sorted through my accumulated books and other souvenirs and despaired of carrying them home, so I boxed up a lot of things I no longer needed (including laundry!) to ship home.
By the time we got started, it was late morning and we all needed to shop for some mundane essentials and ship that box before turning our attention to explorations. Those chores done, we force-marched to the Jewish ghetto neighborhood to start the day's peregrinations in the Eternal City.
We had lunch at Piperno, a celebrated Jewish-Italian restaurant. Jewish-Italian food has developed for thousands of years, and Jewish food in Rome is nothing like Jewish food in New York City!
Of course I had to have the Carciofi alla Giudia (Jewish-style artichokes, a classic of traditional Roman-Jewish cuisine). It was interesting... It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. It was a little heavy and oily, but I have nothing to compare it to, so maybe it was an excellent version of something that I am in no rush to attempt at home. I think I might have preferred a potato knish. But you win some, you lose some, and this trip had a lot of winners!
The whole lunch was sort of hit-or-miss. The stuffed zucchini blossoms were light and crispy and delicious, but it would have been good for Melissa to know that the stuffing included anchovies.
I had turbot that was perfectly prepared but was served with the head on, looking directly at Lorna. After a shriek on her part, it was hurriedly taken away and filleted and brought back. Lorna had gnocchi in a cheese sauce of Fontina val d'Aosta cheese that was absolutely delicious but way too saucy, and Melissa had a very good spinach-ricotta ravioli.
We drank a bottle of Dolcetto d'Alba with all that, and somehow the women still had room for dessert, amazingly delicious little strawberries with excellent vanilla gelato. They declared it the best part of the meal and I had no solid evidence to the contrary.
We explored the Via dei Pettinari and the ancient Jewish ghetto neighborhood, which is considerably nicer today than it was in medieval times. There are many jewelers here, but as we had feared the jewelry was dominated by simple modern stuff and engagement rings no very different from the jewellers in an American shopping mall. There was nothing as nice as Bimonte Sorrento!
There was also an excellent bakery with poor service and fabulous pastries: i Dolci di Nonna Vincenza (the Sweets of Grandma Vincenza). Lorna got an excellent Cassata alla Siciliana there. How she did it so soon after the strawberries and gelato is a testament to the magic of the Cassata. I'm quite certain that we set some sort of record for simultaneous eating and exploring on this trip.
We reached the Campo dei Fiori just as the flower-sellers and greengrocers were closing up in the afternoon heat (did I mention the heat?). The cobbled surface was strewn with flowers and leafy greens rapidly wilting in the July sun. It looked like a rampaging mob had stormed through, which I guess is not too far from the truth of the matter. Don't be fooled by this photo; the owner of this booth was helping a friend and scant moments later there was not enough on this site to feed a rat.
From there we hit, in order, the long Piazza Navona shopping area, the Cloister of Bramante (with an exhibit of the works of the fascinating, influential, and tragic J.M.W Turner), the famous and elaborate Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps, near which are all the same ritzy shops that were in the impossibly crowded Piazza San Marco in Venice. I think I saw some of the same people there.
I had gotten a hot tip from a Facebook follower to try dinner at Al Moro, which was nearby but not yet open, so we had cocktails at Angolo Sciarra - an excellent cocktail bar that had a cask-aged Manhattan, just like the one that I make at the Old Colony Club! (well, not just like... I think mine is better - shhh!)
Our dinner at Al Moro was incredible (and incredibly expensive, but worth every penny). We ate artichokes again (but in the Roman style and delicious), the ubiquitous caprese, asparagus, tagliolini with lots of shaved black truffle, I had the baccalá, Lorna her usual sea bass, and we complemented it all with an excellent, earthy Vino Nobile de Montepulciano.
We crashed back at the bivouac and slept the sleep of the innocent, and arose early the next morning ready for strenuous combat with the crowds at the Vatican.