Exhausted. Less than 5 hours sleep last night. It's like I'm in Calgary all over again! I think I'll need a nap later. The dreary and rainy weather doesn't exactly invigorate me, either. Perhaps an early morning gelato is in order, as a pick-me-up.
Took the train to Orvieto then a bus to the Duomo. As the bus came out of a narrow alleyway onto the Piazza del Duomo .... all of a sudden .... holy crap! I actually said that out loud! I've seen nicer duomos, but this one appeared quite out of the blue as we had been driving through windy, tight little alleys - hence the reaction. The interior was pretty disappointing. I also found the exterior to be a little comical - the stripes looked like a prison uniform, to me.
Browsed in some touristy stores - they have some very cheap truffle oil here! 8 euros for a big bottle - I paid more than twice that for 1/3 the amount back home. I strolled around town - there are some nice cafes and coffee shops. Stopped for a sit-down lunch. It's time to splurge and enjoy myself! The food budget is being blown today! They had some nice fresh rolls. Dense, but good - perhaps a tad underdone.
Tomato salad - good as usual. Steak w/ truffle sauce - grilled, then smothered in an oily truffle paste. Very good!!! The sauce wasn't overpowering - mild, yet still aromatic. The steak was sweet and tender, just like I like it (coincidentally, it's also how I like my women ... heh heh). It was a tiny bit underdone, but still great. The steak was huge by Italian standards (from what I've seen so far) - but it sounds like the Umbria and Tuscany regions like big chunks of bloody beef. My kind of people, my kind of place!
Sat next to the stereo-typical "ugly Americans". Stay home if all you do is complain! One guy absolutely loved the sound of his own voice. It's funny because they were all complaining about how long it took the waiter to take their order (45 minutes - they were justifiably mad) - yet when they called him over, nobody was ready to order. Huh? They also spent 10 minutes trying to figure out what an aubergine was. I really wished that I had my earplugs with me.
Back to Rome, where I relaxed for awhile before meeting the girls for dinner. A few others joined us - Kristine's friend from Barcelona just arrived in Rome (Andrew), Jose, and Travis (ahhh .... the stories that will be told about him later on!). We went for salad - again! I had the salad that Kristine had the previous time - chicken, shrimps, egg, peppers, onion, tomato, lettuce, oranges. My only complaint was that the dressing was lacking flavour. Otherwise, it was top-notch.
There was this terrible magician performing at dinner - the kind that you felt so bad for, you HAD to give him money. We all thought that his greatest trick was keeping his horribly bad toupee on top of his head. It looked like some kind of dead rodent. He actually pulled his toupee off at the end and used it to solicit money from people. Hilarious!
Overall, a great dinner - it was like dining with old friends. We all had WAY too much cheap wine, and then Jose ordered everybody a double shot of limoncello. A bad, bad combination. Tiffani and I left after dinner to go back to the hostel, while everyone else went to Campo Dei Fiori for some more wine. I felt OK as we left the restaurant, but was VERY tipsy on the way back.
It was already midnight and we had a 40 minute walk to the hostel. It was a hellish walk ... my dinner almost magically reappeared several times on the walk back (it's times like this that I remember why I rarely have more than 1 or 2 drinks). I had a very tough time keeping it together as we approached the hostel - we came across an area that people had been obviously using to relieve themselves. I managed to make it back to the hostel without incident and was very relieved - then I saw the four flights of stairs I had to ascend to get to my room. Nooooooooooooo!!!!
More thumbnails ...
