We made our way to Eataly, a super posh food hall a bit south of the Colosseum. Brian rightly called it the Ikea of food. We meant to eat at the panini place, but I got distracted by the focaccia stand right next to it where we had the BEST onion focaccia evah!
Ninety-two cents of awesomeness later, we headed towards the chocolate counter where I had two scoops of gelato mascarpone fig and cacao…YUMMY and Brian had half the chocolate counter okay, not really but it was rich stuff. By the time we rolled out, it was quite warm out. What to do? We ended up taking the Metro to Garbatella, a suburb south that has a unique architectural feel.
They were shared by families and each one is built differently, some with fun design quirks. After a few hours roaming the neighborhood, we hopped back on the metro and got off at Circus Maximus. Sitting on a marble bench above the former race track, we watched as the starlings started swarming. The huge amount of black birds against the perfectly blue sky was stunning.
After running into a Bavarian family in full dirndl and leiderhosen glory, we headed up a hill toward the Malta embassy. The keyhole. Through the keyhole, you can see three countries at once: Italy, Malta and the Vatican. The keyhole is particularly placed so that you look through the tree-lined garden to get a perfect view of St. In the nearby orange grove, there is a large garden with a balcony that overlooks the Tiber and Trastevere.
This is the point where I realized I feel panic not in my chest as most people do, but in my shins and ankles. As Brian teetered dangerously closed to the edge my shins and ankles began to tingle and I decided to film the gorgeous display of starlings as they flew overhead toward the trees lining the Tiber. Brian shared a story about how he had once gotten locked into this particular garden with a friend and how they had to hoist themselves up the huge 12 foot fortress walls.
