A bit of New York in Rome...

My friend Simona arrived from New York the same day that Martine left so I’ve been pretty much nonstop all week. She’s a late sleeper so we didn’t start our day until about noon—grabbing lunch before hitting the first site. I started my month-long Italian lessons at Dante Alighieri last Monday so for 3 hours in the afternoon Simona went to check out the museums and churches while I sat in class learning how to conjugate verbs. Italian seems to be a little easier than French (with some of the same root words so I can sort of follow along) so hopefully I’ll pick up a bit before I leave here (notice I said “a bit”. I’m not as naive as when I first moved to France and thought I’d be fluent in 3 months, lol). In the evenings, Simona and I would meet up after my class, grab an aperitivo (did I mention how much I LOVE the fact that you can go to a bar, order a drink and help yourself to a free buffet spread? Genius!), go home and relax then change before our nights out.

(compliments of the chef, our new friend)

On her first night in town we met up with a new acquaintance of mine. My friend M met a lawyer from Rome (we’ll call him The Expat) at an International Meetup in Paris last year while he was working there for a few months. She put us in touch back in December when he was planning a trip to New York for New Year’s. We never met but I picked up the correspondence with him a couple weeks before I arrived in Rome. He called me on Friday night and invited Simona and I to join him and his friends for drinks at this cute bar called Salotto 42. It’s a tiny bar but when the weather’s nice, everyone stands outside in the piazza with their drinks, the crumbling façade of a huge, ancient temple as the backdrop. Finding myself in moments like that is when it really hits me: wow, I live in Rome.

(she'll be back!)

Anyway, its funny b/c when I first saw pictures of The Expat on Facebook I was not impressed. Little did I know he just doesn’t photograph well—in person he was HOT. He was sort of flirty with Simona and asked to meet up with us before she went back to NYC. In the end, we played phone tag but didn’t manage to connect with him before she left so she told me, “Stace if he tries to talk to you, totally go for it. One of us should take advantage!” (lol, did I mention that I love that girl?). I’m all for persistence and reaching out to new friends but when a guy is potential dating material I guess you have to take it a little easy. So we’ll see if he calls again…

(pizza in the Jewish Ghetto)

The next night we were at a bar in Monti, again taking our cheap carafe of house wine outside to drink when two guys approached us—one was another lawyer (aka The Lawyer) who was flirting with me and the other took a liking to Simona. Unfortunately The Lawyer doesn’t speak much English so I’m not really sure what to make of it. He also seemed a bit aloof, but one night when I asked his friend about him (he popped up at the bar for like an hour then disappeared), his friend was like, “Do you like The Lawyer?! He went home but said if you asked about him then I should call him and he would come back and join us”. Um ok. Apparently he didn’t think I was interested (hello, we can barely communicate) so he was waiting for a sign from me.

(our new friends... for the week anyway)

The following night Simona and I ran into The Lawyer randomly in the street and he invited us to join him and his friend for dinner, I declined b/c we had to be up early the next morning. And Sunday night he sent me a text asking to take me to Frascati (a small town an hour outside of Rome famous for its wine bars and restaurants) but I already had plans. I mean, he seems nice but what in the world are we supposed to do, stare at each other? He’s cute but not that cute. So again, leaving the ball in his court. We’ll see what his next move is.

On Simona’s last night in town we went to this new place called Mater Matuta in Monti. We were walking home one evening and spotted a set of stairs leading to a really cute cave like bar/restaurant. The décor is all white with huge low hanging chandeliers over the tables. And they have a small room tucked in the back with a long table that seats about 10 and looks like its set up for a formal wedding (note to self: good place for a birthday dinner). Anyway we called to make a reservation for Saturday and it turned out they were having their opening party that night—10 Euros for a sampling of all the food on their menu and unlimited prosecco. So we got dressed up and enjoyed a delicious and cheap dinner before calling it a night around 1am. She left at 9am the next morning and now I am officially on my own in Italy.