Abe's Adventures in Florence: Weekend in Rome

This past weekend I headed to Rome, and I must say with absolute certainty that it's the definitive highlight of my trip thus far. Rome is a fascinating place and I like the city there quite a bit.

I traveled with friends Laura Krule and Alana Weber, and every piece of the trip was fantastic. We got an early start on Friday morning, meeting at 7am to walk over to the Florence train station. We successfully boarded a 7:49am train to Roma Termini. The Eurostar train was really nice and clean. The scenery along the way was dazzling as well. Despite miscalculating the direction of the train and ending up seated facing backward rather than forward, I had an entirely pleasant experience on the train.

Laura was our designated planner and guide for the weekend, and her excellent directions took us to the Metro Linea B, and we got off at the Bologna stop. The Metro trains and bus only cost 1 euro a trip, which is great and makes traveling around really easy and nice. Our Kosher hotel, Bed Breakfast & Cappuccino, was located literally moments away from the metro stop. We exited the first few times at the wrong part of the intersection, but we quickly got the hang of it and were pros by the end of the weekend. We had a wonderful room all to ourselves, with a large bed in the middle for the girls and a small bed tucked against the wall for me. There was a mini-fridge with milk and peach juice (delicious!) as well as a croissant breakfast each morning. We had our own bathroom right across the hall. It was a lovely experience, especially considering we could have ended up in some shady hostel somewhere for nearly the same price. Our triple cost only 20 euro each a night. Our accommodations, pictured below, were wonderful. My internal frame backpack was great - I carried it on my back for the walks to and from our lodging, and then zipped off the mini backpack to take around during the day!

Our first stop after depositing our luggage in our room was Pane al Pane, a quaint Kosher bakery just about five minutes away from the bed and breakfast. Laura was our official communicator, speaking Hebrew to both the people at the bed and breakfast and at the bakery. We ate some impressively-looking and slightly mild-tasting lasagna for lunch, and planned to return later to get some Shabbat snacks. We were told that we locate both synagogues easily by looking for the police car parked right outside, and it turned out that both of them were literally seconds away from the bakery. Our next stop: the Vatican.

The metro took us to the Vatican, and we arrived probably around 1pm. We had a nice, leisurely, awe-filled stroll through all the hallways and while I didn't have the chance, I believe that both Laura and Alana snuck a picture or two inside the Sistine Chapel. Here are a few of my photos:

After spending a few hours at the Vatican, we headed back to the bakery and purchased some delicious cookies with fruit and chocolate filling for consumption the following day. We returned to our hotel to change and then walked to the synagogue. The services were a lot of fun since they use the same tune for the entire Kabbalat Shabbat service, but it never quite ends and as a result just starts over every few words. It's incredibly difficult to sing along to because of the quick pace, often indistinguishable melody, and accented pronunciation of each word, but I had a great time. For dinner, we joined with a Bnei Akiva youth program with about ten high school seniors from Milan and Rome. The purpose of the weekend was to encourage them to come to study in Israel for a year before college. We simply joined them for meals and participated in a few of their programs. Introducing ourselves and naming our favorite ice cream flavor and movie, I had the option of either speaking in Italian or Hebrew and I opted to give my Italian a shot. Apparently, I did pretty well, despite some later flak from Emmanuel about my accent. I made my best effort to speak in Italian as much as I could, and some of the girls spoke back to me in English in order to practice their own command of a foreign language. Dinner was great, though I was woefully unprepared for the way it mirrored traditional Italian meals. I had some challah, some pasta, and some fish, and then was shocked to find out that the main course of meat was still on its way! After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and I'm pleased to report that I got the best night of sleep I have in months, even before coming to Italy. It was infinitely quieter and warmer than Florence, and sleeping for ten hours was a glorious thing.

Saturday morning we awoke shortly before 11am, and slowly made our way to the synagogue, where we found services still underway and caught the tail end of some interesting rituals with which I was completely unfamiliar. Before lunch, I went with Emmanuel to join an early Mincha afternoon service. I was asked to open the ark, which normally wouldn't be too much of a problem, but I have no idea how these keyhole Italian doors are made, and it ended up taking a little extra time, though it was hardly a problem. Lunch was very much like Friday night's dinner in that I was still not expecting further courses at every turn, but it great to eat a whole lot of food. We returned briefly to our hotel room on Saturday afternoon to play Bananagrams, and I'm very proud to say that I managed to get two Zs at the end of the game, and even though Laura won first, I put them both into the word "frazzled." We went back for a minute only to leave right away to go to the students' bed and breakfast, which was very nice. When we returned, we had already missed Havdalah but had an extremely brief ceremony ourselves. We parted ways rather abruptly from our new friends, but we hope to get their contact info from the Bnei Akiva coordinator or the Shaliach, Rafi.

After changing at our hotel, we took the 62 bus to the Jewish ghetto. We passed a number of Kosher restaurants after locating the synagogue, and saw some ruins of an arch right near the Largo Ottobre 16 1943, dedicated to the memory of the Italian Jews deported from there by the Nazis. We ate at Nonna Betta (advertised as the real Jewish ghetto's tradition), and what a terrific meal it was. We began with the highly recommended fried artichoke, which was tasty. Alana ordered penne al salmone (penne with smoked salmon), I tried the ravioli all'aranciata (ravioli with orange sauce) and Laura got the vegetable lasagna. All the dishes were great, even though mine only had four or five raviolis. The meal wasn't terribly expensive and was well worth every penny in my opinion.

It was late by this point and we had an early day of exploring ahead of us, so back to the bed and breakfast. We awoke at 8am the next morning and headed out a bit later to our first sight-seeing stop. The woman at the bed and breakfast was kind enough to let us leave our stuff there until the afternoon, which was really great. We went to the Coliseum and got a guided tour from an entertaining guide named Vito. We explored the Roman Forum and all the gardens as well. Our return to the Jewish ghetto for lunch was a wondrous decision because we went to a place called Fast Kosher, which had Kosher fast food! The Jumbo Burger with fries and pineapple juice was one of the most satisfying meals I've had here so far. It was quite filling and entirely delicious. We walked from there to the Pantheon, the Trevi fountain, and the Spanish steps. I actually heard someone calling my name at the Trevi fountain - we ran into some of the peer advisors who were there on a weekend trip too! It was an exciting but tiring day, so we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff, made one last trip to the bakery for some cookies to go, and then made it to the train station for a 4:30pm train back to Florence. We were back in our rooms before 6:45, though we admittedly got delayed a bit by our coincidental meeting with Joey and Eddie, Brooklyn College students studying in Florence for the semester, on the walk back. Joey is a good friend of my former roommate Hal. I'm sure we'll be seeing them again this semester. All in all, a terrific weekend! I think I'd like to go back to Rome and see some more of it, or even just experience the culture again, maybe sometime in April. Some more photos below: