(Hint: it includes monkeys and cats. If that doesn't get you curious I don't know what will)
Thursday
After a nice calm morning we decided to start walking towards the park. It was such a lovely day, with the sunlight on our faces it felt way too warm to wear a jacket! We still needed one of course, as it was rather chilly in the shadow. We spent some time in the park first, looking at the green birds in the trees and just enjoying the sun. The ultimate holiday feeling...
We continued our way and bought tickets for... The zoo! Right in the middle of the park. For those of you who don't know me: I love zoos. I can spend hours just watching our cats and dogs at home, so can you imagine how happy I am when I can look at other animals, too?! Luckily my boyfriend agrees or adapts because he knows how happy this makes me so we spent quite some time there. Unfortunately some of the monkeys were not in their outside shelters, but there were plenty of other animals left to see.
There were only a few other people in the zoo, which meant we could stay and sit there watching for as long as we liked. I don't know why but observing animals has such a calming effect on me, and I could have walked around there all day. This was exactly what I needed: some sort of break from all the thinking and taking in information and just shallow-brained entertainment for a few hours. Monkeys jumping from one rope to the other, meerkats sitting there observing the sky, zebras going wild because they hear the zookeeper coming and two seals just calmly swimming around. So relaxing!
After some time for ourselves we decided to look for a restaurant close by. On Monday we passed by many lovely places there, so we were hoping for the best! Unfortunately it was way busier, and many places were already full or booked until 10 p.m. We had been walking around for nearly an hour when we were close to the restaurant we visited on Monday (It was called "Trattoria al 19") and later on we decided to just go back there. After all, it had been so delicious and we were ready for some more!
Funny story: we saw some people watching the menu outside doubting whether to eat here or not. We were like a promotion team, telling them they had to go inside and that we looooved it so much on Monday! They told us they had seen a lovely restaurant during the day but that it seemed to have vanished, and that they were already searching for so long. I don't think any foodie hasn't been in that situation before, at least not the ones like me with a bad sense of direction... Oh well.
Anyway, they entered the restaurant a little while later too. We felt like they were our responsibility since we had convinced them to go in, so we were watching their faces every time they tasted a new dish! Later on the girl came by our table to tell us everything had been incredibly tasty, and she thanked us for our recommendation. Mission succeeded!
Our food was lovely too. First we both ordered our own starter as I was feeling like eating seafood, which my boyfriend hates. I had the most incredible gnocchi with a sauce made of pesto, cherry tomatoes and shrimps. To be honest it didn't look that appetizing (see picture below) but I ended up scraping the last bits off my plate! Secondly we ordered thinly sliced beef with mushrooms on top: it is quite common to share a plate, for example with meat or vegetables. This was very tasty as well, surprisingly. We were in some kind of foodie heaven, or maybe I was just feeling light-headed because we were drinking a whole bottle of wine in a short amount of time haha (I really sound like an alcoholic, first the limoncello and now the wine... I swear I'm not). We decided to both order a chocolate tart as a dessert, which I normally don't even like that much. But mine had pear in it and his was something with almonds or I don't even know (It was called "caprese" and it definitely was not tomato and mozzarella) and it was to die for. It was so good, I swear I've never had any dessert I liked more and that is definitely saying something! I'm still in heaven. Might have to try and recreate that too, but I'm afraid that won't do much good to my healthy eating intentions. Hmmm.
No, I didn't take a picture of the chocolate tarts. I could not wait.
We were so satisfied, and I was a little sad that our holiday was almost over. We planned to finally have breakfast the way the Romans do he next morning though: that lifted my spirits a bit!
We said goodbye to the lovely apartment and left around 9.15 a.m. This left us with plenty of time to have breakfast before walking to the central station, from where we would take a shuttle bus to the airport. We looked around for a nice cafe until we spotted a sign that said "Illy Coffee" but since we are pretty picky about places we eat we decided to look further for a nicer place ;) Luckily I looked the other way, where a perfect cafe was situated! It looked rather expensive but we soon found out that this was not the case: we had a cappuccino, hot chocolate and a chocolate croissant each for around 6 euros. And it was the best coffee I had that week: I think it's usual for cappuccinos to be at drinking temperature, but I prefer to have it nice and hot. The croissants were really good as well, and I regretted not having a breakfast like this before. Perfect way to start the day!
The rest of the day was not that interesting: we watched the newest episode of Sherlock (FINALLY) while eating our last pizza slice at the airport, flight left at 13 o'clock, everything went fine, I travelled back home by public transport which took me 2 hours.... Was extremely happy to be home though: the youngest cat and our puppy were so excited to see me! Best reason to come home, who's with me... It was nice to see my mom and brother too, but my dad is on a holiday with friends himself so I won't see him yet. Now I'm spending the weekend relaxing, and I made some broccoli soup to compensate for all the pasta and pizza I ate!
Will see you next time guys, look forward to the tips and tricks for Rome post :)
If you have any comments or requests feel free to let me know!
Vivian
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