When in....

“When in Rome…” they say, but I tell you what, it’s hard to keep up.

Let’s start with the driving. I hired a car for the duration of my stay as I’m planning to drive up through the middle of Italy to see some of the countryside and knowing that driving alone would be complicated enough, I also hired a GPS so I wouldn’t have to be constantly checking maps. This was probably the best money I have ever spent as it saved me enormous amounts of time, but I suspect it cost more than I think it did since I’m not sure if it took into account all the areas of Rome (which I may or may not have driven into) which require special permits (which I’m fairly sure I didn’t have). So, if anyone at home is reading this and there is a pile of official looking mail from Italy, I don’t want to know about it ok? Romans make their own rules as they drive and the roads reflect this. In most cases lanes are not clearly marked and a road that would normally be three lanes wide contains five lanes of traffic all cross-crossing without indicators and it always seems to be peak hour. Surprisingly though, I very quickly felt comfortable driving in this environment and as the Lonely Planet guidebook puts it “As a general rule, worry about what’s in front of you, leaving those behind you to think about your rear!”

Breakfast in Italy is more about coffee than food. The traditional espresso is usually had standing up at a counter with a pastry, perhaps a cornetto (Italian croissant-type pastry often plain but sometimes filled with jam or custard) or a ciambella (doughnut), but the selection in many pasticcerias is far more extensive.






One important thing to note about Italy is that almost everything closes for several hours in the afternoon; this includes many churches and attractions, so if you’re a late riser you might want to consider changing habits while here. During this time, most people have lunch or a siesta or both. Lunch in Italy can often be three or four courses, consisting of Antipasti (Appetiser: Often cold), Primi (First Course: Carbs mostly – Pasta, Risotto, etc), Secondi (Second Course – Meat, fish, etc) and Frutti e Dolce (Fruit and Sweets). Dinner is the same, but who can do that twice in one day, or even once unless you don’t have anything else all day? So what can you have for lunch on the run that isn’t going to take 2 hours or make you lie down in the first available shady spot for a siesta?

One of the lunchtime staples is the perennial favourite – Pizza. Almost a never ending variety is available by the slice, but the main feature is simplicity and freshness with many having only two or three ingredients. One place I found, while obviously targeted to tourists showed quite a bit of pride in itself and I had to take this photo. As many of you know, if this was a sign in Melbourne I would have a great time picking on all the spelling mistakes, but this is Italy.

While they don’t have over 180 different varieties available at all times, the selection of the day is still impressive:

Since I love mushrooms on a pizza, I decided on the mushroom pizza, which has at least two different types of mushrooms as you can see and was delicious if a little oily.

Another favourite on a hot afternoon in Italy is, of course, Gelato. Every street has a gelateria or two, at least it seems that way. The list of flavours is endless and the quality is outstanding. My favourite flavour was Cinnamon, but I only had Gelato once, resisting the temptation is not easy.

I had the rare opportunity to have dinner with three beautiful women in Rome (met up with some friends from Melbourne), so we decided to make a night of it and head to one of the nicer restaurants. From recommendations and from Lonely Planet, we chose La Baguette, a rooftop restaurant. The La Baguette shop downstairs was closed for personal reasons, but access was available though the next door wine shop. We thought it was a different restaurant, but decided to try it anyway. The staff were very friendly, helpful and spoke English quite well. To begin with they served an amuse bouche of smoked salmon, and since I was having dinner with a vegan, a vegetarian and someone who doesn’t eat fish, this meant more for me.

As for main courses, unfortunately vegans are limited in their selection and will probably have to look to the Contorni (side dishes) instead. Helen chose the Green Salad and the Grilled Vegetables.

Vegetarian options are a lot easier and, in fact, I have been eating a lot of vegetarian food since arriving in Italy, which I guess is not surprising after Serbia. Monica selected the vegetarian pasta.

Nancy had the rack of lamb, which was perfectly cooked.

I chose the Swordfish with green pepper sauce and zucchini and mint sorbet. This was sensational, the coolness of the minty sorbet was an excellent foil for the spicy green pepper sauce and the swordfish, while not a strongly flavoured fish, was cooked to perfection and had a great texture.

For dessert, Nancy chose the crepe.

I chose the Crème Brulee, which was flamed at the table - it must have had some alcohol poured over it – and tasted delicious.

This was a great meal and I would definitely come here again if I come back to Rome. I loved Rome, but to be honest I wouldn’t come back here in a hurry since there is so much left of Italy to see and experience.

Good Morning Belgrade

Waking up at 6:45 am was a bit of a surprise, but I wasn't too tired, so I got up and started thinking about breakfast. My parents (who I am sharing the Serbia/Montenegro stage of my trip with) were also up and we put it down to jetlag and decided to go for a walk into the city and find somewhere for breakfast.

Our apartment is close enough to the town center of Old Belgrade to walk there within 10 minutes, so it was a great way to check out the local area as well as the town. There were bakeries and little cafes everywhere, but I wanted a hot cooked breakfast of eggs and bacon, so we kept moving. Eventually we found a nice restaurant in town called Biblioteka (Library). After realising that people were smoking, we asked if there was a non-smoking area and were told that it was upstairs. Now this sounds fine until you realise that upstairs is not closed off and is directly above the smokers, but it wasn't too bad as we sat down and took a look at the menu.

Now if I was expecting Eggs Benedict or Florentine, I had to readjust my expectations. Poached eggs were not on the menu anywhere, only scrambled of fried. There was an omelet also, but I quickly found something that grabbed my attention: Bibloteka Dorucak (Library Breakfast) which was their version of a big breakfast. This consisted of a fried egg, vienna sausage, ham, cheese, fried potato chips, tomato chutney and mustard. Now I have to apologise for not taking any photos but I was hungry and didn't think to grab the camera before I was already well into it. My mum ordered the bacon and eggs, which was 3 fried eggs with bacon, dad ordered the omelet. Both came with the potato chips and sauces. This wasn't the best breakfast I've ever had, but it was very nice. The ham and cheese both seemed a little flat and after tasting the bacon, I would have gladly substituted the ham and cheese and had bacon instead. We all had juices and coffees. The total if this meal was about 1650 dinars for three of us, about $AUD33. At these prices, I'm gonna love this town.

Deciding to do some more walking to compensate to some extent for breakfast, we continued our walk through the old city and headed for the fort in Belgrade, Kalemegdan.

This is a huge sprawling fort set on a very high hill in Belgrade, overlooking the meeting of the Danube and Sava Rivers.



The views from here are spectacular and it is surrounded by parks and gardens full of people from teens to senior citizens. Some just enjoying the view and the day and others gathered around chess boards, playing and chatting away.

Walking back through town we saw some poets from all over Europe sharing poems about Belgrade and their impressions in several different languages. We would have stayed and listened to this longer if we weren't already fairly tired and we also had to head over to my cousin's place for a late lunch at about 3pm.

Now I don't think I've walked this much in a long time and I was very tired when we got back to the apartment, but we soon headed out for lunch and had a great afternoon with several members of my dad's side of the family and got home around 7pm. Being as tired as I was, I decided to take a nap before figuring out what to do for the rest of Saturday night. I'm sure you can guess what's coming, but I didn't get out of bed until about 11 hours later.

Let's put it down to jet lag and see if we can make up for it today (Sunday).