I turn my back for one second
And look what Eric does
Sticks his hand right in my puff
How do you know that happened?
I just reached for the camera the next thing I knew I was covered in cream puff
Good morning adventurers.
Good morning.
We are in one of the most ancient cities in the entire world today
the city of Rome
No, I don't think so. This doesn't look like Rome.
To be honest up until now we've avoided Rome because it is one of the most touristy places on the planet and we don't really do that well
in such intense crowds so that being said there is so much amazing history in this city so much to see and do there's
A ton of really good food to eat
so we are at least going to take this one day before we move on to other parts of Italy and we are going to
Explore Rome as much as we can.
So we actually came in the shoulder season
It's actually November and I think today there's free entrance everywhere. I don't know if that means it's gonna be way busy
I don't know how this compares to normal. Yeah, but it's pretty busy. I'd have to say by my standards
It's pretty busy
But before we head inside or explore any of the other monuments here in the city, we're going - we haven't had breakfast yet
So we are going to head to a more local part of the city to sort that out first
Yes! Breakfast time, here we go.
We've got our coffee we're sitting on the street and it's quite loud
It's loud, sorry. But this is the
Maritozzo, these little guys are super simple
They're just little sweet buns that have been cut in half and they put whipped cream in there
It used to be I think more of a snack but now it's become a pretty common breakfast here in Rome
Or I hear, a late night, maybe drunk food?
People say you eat this before you go to bed after you've been out drinking, I don't know.
Think it's gonna be really messy. They didn't give us any silverware or anything with it. Yeah
I think you just eat it like a cream puff or something but a lot of cream
It's like an open-faced doughnut
That's what it tastes like except the dough in there is a little more bready like a dinner roll maybe a little more yeasty
But then this is like nice whipped cream that you would get inside of a doughnut sometimes
It really reminds me of like a not so sweet
doughnut, this is really good
So these little guys are two euros a piece I don't know yet if that's actually
Expensive or not? It doesn't seem so bad. But the place we wanted to go to is actually called Il Mari-
Wh- I already forgot
Maritozzo. It's actually called this and it was right across the street from our apartment
So if you're in that area, maybe look that one up maybe they'll be cheaper
But these look and taste exactly how I was hoping so I think they're pretty legit
Other than being really loud because we're right on a busy street. This is really nice. There's a bunch of tables just along the sidewalk here
Pretty sure these are nothing but locals that were sitting around which is always a good sign.
The bread isn't like pillowy soft or
Anything like that? It's a little bit hard. Let's give it a try
Did I get it all over me?
Sure did.
Right.
It's really good. Messy, but good the cream is so
Puffy and whipped so you have this really light airiness the cream, but then the bread is pretty dense down here
It's definitely kind of like an open-faced doughnut like Alison said but it's really delicious
Definitely worth trying for 2 euro, I'd say.
I turn my back for once
And look what Eric does
Sticks his hand right in my puff
How do you know that happened? I just reached for the camera the next thing I knew I was covered in cream puff
Travel back with me to the second century when a disgraced emperor challenged the fiercest gladiator and
General Rome ever known to battle to the death. That is right. Right here to this exact spot
Joaquin Phoenix
Challenged Russell Crowe to fight and they both died.
We watched Gladiator last night. That's why she's doing this whole bit
It's true, right? Historical fiction?
Very historically accurate
Now it's time for some real facts. That's where I come in
The last battle actually took place here in
435 AD it is estimated that over
500,000 people and 1 million animals died in this arena right here
The real question is how many people can this arena accommodate well back in its heyday about
50,000 people so that is a huge arena considering the technology of the day and how long ago that was
It's incredible that they could house that many people at one time in one place
We've come across
From the Coliseum and you get this really epic view the ticket to the Colosseum gets you access to a bunch of other attractions
so the forum is one of those and it's right across the street from the Colosseum if you
Go into the forum and then go to where the Temple of Venus is, then you can get a view like this pretty cool
A lot less people up here.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty nice. You can take your time take it in see from a different perspective
Watch the beautiful construction going
There's a lot of construction going on
I know it's really crowded, but it's definitely worth seeing all this stuff because I mean if you like history
It's really nice to see a lot of the preserved ruins and just you don't usually see such full-scale items. It's usually really isolated
So it's cool that it starts the Colosseum you can wander through the forum through the parts here and it's all just ancient amazingness
We just popped over to the Trastevere
Neighborhood which my Italian is not so good
So the pronunciation is probably off but it's supposed to be one of the prettiest and maybe most underrated neighborhoods in all of Rome
We will be coming back here for dinner and some other things though. So we probably won't explore too much now right now
we're just on a food mission and we're gonna go to a place to get I think one of the most
Popular kind of street food snack items. I'm very excited. It's gonna be super savory and I'm so hungry I cannot wait
This is rice
sauce and cheese
Different variations that are then breaded and deep-fried and eaten as a little snack
I measure to be really good with a beer wine, but I don't see any in here.
