In the Ghetto & Aperitivi

A deliberately slow start (as opposed to all the other ones) this morning.

Nancy had found out that an old friend, like one she hadn't seen since she was fourteen years old and living in the Virgin Islands, lives in Perugia an hour or two north of here so she had reached out via email with the upshot that we made plans to have lunch in the old Ghetto or Jewish section of Rome at a restaurant called Nonna Betta. (I hope to god that isn't a play on words of "none better" but there is a restaurant chain here called Eataly (get it?) so these hopes may be in vain.)

Well, you never quite know what you're going to get with the old school chum that you haven't seen in a half century or so, so it was with a bit of stroking of the chin and sucking of the teeth that I approached the meal. But I'm here to tell you that Elida was charm itself and lunch was a lot of fun.

After a long multi-course meal I suggested that my tourist map had a couple of Grade C attractions a block or two in either direction from the restaurant and that we might if nothing else enjoy the stroll. This just shows you what Grade C gets you in Rome.

Judaica along the way

A "toss in" on the way was the "turtle fountain". I was expecting a giant turtle so the fountain, nice enough in its way, was a bit of a disappointment.

Next up was the Palazzo Mattei di Giove which doesn't rate a picture on the map or even a reference; it's a footnote in the description of the Piazza Mattei. Keep that in mind for the pictures below.

There is absolutely no signage for this. The address given in the footnote was wrong. The sign on the door said something like (in Italian) Italian Center for American Studies. And what was inside was great, a large collection of classical statuary and various fragments. We could have seen more but there was a conference going on.

We could have retraced our steps to the next item but I decided that looping around the other way would be more fun. It was, if also more uncertain which involved a bit of map flipping. We stuck our noses into this church whose name I forgot to note but which may be St. Ambrogio; very rococo.

Teatro di Marcello. Note the building along the top. Those windows appear to be new. No idea what's going on there.

It never occurred to me to look under the tops of these things until Nancy mentioned it.

The next stop was Teatro di Marcello, a first century BCE theater built by Augustus. Pretty impressive as we got to walk around the outside.

This left us back at our starting point near the restaurant so we jointly wandered back towards our tram stop where Elida caught a taxi. What a delightful visit! We plan to go up to her farm in Perugia by some means soon for a couple of nights.

And Nancy and I headed back to Monti where inevitably we had some gelato.

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Kelly Medford, the artist we had met, forwarded an email to us announcing a "Friends In Rome" get together and suggesting that we might attend. This evening we did. If I had paid closer attention I would have noticed that the forwarded note was pretty impersonal. Anyhow, we went, and setting aside the cost it wasn't a bad hour or two, just chatting with some different folks. Probably nobody that we would like to have any further relationship with though. This group does have language get togethers however and they're at a cafe in Monti. For 12€ you get to talk in a foreign language with someone else who presumably also paid 12€.  That's next week and Nancy may go