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| Starting the day with a visit to my favorite church in Rome located in the Monti neighborhood. |
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| SO beautiful! |
Teresa is studying in Rome for a year, and decided that for her birthday she wanted some good old American hamburgers. Luckily for us, hamburgers are a hip, gourmet thing (think cupcake shops in the US). We found a really cool place right by Piazza Navona (which has 5 euro burgers after midnight!). I had a delicious veggie burger and some of the best chicken quesadillas of my life. Teresa, a burger conisour, was quite pleased with the meal and Joey, Nina, Teresa and I all decided that we would be coming back. We got really lucky for dessert and met some Italian ladies who were celebrating "Singles Awareness Day" They gave us some of there delicious red velvet cupcakes :)
Ravonettes concert at one of the coolest venues I have ever been to:
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| 2 euro beers in front of the Victor Emmanuel make waiting for the N6 bearable. |
Today was Teresa's 21st
birthday! Instead of spending the day hopping from one trashy
American bar to the next Teresa, Nina, and I spent the day in true
Ter fashion. We started the day off at Villa Borghese (one of the
most beautiful, and popular parks in Rome). We wandered around
talking, singing, laughing, and occasionally flinging pieces of our
pizza bianca at geese. We wandered out of the park and stumbled into
a beautiful church in the Monti neighborhood. Next, we walked all
the way to the area around Termini were we shopped at a
crazy store called Moss?? One of my new favorites, and very eclectic
and interesting.
Of all of my friends, Teresa is
probably the most knowledgeable about GOOD food. What else would you
expect from someone whose favorite food is actually fancy cheese! One
of Teresa's culinary passions is meat, especially Hamburgers. For her
birthday dinner, Teresa set about finding the perfect hamburger. A
task not so easily accomplished in Rome. Cultural bit: Hamburgers,
Cheesecake, and beer pong are considered as as American as Pasta,
Terrimissu, and wine are to Italians. Thus, hamburgers, cheesecake,
and beer pong become somewhat of a novelty here in Italy. My Italian
friends are always asking me about the finer points or 're-racking'
or trying to make the most American cheesecake (which, along with
hamburgers, they think we eat all the time?). Anyway, after lots of
research (instead of paper writing, as usual) Teresa found
Hamburgeresa. The head chef is from New York, and the place seemed to
be in good repute with the Italians who had raved about it in the
numerous Italian food and living blogs Teresa regularly sifts
through. I had a perfectly moist veggie burger which was delicious
because unlike most veggie burgers this one was mushroom based
instead of bean based like most veggie burgers in the states. While
here I managed to befriend some Vietnamese-Italian women celebrating
'singles awareness day.' We talked for a bit, and they ended up
sharing their home-made (really!) cupcakes.
After Joey left Teresa, Nina, and I
headed to the Ravonettes concert. We showed up over an hour late
which turned up to be just in time (oh, Italian time!). The concert
was amazing, and we eneded the night splitting a cab to Piazza
Venetzia with an English speaking couple who bought us beers which we
(in true Italian style) drank in the Piazza right in front of the
Victor Emanuelle.