We were kind of sad about that
Yeah, so we got a traditional kind we got one that has cheese and pepper in it and then one with amatriciana
amatriciano, which is should have pork in there when we rip this guy open
There should be a nice thick ring of mozzarella that's gonna split apart and I'm very
Excited to see that and then immediately devour it. So this is more of the classic one
I think I kind of lost track of which one is which but the balls are surprisingly firm on the outside
Woop, well, there we go!
Got the string of mozzarella
It's a little hot so jeez that is so stringy look at that
It's insane!
Wow, look at that!
No escaping it it's an absolutely delicious savory tomato eat treat. The textures in this things are great. You've got this hard outer
Shell and then you have a dense ball of delicious rice on the inside with mozzarella cheese and just this
Tomatoey deliciousness holding it all together. It's like a giant mozzarella stick with rice on the inside
Oh jeez, look at that!
Now I get to try one I think this is when he said there's cheese and pepper in there?
We walk in just as they finish these ones - yeah, they're piping hot. Oh my god. It looks like risotto deep-fried risotto
No string but that's okay. I'm just killing time 'coz I'm scared it's gonna burn me.
That is so good it's so
Deceptively cheesy and creamy in there
It looks like it could be dry or something
But it is not at all and the pepper adds a nice little spice to it a really nice dynamic
The cheese is so good and that rice is perfectly cooked
So it's a little bit chewy, but it's still really dense and thick and then it's just fried perfectly
Is the outside of that as firm as this one?
It's pretty crunchy. Yeah. Yeah. This one looked a little bit lighter in color
Yeah, so it's not as hard I think but oh my gosh, it's so good
Now, this is definitely what I would be eating after a night out of drinking.
In total we paid five euro for these three, but I feel like it's an entire meal for a person.
Yeah, and then two euros for breakfast. Oh
That place is very easy to miss. It's another literal hole in the wall
That's completely unmarked. They have a bunch of really delicious looking stuff in all the cases
And of course the dish that we tried which I highly recommend trying it was very good
It was so good.
Yeah a little bit more filling and what we had this morning
We forgot to mention our good friends Thomas and Sheena from Chasing a Plate actually went and tried this place and they assured us it was good
and they did not let us down. That was phenomenal
All right, we're nice and full and we still have more of Rome to see so onward!
How are you doing buddy
Did you just make a best friend?
He spotted me and wanted to be my best friend apparently. This is where he lives now.
You want to come home with me?
He's got a little mustache. We call him Charlie.
Your name's Charlie the cat. Charlie cat. That's
Purrrfect.
So if you haven't guessed by now
We came to a cat sanctuary that's in the middle of the city and it's actually a bunch of ruins where they allow these cats
To live and it's because there's actually a law in Rome
[high pitch sound]
That's horrible
There's actually a law in Rome that says wherever I think it's five or more cats are living together
You can't mess with them. You can't shoo them away. You can't do anything
You have to just let them be so that's what happened here
There was a bunch of cats hanging out and they just let them be and this is now a cat sanctuary and I love it
This is number one must do thing when you're in Rome come to this cat sanctuary and find this little guy little Charlie
This is his home now. He's never gonna leave me alone. I tried to push him off me, but
He wasn't having it
You guys have a happy life together
See ya, bye!
Say bye bye Charlie!
These little kitties are actually not strays because the animal shelter is here
They take care of them all and they make sure they're all vaccinated and up to date on their shots
So they're healthy happy little kitty cats. They are very happy little cats and they're so affectionate
Yeah, they get this whole site all to themselves because people can't go down in there
Yeah
probably the coolest fact about this place other than that's
Overrun with kittens is that this is supposedly where Julius Caesar was murdered here in this area
So the ruins aren't as glamorous maybe as the colosseum
But it's a pretty cool stop for the history aspect and to pet a cat if you want
All right y'all
Final sights of the day we want to see
Found this epic look out. They were on our way up to right now
I didn't really realize it was gonna be such a steep incline
[Alison speaking almost out of breath]
But we're almost there we have three more flights of stairs
And we're actually trying to go pretty fast because we were trying to catch the sunset
Well, we might be like 20 minutes too late. We'll see stay tuned
We made it to top you all
We had to run a little bit but we made it!
