When in Rome

Yes, I have been waiting this entire trip to say that.

We've made it to "the eternal city" (well, we made it again since Whitney and I were technically here before we went to Paris) and were reunited with Susie Q, also known as Susan or Mom or life giver, among others.

The plan is for us to spend the night here, move Whitney into school tomorrow and then take the train to Naples/Capri until Friday when we will be back in Rome (and will then have to come back to America).

We had some of our characteristics travel shenanagins throughout the day, but we got through them with an unending supply of Lizzie McGuire quotes and movie references.

After we'd gotten situated -- and after my mom had become best friends with the hotel manager, Fabrizio -- we set out in our neighborhood, Trastevere. One thing need to note before I can continue is that my dad's barber, Gene Franco, is from Italy and gave us lots of recommendations of what to eat, see, do, etc. and visiting Trastevere was one of them, so check! (Gene Franco shall be a recurring theme in this post, sorry not sorry).

While my mom says that she has followed my blog "religiously" these past two weeks, she doesn't seem to understand that stopping everywhere we see food is not frowned upon but actually encouraged on this trip, so navigating the next week might be more difficult than actually navigating through Rome.

After walking around for a while, we eventually decided to really hunt for some dinner; since my blog is really a food blog and I just pretend that I do other stuff, here is the low down on our first meal in Rome:

First of all, my mom's Italian is bad. Really bad. Watching her try to communicate with anyone while Whitney also tries to use the half dozen phrases she's learned is kind of painful -- at one point, our waiter brought two fish to our table, and these were real fish, like Nemo fish, as in they still had scales and eyeballs and I'm still not sure why that happened!

Following Gene Franco's advice, my mom ordered carciofi alla guida, which is an artichoke thing, and linguini cacio and pepe, which is a pasta thing. Whitney decided to ask our waiter's advice (in first-grade level Italian obviously) and got what she described as "linguini of the sea," which was linguini cooked in tin foil with all sorts of little sea critters. I got fettucine alfredo with shrimp, except I don't think there was actually any shrimp in it. With or without shrimp, it was still delicious. Whitney dubbed it our best meal yet.

One awkward thing about dinner -- other than my mother and sister -- is that I've never managed to figure out how to effectively twirl pasta around a fork and Whitney says that this means that I look like I'm in pain when I try to eat, so I'll be working on this before I leave.

Another awkward thing for me -- and this is all the time, not just at dinner and not just in Europe -- is that both Whitney and my mom feel the need to tell absolutely everyone they meet their life story. Whitney has spent our whole trip telling anyone who looked our way about the American University in Rome, her art history class, how she only has class four days a week from 8:30-11:30 and everything in between... After dinner, Susan was telling (or trying/failing to tell) our waiter about Gene Franco and all sorts of other things that I don't even care about so they must have been totally lost on our waiter with his questionable English skills.

After dinner, I hoped the awkwardness would end, but we still had time to embarrass ourselves on the walk home, where Whitney and my mom told me that I was stupid for liking Benjamin Franklin because Thomas Jefferson was "better looking" and wrote the Declaration of Independence. Their (incorrect) opinions remained unchanged even after I said that the only reason Benjamin Franklin didn't write the Declaration of Independence was because his colleagues were worried that he would hide dirty jokes in it. We also got gelato.

I'm not sure about the WIFI situation in Capri, so that might make blogging a little difficult in the upcoming days. In Rome, we have to pay for the internet but I couldn't get it to work on Susan's computer tonight so I used Whitney's, which will be with her and not me in the hotel when we get back to Rome. That means that this is the last absolutely-assured post for the near-future, although I'm sure it will not be the last. Peace and love until then. Ciao!