Rome, October 19, 2006

After a night journey, we reached Rome early morning and took really antiquated metro to our hostel. Rome gives a feeling of Delhi. No artsy buildings, hidden mom and pop stores and no rules on the road. Our hostel was also very ordinary and the hostel keeper very uninterested. We managed to ask him where to go for breakfast while we waited for the check in time. Later, we ventured into a small café run by a family. Struggling in Italian we managed to ask some pasta for lunch. What we got instead was some bread, mushrooms, artichokes, tomato and mozzarella. While this was a surprisingly very tasty entrée there was no pasta anywhere. Few minutes later the café owner comes and tells us that your pasta is on the way. That was the time we were introduced for real with the many course Italian dining. This was antipasti, a pre main course entrée. Pasta is the first course usually followed by a second course of a meat dish followed finally by dolci (dessert). Phew, Italians do spend a lot of time eating and the bill comes only when you ask for it.