Yeah a little bit sweaty, but it's actually really cool up here. You can see all of the city over here
There's a few trees in the way. But other than that, it's really cool
There are a bunch of little stalls and food trucks and stuff
Also, I don't know if it's birds or just a big horde of bats, but they're buzzin atop the city and it looks incredible
It's such a huge school of bats that we call in the school
I don't know but it looks like a school of fish the way it moves seeing that over the city. It's really incredible
Yeah, so Rome is apparently known as the city of Seven Hills, but this Hill is the honorary eighth hill from what I read
So it's not one of the main ones but it gives you a great view of the whole city
And you can see up in the distance all the mountains and everything
You can see quite a bit from up here
And we're also going to be as usual marking everything that we're doing today in the description below
So you can find all these spots when you come from so we didn't exactly catch the sunset
But we got a beautiful view of the city. So that's awesome. But now we're going to go eat again because it's dinner time y'all
Rome is actually the birthplace of the dish carbonara
Which maybe you've heard of before we actually had a really cool place picked out that we wanted to go to but we showed up
And turns out it's closed. We're not having good luck
That's been a theme of our Italy trip. Everything's been closed, but that's okay
Yeah
because
We did a little deep dive and we were up on the viewpoint and we found a place that was nearby at the very least
Not sure how local it is, but it is a little bit away from the tourists walking street here in a from best
Yeah, we still can't say the name of this area properly
but I ordered the carbonara it has arrived and carbonara is basically just a
Spaghetti and you have some hard cheese in there either pancetta or guanciale
This is guanciale, which is basically pork jowl, which is the cheek of the pig and there are eggs in there as well
Well, it smells so cheesy and savory and delicious
I think it's gonna be pretty good hopefully because we're kind of taking a gamble in this place
This just looks so gluttonous and delicious.
Yeah, well looks really hot
Let's give the carbonara a try
It is pretty dang delicious the real star of this is the guanciale
it's these little chunks of pork that have a little bit of crispiness on them and you can just
Taste the fire in them, which is the best part of it
And the rest of it is just really subtle and really simple its I thought it was just gonna be this overpowering cheesy flavor
But it's really not it's a very simple subtle pasta dish. The pork is super tasty
It's almost like little bits of pork cracklin
It even has a bit of a crunch to it
But it really has a similar flavor or to like chicharones or something like that pepper is also another very mmm
It's actually at my throat right now
Pepper is another very important component of this dish so you can see the little bits of pepper in there
But I love the little burst of pepperiness that it adds. But if you get one big whole chunk of it
It can go down your throat the wrong way
That's what's happening to me right now
Really good, I promise
I went with another local Roman spaghetti dish
So this is spaghetti a la amatriciana?
I think that's right.
Unlike Eric's, mine has a nice tomato base
It still has the guanciale in there. So the pork jowl, but it looks like it's cut potentially differently
so it's tomatoes pecorino and then that delicious pork and
It smells so good. I was really hoping for a tomatoey pasta sauce
Oh
Just have to say I love all the fresh pasta here in Italy
It actually tastes like pasta instead of just being like a vessel for having sauce shoved down your throat
And then the cheese on here, it's so nice
It's a little sharp and then with the pork and the tomato sauce, it's just such a hearty delicious
Pasta dish. I love it
when a lot of menus here in Italy
You're gonna see your first courses then your second courses now dishes like this
These pasta dishes are gonna be on the first course
Usually at least that's what I've seen
But it's funny because they're a little bit cheaper and they're meant to be you know the starter
But they're so big at some places. This is a big portion
Some have much smaller ones, but this is a great value. I think each of these is nine or ten euros a piece
Yeah, which seems to be pretty on par with what we've been seeing throughout the day
So yeah, and I don't know how you could get a second dish after this
Most people do a starter a first and a second and then dessert
Oh my word if you guys can do that kudos to you because this is about as much as we can do
It has been such a fun day
Obviously Rome was not built in a day and it is not meant to be seen in one day
So when you come if you can have more days do it
If not, hopefully this guide will help you but it's time to put the camera away and get to work on this pasta
So we will be heading to Matera tomorrow
Yeah, we're gonna get out of the big big cities and we just wanted to make a brief stop in the big city
We're not going to Albania. Sorry to break it to you guys
We really wanted to but where we wanted to go is now closed for the winter
And so instead we're gonna go to Sicily even more Italy coming at you. Yeah. All right. Good night adventurers
We'll see you on the road