Viale Di Trastevere

I’ve been spending more and more time on Viale di Trastevere (and Trastevere itself), and for many good reasons. The weather has finally started to break here, and more and more people are coming into the city for the summer (the tourist season). Dom and I explored a new area the other day down by one of the bridges that crosses into Testachio, which is where our graduate assistants are living this summer. We picked up some gelato from the local gellateria and parked ourselves on a bench on the street corner and just watched people. I have noticed that Rome is a great place to people watch, and that Trastevere could be the “people watching capital” of Rome. There are no tourists here. I have heard from everyone (including locals) that the tourists tend to stick on the Rome side of the Tiber River, leaving Trastevere to the Roman natives. Anyways, we found a new favorite place to eat in Trastevere. It’s called Pizza Portese and it is fantastic! They have more than just pizza, they roast chickens, they sell bread, they have all types of lasagna, calzones, and many other items. The owners are great. They know that we’re American (we’ve been frequenting this place a lot lately) so they attempt to speak English as we attempt to speak Italian. In the end it all works out. After we get our pizza we go outside, lean against the wall and enjoy the authentic Roman taste as we watch hoards of Italians go about their daily, hectic lives.